United Nations (UN) Al-Farra Memorial Journalists Fellowship Program 2017

Application Deadline: 21st May 2017

Offered Annually? Yes

Eligible Countries: See list below

To be taken at (country): United Nations Headquarters in New York City.

About the Award: The Programme is sponsored annually since 1981 by the United Nations Department of Public Information as a fellowship programme for junior and mid-level broadcasters and journalists from developing countries and countries with economies in transition.

It also provides journalists with an opportunity to gain first hand experience in the work of the United Nations. It is also an opportunity to meet journalists from other countries and exchange ideas with UN communication professionals.

Upon completion of the Programme, participants are expected to continue working in journalism or broadcasting and help promote better understanding of the United Nations in their home country. The Programme is not intended to provide basic skills training to broadcasters and journalists as all participants are already working as media professionals. The Programme also does not lead to employment by the UN.

Type: Fellowship

Eligibility: The Reham al-Farra Memorial Journalism Fellowship is open to junior and mid-level media professionals from countries with developing economies or economies in transition.

To meet the eligibility requirements, candidates must:

• be under 35 years old
• be a fulltime working journalist
• be proficient in English
• possess a passport valid for at least 6 months beyond the start of the Programme (programme begins September 2017)
• be a national of a developing country or country in transition, as defined by the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs

Number of Awards: Up to 8

Value of Fellowship:  

• It provides journalists with an opportunity to gain first hand experience in the work of the United Nations.
• It is also an opportunity to meet journalists from other countries and exchange ideas with UN communication professionals.
• Upon completion of the Programme, participants are expected to continue working in journalism or broadcasting and help promote better understanding of the United Nations in their home country.
• The Programme is not intended to provide basic skills training to broadcasters and journalists as all participants are already working as media professionals. The Programme also does not lead to employment by the UN.

Duration of Fellowship: 4 Weeks

Eligible Countries: Afghanistan, Albania, Algeria, Angola, Argentina, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bahamas, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Barbados, Belarus, Belize, Benin, Bhutan, Bolivia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Botswana, Brazil, Brunei Darussalam, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cabo Verde, Cambodia, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Chile, China, Colombia, Comoros, Congo, Costa Rica, Côte d’Ivoire, Cuba, Democratic Republic of Congo, Djibouti, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Egypt, El Salvador, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Fiji, Gabon, Gambia, Georgia, Ghana, Guatemala, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jamaica, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kiribati, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Lao, Lebanon, Lesotho, Liberia, Libya, Macedonia, Madagascar, Malawi, Malaysia, Maldives, Mali, Mauritania, Mauritius, Mexico, Moldova, Mongolia, Montenegro, Morocco, Mozambique, Myanmar, Namibia, Nepal, Nicaragua, Niger, Nigeria, Oman, Pakistan, Panama, Papua New Guinea, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Qatar, Republic of Korea, Russia, Rwanda, Samoa, Sao Tome and Principe, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Serbia, Sierra Leone, Singapore, Solomon Islands, Somalia, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Suriname, Swaziland, Syria, Taiwan (Province of China), Tajikistan, Tanzania, Thailand, Timor-Leste, Togo, Trinidad and Tobago, Tunisia, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Uganda, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, Uruguay, Uzbekistan, Vanuatu, Venezuela, Viet Nam, Yemen, Zambia, Zimbabwe

How to Apply: Apply Here

Visit Fellowship Webpage for details

Award  Provider: United Nations

Pop-Kultur Goethe Institut Talent Scholarship for Music Students from Developing Countries 2017/2018

Application Deadline: 21st May 2017

Eligible Countries: Developing or transition countries

To be taken at (country): Germany

About the Award: It’s going down on August 23rd and August 24th in a couple of locations at Kulturbrauerei Berlin. International professionals give personal insights into their work and share their expert knowledge through workshops, case studies and talks with you – lively and practical instead of dry and formal. Among them are Pop-Kultur acts such as Noveller, Throwingshade and Circuit des Yeux. More mentors & courses will be announced soon.

Once more the program offers spots to talents from all over the world. Hence, you’ll be able to network across borders.

Furthermore, in the run-up of Pop-Kultur from August 16th to August 22nd, we plan activities to experience Music City Berlin: studio visits, short mentorships in selected companies of the Berlin creative industries, listening sessions and meetings with scholarship holders of Musicboard Berlin GmbH. Other activities, such as visiting the evening program of the Atonal Festival, will be taking place during the week before Pop-Kultur.

Type: Training

Eligibility: 

• Every participant should prepare a short input talk (15 min.) in advance about his/her experience in the music field so far and the music scene in his/her respective country.
• Advanced English skills are crucial as there is no translation available. You will be tested in advance by the local Goethe-Institut.
• You need work experience in a specific music field. We require proof of at least 3 projects.
• You have to cover all additional expenses that might occur during your stay.
• If you are not boarding your flight or cancel the program on short notice, you are obliged to reimburse Goethe-Institut/Musicboard for accrued expenses.

Number of Awards: Not specified

Value of Program: The participation fee, accommodation, travel expenses, hospitality (per diem of 10€) will be coveredby Goethe-Institut within the period of August 16th to August 26th 2017. Goethe-Institut will book flights, cover the costs and will help with visa issues. Additionally Musicboard will grant the talents a Festival Ticket plus access to Pop-Kultur’s networking area for professionals, provides for accommodation (breakfast included), health insurance and public transportation.

How to Apply: Apply in the Program Webpage

Visit Program Webpage for details

Award Provider: Goethe-Institut

European Institutes for Advanced Study (EURIAS) Fellowship Program for International Researchers 2017

pplication Deadline: 7th June, 2017 (4 pm GMT)

Eligible Countries: International

To be taken at (country): The Netherlands, UK, Germany, France, Hungary, Finland, Italy, Spain, Sweden, Denmark, Israel, Poland

About the Award: The European Institutes for Advanced Study (EURIAS) Fellowship Programme is an international researcher mobility programme offering 10-month residencies in one of the 19 participating Institutes: Aarhus, Amsterdam, Berlin, Bologna, Budapest, Cambridge, Delmenhorst, Edinburgh, Freiburg, Helsinki, Jerusalem, Lyon, Madrid, Marseille, Paris, Uppsala, Vienna, Warsaw, Zürich. The Institutes for Advanced Study support the focused, self-directed work of outstanding researchers. The fellows benefit from the finest intellectual and research conditions and from the stimulating environment of a multi-disciplinary and international community of first-rate scholars.

EURIAS Fellowships are mainly offered in the fields of the humanities and social sciences but may also be granted to scholars in life and exact sciences, provided that their proposed research project does not require laboratory facilities and that it interfaces with humanities and social sciences. The diversity of the 19 participating IAS offers a wide range of possible research contexts in Europe for worldwide scholars. Applicants may select up to three IAS outside their country of nationality or residence as possible host institutions.

Type: Fellowship

Eligibility: 

• Degree: At the time of the application, researchers must be in possession of a doctoral degree plus 2 years of full-time research experience after the degree. Exception is made for Law scholars who are eligible with a Master +6 years of full-time research experience after the degree. (PhD training is not considered in the calculation of experience).
• Mobility: Researchers from all countries are eligible to the programme. At the time of the application, researchers must not have resided or carried out their main activity (work, studies, etc) in the country of the selected host institute for more than 12 months in the 3 years immediately prior to the reference date -June 7th 2017 (short stays such as holidays and/or compulsory national service are not taken into account).
• Disciplines: The programme is open to all disciplines in the fields of humanities and social sciences. It also welcomes applications from the arts, life and exact sciences provided that:
  • the research project does not require any intensive laboratory work,
  • the research project interfaces with humanities and social sciences,
  • the applicant has a proven capacity to dialogue with other scientific disciplines,
  • the candidate applies to an IAS that welcome scholars outside the humanities and social sciences.
• Applicants are strongly encouraged to check the IAS’ websites to learn more about the scientific orientation of the Institutes and their potential opening to disciplines outside the humanities and social sciences.
• Age: There is no age discrimination.
• Administrative: Applicants must provide full application forms, curricula, PhD diploma, publications, two letters of recommendation for junior applicants, detailed research proposals. Incomplete applications are not considered.
  Late applications are not considered (the online application platforms prevents applicants from submitting after the deadline)

Selection Criteria: The selection of applicants who are eligible for a fellowship is competitive, merit-based and conducted through an internationally independent and recognized peer review process. It meets the highly demanding excellence standards of the participating Institutes for Advanced Study.

The EURIAS Fellowship Programme undertakes a detailed qualitative assessment according to the following criteria:

• Scientific excellence of the applicant:
• Quality of the research proposal:
• Relevance of an IAS residency:

Selection Procedure

– Scientific assessment by two international reviewers
– Pre-selection by the international EURIAS Scientific Committee
– Final selection by the IAS academic boards
– Publication of results (January 2018)

Number of Awards: For the 2018-2019 academic year, EURIAS offers 54 fellowships (26 junior and 28 senior positions).

Value of Program: All IAS have agreed on common standards, including the provision of a living allowance (in the range of € 26,000 for a junior fellow and € 38,000 for a senior fellow), accommodation (or a mobility allowance), a research budget, plus coverage of travel expenses.

How to Apply: Applications are submitted online via www.eurias-fp.eu, where you will find detailed information regarding the content of the application, eligibility criteria, selection procedure, etc.

Visit Program Webpage for details

Award Provider: European Institutes for Advanced Study (EURIAS)

Rory Peck Awards for News Cameramen and Camerawomen in Disaster Areas 2017

Application Deadline: 3rd July 2017

About the Award: The awards welcome self-funded work and entries from local freelancers, especially those living and working in regions where it is difficult to operate. The Rory Peck Awards are uniquely dedicated to the work of freelance cameramen and camerawomen in news and current affairs worldwide. They celebrate creative, technical and journalism skills and highlight the important contribution that freelancers make to the newsgathering industry.

Across three competitive categories the awards honour quality of camerawork but also take into account individual endeavour and journalistic integrity.

Type: Awards

Eligibility: 

• Rory Peck Award for News (maximum duration: 10 minutes)
• Rory Peck Award for News Features (maximum duration: 30 minutes)
• Sony Impact Award for Current Affairs (maximum duration: 60 minutes)

All entries must have had their first broadcast (television, agency feed or recognised online news publisher) between 1 July 2016 and 30 June 2017.

All entries must have been shot by the entrant(s) who must be a freelance cameraman or camerawoman. For the purposes of the Rory Peck Awards, the term “freelance” is defined as someone who is gathering and generating stories for professional broadcast and online news and current affairs platforms. He/she will not have a permanent or rolling contract or salary but may be on a retainer with one or more organisation(s), work to commission or be paid by the piece. This can include those who, at times, may be required to supplement their income by other means.

All entries must be submitted and titled as broadcast (television, agency feed, recognised online news publisher).

Entrants may submit one entry per category, but cannot submit the same entry twice.

Selection Criteria: Across all categories the awards recognise quality of camerawork, but also take into account individual endeavour and journalistic integrity.

Value of Program: Not stated

Timeline of Program: This year’a awards night is on Monday 23rd October

How to Apply: Once you have submitted your online entry form, you will receive a confirmation email with instructions of how to deliver your digital master material. If you do not receive this email, or if you have any questions, please contact Kate Garner at awards@rorypecktrust.org

Entries not in English must be accompanied by a detailed and accurate storyline and translation, uploaded with the online entry form or emailed with the Word entry form to awards@rorypecktrust.org.

Visit Program Webpage for details

Award Provider: Rory Peck Trust

Important Notes: Entry forms are also available in Arabic, French, Russian and Spanish on request.

Microsoft 4Afrika Paid Internships for Young African Graduates 2017

Application Deadline: Deadlines vary for different regions.

Eligible Countries: All African countries

To be taken at (country): Internships are available across the African continent

Eligible Fields: There are internships available across the African continent in three distinct areas: sales, marketing and technical and we ask you to apply for one of these paths depending on where your skills and passions are. e. If you are successful in your application, you will be matched to great roles with Microsoft partners

About the Award: The Interns4Afrika program offers talented young people a unique experience with a dynamic and agile technology organization on the African continent. You will work for 6 months with a Microsoft partner on real projects, collaborating and learning from your colleagues. Whether you’re aspiring for a future in sales, marketing or technology, this is your chance to kick-start your future

To give you the best chance of success 4 weeks of your internship will be dedicated to developing world class business and technical skills. We’ll support you to rapidly develop your capabilities through the (virtual) classroom and the great work you will do.The competition for a place on Interns 4Afrika is tough but if you are entrepreneurial with a passion for technology, are keen to continue learning and have a flexible can-do attitude we want to hear from you. Join us today, and help shape the Africa of tomorrow.

Type: Internship

Eligibility: Apply if:

• You are able to commit to completing full time internship for 6 months
• You are currently in education or have graduated from an Undergraduate or Postgraduate course within the last 12 months
• You have a BA/BSc in a business related or IT degree
• You are based on the African continent and You have right to work in the country in which you are currently located

Number of Awardees: Not specified

Value of Internship: All interns will be paid a salary and will be located at and employed by the partner organization for the six-month internship period.

Duration of Internship: 6 months

How to Apply: You can download the Interns4Afrika application form here. Please complete the form electronically and email it to the Interns4Afrika team at y4Afrika@microsoft.com . Please also include an up-todate copy of your CV as an attachment to the email.

Don’t forget to sell yourself on your application form and CV as the competition for this internship is tough!

Visit Internship Webpage for details

Award Provider: Microsoft

Deutsche Welle Digital Heroes Online Competition for Bloggers in Nigeria 2017

Application Deadline: Friday, 26th May 2017. 

Offered Annually?  No

Eligible Countries:  Nigeria

To be taken at (country): Nigeria

About the Award: Do you have ideas that will help the environment in Nigeria? Do you want to be recognized as being a digital hero for environmental issues in Nigeria? If your answer is yes, we are excited to invite you to join our blogger contest “Digital Heroes – Generation Nigeria”.

Eligibility: 

• Bloggers must be at least 18 years old at the time of submission.
• Bloggers must be active on social media platforms (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google+, YouTube, etc.)
• All files submitted for the competition must be a product of your own work.
• Submitted links should be posted on one of your social media platforms.
• Each blogger is allowed to submit only one entry (for only one category).
• Your entry must cover issues involving the environment.
• The competition language and the language of entries is English.
• You cannot submit any work that has been published or broadcast by Deutsche Welle.

Entries will be accepted in three journalistic formats:

• Video (max. 3min.)
• Photo gallery (max. 10 photos)
• Article (max. 5,000 characters)

Selection Criteria/Procedure:

1st phase:

• A jury of experts will evaluate the entries, based on criteria such as clarity, narrative structure, research, innovation, authenticity and originality. The jury will choose the top three entries from each category.
• Out of these nine finalists, the jury will choose the winner of the grand prize: a two-week internship at Deutsche Welle, Germany.
• Decisions of the jury are final and are not subject to legal appeal.

2nd phase:

• All nine finalist entries will be published on DW.com/africa. The audience will then determine the ranking and winners from each category with a public online vote.
• The voting starts on Monday, June 5, 2017.

Number of Awardees: 9

Value of Competition: Grand prize: Two-week internship at DW in Germany.

• 1st prize: GoPro camera
• 2nd prize: Smartphone
• 3rd prize: iPod

In addition, all nine winners will be invited to attend the awards ceremony to be held on July 5, 2017 in Lagos, Nigeria.

Duration of Program: 6 weeks

How to Apply:  Apply Here

Name of Provider: Deutsche Welle (DW)

The Universal Lesson of East Timor

John Pilger

Filming undercover in East Timor in 1993 I followed a landscape of crosses: great black crosses etched against the sky, crosses on peaks, crosses marching down the hillsides, crosses beside the road. They littered the earth and crowded the eye.

The inscriptions on the crosses revealed the extinction of whole families, wiped out in the space of a year, a month, a day.  Village after village stood as memorials.

Kraras is one such village. Known as the “village of the widows”, the population of 287 people was murdered by Indonesian troops.

Using a typewriter with a faded ribbon, a local priest had recorded the name, age, cause of death and date of the killing of every victim. In the last column, he identified the Indonesian battalion responsible for each murder. It was evidence of genocide.

I still have this document, which I find difficult to put down, as if the blood of East Timor is fresh on its pages.

On the list is the dos Anjos family.

In 1987, I interviewed Arthur Stevenson, known as Steve, a former Australian commando who had fought the Japanese in the Portuguese colony of East Timor in 1942. He told me the story of Celestino dos Anjos, whose ingenuity and bravery had saved his life, and the lives of other Australian soldiers fighting behind Japanese lines.

Steve described the day leaflets fluttered down from a Royal Australian Air Force plane; “We shall never forget you,” the leaflets said. Soon afterwards, the Australians were ordered to abandon the island of Timor, leaving the people to their fate.

When I met Steve, he had just received a letter from Celestino’s son, Virgillo, who was the same age as his own son. Virgillo wrote that his father had survived the Indonesian invasion of East Timor in 1975, but he went on: “In August 1983, Indonesian forces entered our village, Kraras. They looted, burned and massacred, with fighter aircraft overhead. On 27 September 1983, they made my father and my wife dig their own graves and they machine-gunned them. My wife was pregnant.”

The Kraras list is an extraordinary political document that shames Indonesia’s Faustian partners in the West and teaches us how much of the world is run. The fighter aircraft that attacked Kraras came from the United States; the machine guns and surface-to-air missiles came from Britain; the silence and betrayal came from Australia.

The priest of Kraras wrote on the final page: “To the capitalist governors of the world, Timor’s petroleum smells better than Timorese blood and tears. Who will take this truth to the world? … It is evident that Indonesia would never have committed such a crime if it had not received favourable guarantees from [Western] governments.”

As the Indonesian dictator General Suharto was about to invade East Timor (the Portuguese had abandoned their colony), he tipped off the ambassadors of Australia, the United States and Britain. In secret cables subsequently leaked, the Australian ambassador, Richard Woolcott, urged his government to “act in a way which would be designed to minimise the public impact in Australia and show private understanding to Indonesia.” He alluded to the beckoning spoils of oil and gas in the Timor Sea that separated the island from northern Australia.

There was no word of concern for the Timorese.

In my experience as a reporter, East Timor was the greatest crime of the late 20th century. I had much to do with Cambodia, yet not even Pol Pot put to death as many people – proportionally — as Suharto killed and starved in East Timor.

In 1993, the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Australian Parliament estimated that “at least 200,000” East Timorese, a third of the population, had perished under Suharto.

Australia was the only western country formally to recognise Indonesia’s genocidal conquest. The murderous Indonesian special forces known as Kopassus were trained by Australian special forces at a base near Perth. The prize in resources, said Foreign Minister Gareth Evans, was worth “zillions” of dollars.

In my 1994 film, Death of a Nation: the Timor Conspiracy, a gloating Evans is filmed lifting a champagne glass as he and Ali Alatas, Suharto’s foreign minister, fly over the Timor Sea, having signed a piratical treaty that divided the oil and gas riches of the Timor Sea.

I also filmed witnesses such as Abel Gutteras, now the Ambassador of Timor-Leste (East Timor’s post independence name) to Australia. He told me, “We believe we can win and we can count on all those people in the world to listen — that nothing is impossible, and peace and freedom are always worth fighting for.”

Remarkably, they did win. Many people all over the world did hear them, and a tireless movement added to the pressure on Suharto’s backers in Washington, London and Canberra to abandon the dictator.

But there was also a silence. For years, the free press of the complicit countries all but ignored East Timor. There were honourable exceptions, such as the courageous Max Stahl, who filmed the 1991 massacre in the Santa Cruz cemetery. Leading journalists almost literally fell at the feet of Suharto. In a photograph of a group of Australian editors visiting Jakarta, led by the Murdoch editor Paul Kelly, one of them is bowing to Suharto, the genocidist.

From 1999 to 2002, the Australian Government took an estimated $1.2 billion in revenue from one oil and gas field in the Timor Sea. During the same period, Australia gave less than $200 million in so-called aid to East Timor.

In 2002, two months before East Timor won its independence, as Ben Doherty reported in January, “Australia secretly withdrew from the maritime boundary dispute resolution procedures of the UN convention the Law of the Sea, and the equivalent jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice, so that it could not be compelled into legally binding international arbitration”.

The former Prime Minister John Howard has described his government’s role in East Timor’s independence as “noble”. Howard’s foreign minister, Alexander Downer, once burst into the cabinet room in Dili, East Timor, and told Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri, “We are very tough … Let me give you a tutorial in politics …”

Today, it is Timor-Leste that is giving the tutorial in politics. After years of trickery and bullying by Canberra, the people of Timor-Leste have demanded and won the right to negotiate before the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) a legal maritime boundary and a proper share of the oil and gas.

Australia owes Timor Leste a huge debt — some would say, billions of dollars in reparations. Australia should hand over, unconditionally, all royalties collected since Gareth Evans toasted Suharto’s dictatorship while flying over the graves of its victims.

The Economist lauds Timor-Leste as the most democratic country in southeast Asia today.  Is that an accolade?  Or does it mean approval of a small and vulnerable country joining the great game of globalisation?

For the weakest, globalisation is an insidious colonialism that enables transnational finance and its camp-followers to penetrate deeper, as Edward Said wrote, than the old imperialists in their gun boats.

It can mean a model of development that gave Indonesia, under Suharto, gross inequality and corruption; that drove people off their land and into slums, then boasted about a growth rate.

The people of Timor-Leste deserve better than faint praise from the “capitalist governors of the world”, as the priest of Kraras wrote. They did not fight and die and vote for entrenched poverty and a growth rate. They deserve the right to sustain themselves when the oil and gas run out as it will.  At the very least, their courage ought to be a beacon in our  memory: a universal political lesson.

The Great Division: the Return of Nationalism

Patrick Cockburn

Suddenly the world is full of leaders from Theresa May to President Erdogan of Turkey claiming to unite their countries while visibly deepening their divisions. Denunciations of supposed threats at home and abroad are a common feature of this new political style, whether they are tweeted from the White House or spoken at the podium outside 10 Downing Street.

“Threats against Britain have been issued by European politicians and officials,” said May this week, accusing them of deliberately trying to influence the results of the general election on 8 June. All this sounded very like Hillary Clinton convinced that Russia helped lose her the presidential election, though in the case of Britain any such calculation is highly unlikely given the common European assumption that Mrs May is going to win a landslide victory.

Defending the motherland against the evil schemes of foreigners is a political gambit that has been played out countless times since the age of Pericles, but its impact depends on the political context in which it is used. At the moment, it is peculiarly destructive as ethnic nationalism reasserts itself as a vehicle for grievances and rivalry between different nation states is reaching new heights. Populist nationalist leaders from Manilla to Warsaw to Washington are promising more than they can deliver and looking for scapegoats at home and abroad to blame when things go wrong. Nationalism has always needed real or invented threats to super-charge communal solidarity.

In an age of reinvigorated nation states, English nationalism is more dangerous than it looks. It displaces a vaguer and more inclusive British nationalism, dislocating England’s relations with Scotland and Northern Ireland. It may well be that Scotland will not become independent or Northern Ireland unite with the Irish Republic, but these options are already feasible enough to preoccupy the British state.

One destructive element in English nationalism is seldom identified. People in England understandably resent the way that their nationalism, which they see as merely sticking up for their own interests, is condemned as racist and jingoistic when Scottish and Irish nationalism (or for that matter Algerian and Vietnamese nationalism) are given a free pass as the laudable pursuit of liberty and self-determination.

There is something in this, but there is a difference between the nationalism of weak countries, whose history is one of foreign conquest and occupation, and the nationalism of larger and stronger ones who did the conquering and the occupying. Smaller countries or embattled communities always play with a weaker hand of political cards than their opponents and cannot do what they like, but this has the advantage of giving them a good grasp of the realities of power.

But states like the US, Britain, France and Russia who have an imperial past or present, have a much less accurate sense of what is feasible and what is not. Their nationalism is coloured by self-justifying myths about their own superiority and the inferiority of others. This is not just distasteful but carries the seeds of frustration and defeat. The British empire fatally underestimating the resistance of Afghans and Boers in the 19th century and the Irish, Indians and Greek Cypriots, among others, in the 20th century.

One could see the same self-destructive arrogance at work more recently in Iraq after 2003 and in Afghanistan after 2006. Public opinion at home never took on board the extent of British failure there was more complete than that of the Americans. In Iraq, the British force ended up signing a humiliating agreement with a Shia militia. No lessons were learned from defeat, as witness Boris Johnson’s glib promise to join the US in attacking President Assad.

Much of this sabre-rattling over the last week is simply part of Britain’s long-standing effort since 1940 to demonstrate its continuing usefulness as the main foreign ally of the US. But here again the political landscape is changing in a way not seen since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. US international leadership under Donald Trump is “mercurial and unpredictable” and Britain needs to rethink its policies in the Middle East according to a report by the House of Lord’s international relations select committee this week. Its chairman, the former Conservative cabinet minister Lord Howell, says that “in a world less automatically dominated by the US underpinning security in the region, it is no longer right to have a stance at every stage of “if we just get on with the US everything will be alright”.

This is all very true, but does not answer questions about whether or not Britain, if it does not piggy-back on US military power, has the inclination and resources to play a more independent role.

There are other doubts about how far British power and influence will survive post-Brexit. Not many Leave voters will have truly believed in Shakespearean rhapsodies about England as “a precious stone set in the silver sea”. But the proponents of Brexit were always cavalier about where Britain outside the EU would stand in a world which is getting more unstable. Appeals of varying degrees of sophistication to the spirit of 1940 forget that British victory in the Napoleonic wars and both World Wars depended on the Royal Navy and on building up a network of alliances with other powers. Having spurned the EU, this latter strategy is going to be very difficult to pursue. Already May, Johnson and assorted royals have been scurrying off to see unsavoury allies in Saudi Arabia, Turkey and among the kleptocratic monarchs of the Gulf.

One aspect of British decline is underrated: people favouring or opposing Brexit both speak in the future tense about the benefits or disasters that will ensue as Britain negotiates its departure. But one of the worst consequences of the decision is already with us and is simply that the British Government is wholly focused on Brexit to the exclusion of everything else.

Mrs May’s explanation that she called the general election to strengthen her hand in negotiating with Brussels is an admission of the dominance of the issue. There is not going to be much time to consider new policies for a changing Middle East or for anything else.

How did all this happen? In many respects, globalisation has turned out to be more destructive to the status quo than communism ever was. In its name, nationalism was discarded and derided by ruling elites who had an economically respectable reason to distance themselves from the rest of society and did not see that they were cutting through the branch on which they were sitting. The left never much liked nationalism, suspecting it of being a mask for racism and a diversion from more important social and economic issues. Populist nationalists came to power in country after country as others retreated from nationalism and they filled the vacuum.

The enhanced rivalry of nation states will be more destructive and violent than what went before. It is not just because of Donald Trump that the whole the world is becoming more “mercurial and unstable”. Everywhere divisive leaders are proposing radical changes that will exacerbate divisions.

Pakistan’s Tense Relations With Its Three Neighbors

Abdus Sattar Ghazali

The head of the Iranian armed forces warned Islamabad on Monday (May 8) that Tehran would hit bases inside Pakistan if the government does not confront militants who carry out cross-border attacks.

Ten Iranian border guards were killed by militants on April 26. Iran said Jaish-al-Adl (the Army of Justice), a militant group, had shot the guards with long-range guns, fired from inside Pakistan. Jaish ul-Adl claimed responsibility for the attack.

The group was reportedly founded in 2012 by members of Jundallah (the Army of God), a Sunni militant group that had been weakened following Iran’s capture and execution of its leader, Abdul Malik Rigi, in 2010. Its first major attack occurred in October 2013 when 14 Iranian border guards. The group claimed responsibility for attacks that killed eight border guards in April 2015

Jaish ul-Adl is a designated terrorist organization by Iran.

Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif visited Pakistan last week and asked Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to improve border security. Pakistan assured Iran it would deploy additional troops along its border, according to Reuters news agency.

“We expect the Pakistani officials to control the borders, arrest the terrorists and shut down their bases,” Major General Mohammad Baqeri, the head of the Iranian armed forces, was quoted as saying by state news agency IRNA. “If the terrorist attacks continue, we will hit their safe havens and cells, wherever they are,” he said.

Pakistan is located at the junction of Central Asia and Middle East, which gives its location great significance. Pakistan shares its borders with four neighboring countries – Afghanistan, China, India, and Iran – adding up to about 6,975 km (4,334.1 miles) in length (excluding the coastal areas).

Pakistan has 2,430 km (1,510 miles), border with Afghanistan known as the Durand Line, which runs from the Hindu Kush and the Pamir Mountains. Pakistan shares 3323 Km (including Line of Control (LoC) in Jammu & Kashmir sector) of its land border with India. This border runs along the States of Gujarat, Rajasthan, Punjab and Jammu & Kashmir. Pakistan has a 523 km border with China towards the northeast. To its west Pakistan shares a 909 km border with Iran.

Tellingly, Pakistan doesn’t enjoy very good relations with three of its four neighbors namely, Afghanistan, China, India and Iran. With the exception China currently Pakistan is facing problems with its neighbors.

Pakistan enjoys exceptionally good ties with China which is exemplified by the $50 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, which by linking Pakistan’s Arabian seaport of Gwadar with western China will partially offset any threat of an economic blockade on China.

Border clashes with Afghanistan

At least 10 people have been killed and dozens others wounded after a cross-border battle between Pakistani and Afghan forces during a Pakistani population census near the border. The attack on Friday left dozens of people wounded and happened near the Chaman crossing point in restive Balochistan province prompting security forces to ask people to evacuate villages on the border. Chaman, one of the two main border crossings between Pakistan and Afghanistan, was closed in the wake of the incident, with firing ongoing, Pakistani military spokesman Asif Ghafoor said.

On Sunday, the Pakistani military said it had killed more than 50 Afghan soldiers since the fighting erupted Friday at the Chaman border crossing, which divides Pakistan’s southwest Baluchistan province and Afghanistan’s southern Kandahar province.

Kabul quickly denied the Pakistan statement. “A very false claims by a Pakistani Frontier Corp that as many as 50 Afghan soldier lost their lives in Pak retaliation; totally rejected,” tweeted Sediq Sediqqi, a government spokesman. Samim Khpalwak, a spokesman for the governor of Kandahar province, instead said two troops were lost in the attack, in addition to one civilian death.

While the border clashes between Afghanistan and Pakistan are not a new occurrence, observers say this time around the situation is more “warlike.” “There have been at least two mass protest rallies in Kandahar and Torkham against Pakistan’s alleged provocation and meddling in Afghan affairs,” said Shadi Khan Saif, DW’s correspondent in Kabul.

Amid worsening ties with Afghanistan, Pakistan announced in March it had started building a fence along the volatile Afghan-Pakistani border. Islamabad said the move was aimed at restricting the movement of militants that cross over the porous border and launch attacks on Pakistani soil.

The move, however, is extremely controversial in Afghanistan and among the Pashtu-speaking people who live on both sides of the border.

Every day, thousands of Afghans and Pakistanis cross the Durand Line – the 2,430-kilometer (1,510 miles) boundary established by the British during their colonial rule. The Afghan government does not recognize the Durand Line as the official border between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The Pashtuns can easily travel back and forth across the border, but the deteriorating political ties between the two countries are now causing them problems.

India, Pakistan clash on Line of Control

Border clashes across the Line of Control in the disputed Kashmir region between the nuclear armed neighbors, India and Pakistan, are frequent and often bloody.

On Monday India claimed that Pakistani troops snuck across the Line of Control in disputed Kashmir, killed two Indian soldiers, and beheaded their corpses.

Pakistan has denied the Indian report. Pakistan’s Director General of Military Operations, Maj. Gen. Sahir Shamshad Mirza, said the Indian claims of a Pakistani incursion, ambush and desecration of dead Indian soldiers were an “attempt to divert the attention of the world” from the popular unrest in Jammu and Kashmir, India’s only majority-Muslim state.

Indian Defense Minister Arun Jaitley vowed Monday that the “sacrifice” of the Border Security Force personnel “will not go in vain,” adding India’s armed forces “will respond appropriately.” This language echoes that employed by Prime Minster Narendra Modi and other members of the BJP government last September when 18 Indian soldiers killed in Uri along the Line of Control.

Indian Vice Army Chief Sarath Chand denounced the Pakistani military for carrying out “extreme barbaric acts” not even seen “during war” at a press conference. He pledged Pakistan would suffer consequences, but said that rather than making threats, India’s military “will focus on our action at a time and place of our choosing.”

Responding to the Indian threats in kind, the Pakistani military spokesman said “any misadventure,” i.e. Indian attack, “shall be appropriately responded at a place and time of [our] own choosing.”

Tellingly, India and Pakistan relations were already tense over an Indian espionage scandal. On April 10, 2017 Pakistan sentenced to death Kulbhushan Jadhav, an Indian alleged spy. Jadhav was arrested on March 3, 2016, in Balochistan’s Mashkel area for his involvement in espionage and sabotage activities against Pakistan, according to the Army Public Relations.

“His goal was to disrupt development of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), with Gwadar port as a special target,” Army Public Relations Director Lt Gen Asim Bajwa had said, adding, “This is nothing short of state-sponsored terrorism… There can be no clearer evidence of Indian interference in Pakistan.”

Jadhav was tried by Field General Court Martial (FGCM) under Section 59 of the Pakistan Army Act (PAA) and Section 3 of the official Secret Act of 1923. He was charged with spying for the Indian spy agency the Research & Analysis Wing (RAW) and being involved in subversive activities in the Gilgit-Baltistan region.

India has condemned Jadhav’s conviction and sentencing in the strongest terms and cited it as further reason to freeze diplomatic relations with Islamabad.

India and Pakistan have fought three wars since 1947.

The Macron Denial

Binoy Kampmark

The cheer was always going to be qualified. The bubbles would be less effervescent, more a case of relieved sighing rather than frothy exultation.  After another electoral hack, and another round of threats, the French election was being played out in an era that may, in time, be given the Trump name.

The pollsters did rest a bit easier after the election result, with Emmanuel Macron outdoing his contender Marine Le Pen by fifteen percent. Their soothsayers have been failing of late, and this result provided some form of revival. But what it did show, as it did in the United Kingdom, is that the battle between the forces of nationalist nostalgia and autonomy, and the market model masquerading as prosperity and democracy, will continue to rage.

In any other set of circumstances, it would have been seen as thumping, clear, and unquestionable: a 66 percent approval for Macron, with Parisians going the whole hog with 90 per cent. But such are the times that the 34 percent, left unattended to the north and south of the country, may well become the future governing power, a disease that takes hold, and eventually conquering the host.

While it was second highest score in the second round of a presidential vote since 1965, Macron’s margin of victory becomes less significant when compared with that of Jacques Chirac’s 82.21 percent in 2002 over Marine Le Pen’s father.  An unescapable fact is that 11 million votes were cast in favour of Le Pen.

Rather than showing France revived and optimistic, the victory of Macron poses an enormous headache which is being shielded by aspirins from various quarters. Instead of considering the model of reform so desperately needed in institutional Europe, the excuse to bury, rather than examine the current revolt, is all too real.

As if showing awareness of this, figures such as outgoing president François Hollande have attempted to bring the brush of freshness to the En Marche! campaign, despite Macron’s ministerial tutelage under him.  The message here is a distorting one: centrism, an approach embracing neither left nor right, but one overwhelmingly in favour of market and banking ideals.  “It’s true that he followed me these last few years.  But afterwards, he freed himself, he wanted to propose his [own] project to the French people.”

Nor does the enormous margin favouring Macron suggest that anti-establishment resentment, nourished by dislike for the European Union, has somehow vanished.  Taken together as a bloc vote, the majority voted, in the first presidential round, against establishment, EU smugness.  (Witness, to that end, the margin favouring Jean-Luc Mélenchon.)  What followed after was a tactical play.

With some swiftness, Macron also became the alibi for other leaders, transmogrifying into rationales and justifications that seek to avoid, rather than confront, the European dilemma.  He had won, he had found the truth.  The European establishment were delighted that something sensible had transpired, that France could again lead the project of reason in Europe.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel was the quickest out of the traps on that score. “He carries the hopes of millions of French people, and of many people in Germany and the whole of Europe.  He ran a courageous pro-European campaign, stands for openness to the world and is committed decisively to a social market economy.”

For the remainder group in the United Kingdom, this would have been a spur along to show that Britain’s Gallic cousins were doing the wise thing, and may well surprise in the British election.  But Prime Minister Theresa May, in full campaign mode, took Macron’s victory as a sign that she needed the numbers to stand up to him regarding Britain’s exit. (She has already indicated future trouble, given her reluctance to renegotiate the Le Touquet border agreement.)

From the stump, she claimed that “every vote for me and my team will strengthen my hand in those Brexit negotiations.”  In contrast, her Labour alternative, Jeremy Corbyn, was weak, lacking the bull dog spirit to face up to “the collective might of the European Commission and 27 other EU countries”.

For the Brexiteers, the vote suggested something quite different.  The Leave.EU group, created by Nigel Farage last year, decided that some good old fashioned venom should be thrown in. The French, went one tweet, had “rolled over” as they had in 1940, though this time, they saved Germany “the bullets and the fuel.”[1]  Farage, not wanting to be left out of the polemics, also claimed that Macron would be nothing more than Juncker’s puppet.

The CEO of the libertarian group the Freedom Association even got personal with the President elect, having a dig at Macron’s liking for the older woman. “Macron evidently likes older women, so he’ll make an excellent lapdog for Angela Merkel.”

For such reasons, mixed with sense and bile, Le Pen will not be disheartened.  Should she stay in those trenches of resentment against the forces of globalisation and European centralisation, the same agents of change Macron deems unstoppable, and even noble, she may well storm in after five years.

Deep in the character of French history is the genius of cosmopolitan enlightenment, and parochial fanaticism; collaboration with power, and resistance to it. On the landscape is now plotted the various forces that will shape the Republic for the next few years.  But Macron, every bit an establishment figure, despite claims to the contrary, promises reforms that are, in effect, non-reforms, a point that will feed rather than destroy the base Le Pen will work from.