Chief of French anti-narcotics police indicted on drug-trafficking charges

Francis Dubois

The indictment on August 25 of France’s top anti-drug police officer casts a sharp light on the police forces, who have had virtually unchecked powers since the imposition of the state of emergency by the Socialist Party (PS) government of former President François Hollande in November 2015.

François Thierry—the former head of the Central Office for the Repression of Illicit Drug Trafficking (OCRTIS), already placed in preventive detention this March in the context of an investigation of the General Inspection of the National Police (IGPN)—was indicted on charges of “complicity in the holding, transport, and acquisition of narcotics and complicity in the exportation of narcotics in an organized gang.”

Thierry was nonetheless left at liberty by the investigating magistrates overseeing the case. He will remain in service at the Anti-terrorist Sub-Directorate (SDAT) of the judicial police, where he was sent in May 2016 after one of his former informants accused him of drug trafficking. According to press reports, Thierry still has the confidence and support of his superiors in the anti-terror police. He is, however, facing three different judicial investigations.

The Paris prosecutor’s office indicted him after a two-year investigation, triggered when the National Directorate of Customs Intelligence and Investigations (DNRED) seized seven tons of cannabis resin, on October 17, 2015. These were located in several vans parked on Boulevard Exelmans in the wealthy 16th district of Paris, just outside the luxury apartment of Sofiane Hambli, one of Europe’s main drug traffickers.

This shipment was, according to Libération, part of a convoy transporting 40 tons of cannabis that was split up between Vénissieux, Mulhouse, Nantes and Paris and traveling under the control of the OCRTIS, which responded by accusing customs officials of torpedoing one of their operations.

In this matter, Hambli functioned as one of the principal informants of the anti-narcotics police. According to Le Figaro, “At age 42, he is seen as one of the key figures importing drugs to Europe, but also as one of the most important informants ever to have worked with the drugs office.”

In May 2016, in article titled “Revelations on state trafficking,” Libérationaccused the OCRTIS outright of organizing drug trafficking in France itself. The investigation that led to the current indictment is concentrated on the “methods” used by the OCRTIS leadership that are now being denounced by the judicial machine, that is to say the close collaboration between anti-drugs police and the major drug traffickers.

For a long time, such “special methods” were hailed as particularly effective in the struggle against drug abuse, and police and the media presented Thierry as a past master of these methods.

According to an August 23 article in Libération, Hambli helped police with the “identification of several dozen high-level criminals, the arrest of around 100 people, and even the transmission of information regarding radicalized Islamists.”

Thierry is accused of having overseen “deliveries under surveillance” operations, ostensibly aimed at infiltrating drug trafficking circles, that above all allowed Hambli to eliminate his competitors on the French illegal drug market. This allowed him, according to Libération, to “set himself up as France’s biggest trafficker thanks to the protection of the former head of French counter-narcotics.”

?The judges are not accusing Thierry of having used these methods for personal enrichment, but of not having informed the legal system of the enormous quantities of drugs that were being delivered in these operations. Thierry insists that the relevant judges were always completely informed.

The Thierry affair is not the only one to have shaken French law enforcement in recent months. In May 2017, the entire national investigation service of the customs office was decapitated, as numerous top officials in this service were fired due to “grave events,” according to the customs office. One official was indicted in April for “complicity in the importing and holding of counterfeit merchandise in an organized gang.”

According to Médiapart, the customs office is “hit by a half-dozen investigations that discredit its methods.” One investigation involved among other subjects “the seizure of Kalachnikov rifles at a Reims toll booth in November 2013,” in which the customs office of Le Havre was implicated. Some €800,000 were seized and a customs official committed suicide on January 5, 2017.

In May, another “top cop,” the number two of the Lyon judicial police, Michel Neyret, was accused of protecting and maintaining close relations with high-ranking organized crime figures. He was sentenced to two and a half years in prison without parole.

Independently of the motivations of the rival factions of the judiciary and of the police apparatus, these affairs partially lift the veil on the deep collusion in France between police and a wide variety of traffickers. It underscores the essential hostility to legal and democratic rights of police forces who have extraordinary, virtually unchecked powers under France’s state of emergency.

Whereas in French suburbs, police impose brutal and humiliating searches based only on suspicions that individuals could be drug dealers, the top layers of the same police force are coordinating with gangsters the wholesale supply of drugs to the same suburbs.

The Thierry affair raises many serious questions. If the counter-narcotics police chiefs personally supervised the proper functioning of these “special operations” drug deliveries—Thierry’s top assistant, former anti-terror prosecutor Patrick Laberche, travelled to Morocco—and they did not enrich themselves with the proceeds, what were the profits then used to do?

And why was Thierry, the former chief of OCRTIS (who was previously tasked from 2006 to 2010 with leading the anti-narcotics section on infiltrations) promoted directly in May to the Anti-Terrorist Sub-Directorate of the judicial police where he is currently the number three official?

Islamist networks responsible for terror attacks are often linked to drug-trafficking, and terrorists are often recruited from those who have served prison time on drugs charges. One example is Moroccan imam Abdelbaki Es-Satty, the alleged leader of the terror cell that carried out the recent Barcelona attack, who was imprisoned on drugs charges from 2010 to 2014. On this basis, it is legitimate to ask whether there was a link between Hambli’s collaboration with the state, whether as a trafficker or an informant on Islamist terror circles, and terrorist acts in France, Spain and beyond.

EU holds Paris conference to set up detention camps for migrants in Libya

Alex Lantier

Yesterday, heads of state of Germany, France, Italy, and Spain and of the African states of Niger and Chad, together with UN-backed Prime Minister Fayez al-Sarraj of Libya attended a summit on immigration hosted by French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris.

The purpose of the summit stamped it with a politically criminal character. It discussed how to deny the right of asylum to hundreds of thousands of refugees and block their travel through Africa north to Libya and across the Mediterranean to Europe. The conference, attended by European Union (EU) foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini, discussed using the armed forces of the African regimes to detain refugees and send them back toward the countries they had fled, thus keeping them in Africa and deterring further migration.

The conference was an attempt above all to deal with the disastrous consequences of the 2011 NATO war in Libya, which destroyed the regime of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi and unleashed a bloody civil war that rages to this day. The summit also tried to contain escalating tensions among the European powers over which armed factions to support inside Libya.

Last week, the UN released a devastating report highlighting the horrific fate of vast numbers of refugees trapped in the civil war conditions of post-2011 Libya and exposing the forces that the EU is proposing to rely on to police refugees.

The UN reported, “Migrants continued to be subjected by smugglers, traffickers, members of armed groups and security forces to extreme violence; torture and other ill-treatment; forced labour; arbitrary deprivation of liberty; rape; and other sexual violence and exploitation. On 11 April 2017, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) denounced the presence of slave markets in Libya, where sub-Saharan migrants were bought and sold and women were traded as sex slaves.”

Based on reports from the UN Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL), the UN painted a portrait of conditions in detention camps set up for migrants in Libya to halt and deter migration. The UN found that victims of brutal conduct from the various warring militias that rule post-Gaddafi Libya “had little avenue for redress, due to a general state of lawlessness and the weakness of judicial institutions.”

It wrote, “UNSMIL visited detention centres under the control of the Department for Combatting Illegal Migration in Gharyan, Tripoli, Misrata and Surman, where thousands of migrants have been held arbitrarily for prolonged periods of time with no possibility to challenge the legality of their detention. UNSMIL had documented cases of torture, ill-treatment, rape and other forms of sexual violence. Detention centres remained overcrowded, and detainees were often malnourished, living in poor hygienic conditions and with limited or no access to medical care.”

The UN also documented the brutal conduct of EU-backed armed forces in Libya, who try to catch refugees to return them to these detention camps. Its report noted, “UNSMIL received numerous reports of dangerous, life-threatening interceptions by armed men believed to be from the Libyan Coast Guard. UNSMIL has been reviewing its support to the Libyan Coast Guard in line with the United Nations human rights due diligence policy.”

The conference issued a brief resolution late last night, calling for the EU to bring “particularly vulnerable” migrants from Libya to Europe, while relying on the armed forces of Niger and Chad and the various militias in Libya to keep refugees from reaching the Mediterranean. The conference also proposed to provide more equipment to the Libyan Coast Guard for its anti-refugee missions.

Macron said he wanted to “identify” which migrants are true refugees in Niger and Chad, before they could reach Libya on their journey north, so that others could be turned back. He blamed the terrible conditions that exist for refugees in Africa on people smugglers, declaring: “Certain trafficking groups that traffic in weapons, in human lives, and in drugs, and groups linked to terrorism have turned the desert in Africa and the Mediterranean into a graveyard. These same people are profoundly linked to terrorism.”

These are political lies, designed to falsely present a brutal EU policy of denying asylum rights to refugees based on outright armed repression as respecting human rights. It is not people smugglers or refugees that are responsible for civil war conditions in Libya, but the NATO powers, which bombed Libya and armed various Islamist militias in a war for regime change. As in imperialist wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria, Libyan society rapidly disintegrated.

Wars across the Middle East and Africa have now produced the greatest refugee crisis since World War II, with over 60 million people displaced from their homes. The reaction of the imperialist powers is not to halt the war drive or to seek to address the military conflicts and the poverty that is driving tens of millions to abandon their homes. Rather, they aim to work more closely with military dictatorships and irregular militias to prevent this unprecedented wave of migrants from reaching Europe.

Despite the European powers’ criticisms of US President Donald Trump, including his call to build a wall to block Mexican immigration north into the United States, their own policy towards African refugees is equally ruthless and brutal. As thousands of refugees crossed in the Mediterranean, EU officials sought to limit rescue operations, hoping news of refugees drowning at sea would deter migrants from trying to reach Europe.

Rescue operations encourage migration, one British diplomat explained, and “create an unintended ‘pull factor’ thereby leading to more tragic and unnecessary deaths.” The solution was to eliminate the “pull factor” created by rescue measures and discourage migration by allowing refugees to drown. Since then, thousands of innocent refugees have drowned in the Mediterranean—2,400 in the first eight months of 2017 alone.

Under these conditions, the EU’s claim that it will bring “particularly vulnerable” migrants to Europe is another utterly cynical gesture. Any refugee in Libya is vulnerable due to the civil war conditions in the country, and promises to bring those that are “particularly vulnerable” only amounts to giving EU authorities the right to cherry-pick which refugees they will grant asylum.

According to initial reports, European officials at the conference summarily dismissed arguments by African heads of state that migration would continue so long as large parts of Africa are very poor. “The problem is poverty,” Mogherini said, but she ruled out launching “a new Marshall Plan” to devote substantial funding to create jobs in Africa. European officials are reportedly thinking of spending €6 million initially on poverty programmes, or up to €50 million in the long term—a drop in the bucket in a poverty-stricken region inhabited by hundreds of millions of people.

The summit not only reflected the EU’s militaristic and anti-refugee policy, but featured growing rivalries among the European powers over who would set the agenda and announce more ambitious plans to limit immigration to Europe. German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who is seeking re-election and trying to burnish her anti-immigrant credentials, announced yesterday a deal with the bloody Egyptian military dictatorship of General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi to limit migration to Europe.

Macron was compelled to abandon his plan to build French “hot spot” detention centres in Libya, presented in July amid sharp tensions with Italy, the former colonial power in Libya, as Paris and Rome backed rival armed forces inside Libya, led by General Khalifa Haftar and the Misrata militias, respectively.

India, China pull back from clash over Himalayan ridge

Keith Jones

India and China moved yesterday to defuse their ten-week-old dispute over control of the Doklam or Donglang Plateau—a dispute that brought the nuclear-armed rivals and world’s two most populous countries closer to a military clash than any time since they fought a month-long border war in 1962.

In choreographed steps, India’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a statement at midday yesterday announcing that an “expeditious disengagement of border personnel … at Doklam has been agreed to and is ongoing.” Approximately ninety minutes later, a Chinese government spokeswoman said Beijing had confirmed “trespassing Indian personnel have all pulled backed to the Indian side of the boundary.” “In accordance” with “the changes of the situation on the ground,” China “will make necessary adjustments” in its deployments, added Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying.

For the preceding two-and-a-half months, hundreds of Indian and Chinese troops had faced off “eye-ball to eye-ball,” separated by little more than a hundred meters, on the Doklam, a remote Himalayan ridge at the tri-junction of the borders of India, China and Bhutan.

Even more ominously, New Delhi and Beijing traded bellicose threats and taunts, poured thousands of troops into the eastern sector of their almost 3500-kilometer disputed border, and otherwise took steps to prepare, and demonstrate their readiness, for armed conflict.

What India is terming the “Doklam Disengagement Understanding” was reached one week before Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is slated to travel to China for the September 3-5 BRICS heads of government summit in Xiamen.

No text of this “Understanding” has been released by either government, nor is any expected to be.

Underscoring that none of the underlying issued that led to the tense military standoff has been resolved, India and China are each suggesting that it was the other that ultimately gave way.

Beijing is emphasizing the withdrawal of all Indian troops from the Doklam to nearby positions in the Indian state of Sikkim. Throughout the stand-off, Beijing demanded an unconditional withdrawal of the Indian forces. It insisted that India’s intervention was unprecedentedly provocative, since New Delhi makes no claim to ownership over the remote ridge, but rather intervened in the name of Bhutan, a small Himalayan state that for decades New Delhi has treated like a protectorate.

At yesterday’s press conference, Hua said China will continue to exercise its “territorial sovereignty” over the Doklam, including through patrols by Chinese border troops.

For its part, New Delhi has emphasized the sequential character of the de-escalation, with China indicating it will reduce its deployments in the disputed area.

Nothing has been said about the issue that prompted India to send troops onto the Doklam on June 18: China’s plans to expand a road on the ridge which it currently controls but Bhutan also claims. India charges Beijing’s road-building violated an agreement with Bhutan to maintain the status quo in all disputed areas pending final delineation of the Bhutan-China border.

For weeks, both the Indian and Chinese press have been full of discussion about the possibility that the Doklam dispute could spark an armed clash.

Various Chinese analysts, cited in that country’s state-owned press, expressed confidence such a conflict could be confined to a short, border war. Indian commentators frequently begged to differ.

As the impasse continued, both the US and Japan intervened to demonstrate their support for India, which they view as a pivotal ally in thwarting China’s “rise.”

Indeed, the principal factor in the deterioration of Indo-Chinese relations of which the Doklam conflict has been both an expression and an accelerant is India’s integration into Washington’s military-strategic offensive against China.

Under Modi’s three-year-old government, India has been transformed into a veritable frontline state of American imperialism’s war drive against China. The Modi government has parroted the provocative US positions on the South China Sea and North Korea disputes, thrown open India’s airbases and ports to routine use by US warplanes and warships, and dramatically expanded strategic cooperation with Washington’s principal Asia-Pacific allies, Japan and Australia.

In response, China has deepened its decades-long alliance with India’s arch-rival, Pakistan. China’s support for Pakistan, including its plans to make it a pivot of its Belt and Road Eurasian infrastructure building scheme, has further exacerbated tensions with New Delhi.

Earlier this month Japan explicitly endorsed India’s stance on the Doklam dispute and compared it to its own territorial disputes with China. Tokyo also let it be known that increased military-security ties with India will be at the top of the agenda when Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe visits New Delhi next month

Publicly the Trump administration maintained a position of neutrality on the Doklam dispute, but it took a whole series of actions in recent weeks aimed at highlighting the strength of the Indo-US “global strategic partnership.” In an Indian Independence Day phone call, Trump and Modi agreed to establish a new strategic dialogue involving their countries’ respective foreign and defence ministers. And in his address last week outlining US plans to intensify the Afghan War, Trump supported Indian ambitions to play a greater role in Afghanistan while putting Pakistan on notice that if it doesn’t do America’s bidding it will be punished with cuts in arms sales and military aid.

The US is above all anxious to expand military cooperation with New Delhi in the Indian Ocean, whose sea lanes serve as the conduit for 80 percent of the oil that fuels China’s economy, as well as much of its export trade to Europe, Africa and the Middle East.

In mid-August, in remarks touting America’s eagerness to assist in the modernization of India’s military, the head of the US Pacific Fleet, Admiral Harry Harris, repeated his call for India to join the Pentagon in joint naval patrols in both the Indian and Pacific Oceans.

While India has not yet agreed to that step, it has initiated plans, according to India Today, to “spread its influence and further strengthen its grip” in the Indian Ocean in response to the Doklam war crisis. These include reviving the dormant Indian Ocean Naval Symposium and using it as a platform to develop military cooperation with “friendly” countries, beginning with a major naval exercise in the Bay of Bengal, and expanding naval training for officers from other South Asian and Indian Ocean states.

Most significantly, the Indian Navy will henceforth permanently deploy Indian warships at the western entrance to the Malacca Straits, the most important potential Indian/Pacific Ocean chokepoint and long a key focus of US plans to impose an economic blockade on China in the event of a war or war crisis.

Whilst India and China appear to have stepped back from the brink over the Doklam, the recent crisis has only served to highlight the extent to which South Asia and the Indian Ocean region have been swept into the maelstrom of great power and imperialist conflict.

Significantly and no doubt with the foreknowledge that an agreement to defuse the Doklam crisis was imminent, the head of India’s army, General Bipin Rawat, warned in a public lecture last Saturday that there will be further military crises with China. “Let us say this standoff is resolved,” said Rewat, “our troops should not feel it cannot happen again … So my message to troops is do not let your guard down.”

Trump orders resumption of military supplies to local police

Patrick Martin 

President Trump signed an executive order Monday morning reinstituting a federal program to supply military-grade weaponry and equipment to state and local police forces. The program had been suspended since May 2015 under an executive order signed by Barack Obama that Trump has now rescinded.

The Obama administration was compelled to restrict, at least temporarily, the distribution of “surplus” military equipment after widespread public outrage following the deployment of armored vehicles and other military weaponry in Ferguson, Missouri, after mass protests that followed the August 2014 police murder of 18-year-old Michael Brown Jr.

When thousands took to the streets in anger over the police killing of the unarmed youth, Missouri Governor Jay Nixon, a Democrat, mobilized the National Guard, backing the local authorities, who employed armored cars, armed helicopters and police equipped with assault rifles pointed at demonstrators.

Trump signed the executive order without ceremony, leaving it to Attorney General Jeff Sessions to announce the policy change formally in an address to the convention of the Fraternal Order of Police held in Nashville, Tennessee.

“I am here to announce that President Trump is issuing an executive order that will make it easier to protect yourselves and your communities,” Sessions declared, to loud applause from the assembled police. “He is rescinding restrictions from the prior administration that limited your agencies’ ability to get equipment through federal programs…”

The program to supply military gear to local police, known as the 1033 program, after the section in the National Defense Authorization Act which first established it in 1990, allows the Pentagon to transfer equipment ranging from body armor and bullets to aircraft, armored cars and tanks, at no cost to the local or state government.

Obama’s executive order did not halt the entire program, but restricted distribution of the most flagrant offensive weapons, including grenade launchers, armored cars and armored helicopters. Last year there was a limited recall of equipment that had been placed on a “prohibited” list, including armored cars, aircraft and explosives.

Sessions boasted that the latest executive order was only one part of a wide range of measures taken by the Trump administration to boost local police, including the reinstatement of civil asset forfeiture, which allows local police to confiscate cash and property from people based only on suspicion of crimes, without a warrant or court hearing.

Local police officials interviewed by the press in Nashville said their departments had become increasingly dependent on the free hand-me-down equipment from the Pentagon, under conditions of mounting budgetary pressures on state and local government.

The program was created under the first Bush administration, initially limited to drug enforcement units, but in 1997, under the administration of Democrat Bill Clinton, it was expanded to include all local law enforcement units. More than $5.4 billion has been transferred to local police, a huge subsidy from the Pentagon for building up a police-state apparatus in America.

A White House background paper rejected claims that military-style equipment made the police look like “an occupying force,” saying that the decision “sends the message that we care more about public safety than about how a piece of equipment looks, especially when that equipment has been shown to reduce crime, reduce complaints against and assaults on police, and makes officers more effective.”

The document characterized the equipment as “entirely defensive in nature,” although it includes helicopters, armored cars, battering rams, explosives and .50 caliber machine guns, as well as assault rifles.

The White House cited mass casualty shootings in San Bernardino, California and Orlando, Florida, as well as the current flood rescue operations related to Hurricane Harvey, as instances in which such equipment had been put to use. There was no mention of the far more frequent use of such materiel in protests over police violence, or its likely future use in the event of more widespread civil disorder provoked by the economic and social crisis of American capitalism.

Trump’s action seemed deliberately timed to mark the third anniversary of the police violence in Ferguson—Michael Brown was shot to death on August 9, 2014, and his funeral, attended by thousands, took place on August 25, 2014.

The policeman who shot the 18-year-old to death, Darren Wilson, was never tried for the killing, after a grand jury refused to bring charges against him, in a rigged proceeding stage-managed by St. Louis County prosecutor Robert P. McCulloch, a Democrat.

Both Trump and Sessions have been vehement defenders of killer cops, opposing all efforts to hold police accountable for killing more than 1,000 Americans every year, nearly all of them poor and working class, black, white, Hispanic and immigrant.

Trump’s executive order came barely 48 hours after his issuance of a full pardon to Joe Arpaio, the former sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona (Phoenix), who was convicted of contempt of court for defying injunctions against racial profiling in the arrest and detention of Hispanics under “suspicion” of being undocumented immigrants.

GSBI Accelerator Program for Social Entrepreneurs (Silicon Valley Mentorship) 2018

Application Deadline: 20th October, 2017

Offered annually? Yes

Eligible Countries: All

To be taken at (country): Silicon Valley, California, USA

About the Award: Past participants include many in water supply, energy, agriculture, and environment in developing countries. The Global Social Benefit Institute (GSBI) at Santa Clara University serves social entrepreneurs around the world who are developing innovative solutions that provide a sustainable path out of poverty. The GSBI Accelerator assists selected participants with business plans and other capacity building in support of investment.

Type: Entrepreneurship

Eligibility: GSBI seeks applicants who:

• Lead an existing for-profit, nonprofit, or hybrid enterprise
• Are a mid-stage enterprise (3+ years) ready for scale and investment
• Develop innovative solutions to provide sustainable paths out of poverty

Number of Awardees: Not specified

Value of Program: Program staff time, in-residence meals, and accommodations for the GSBI Accelerator program are all paid through the fundraising efforts of Miller Center. Participants in the GSBI Accelerator are expected to pay only for round-trip airfare to San Jose or San Francisco, California for the August in-residence portion of the program.

• Silicon Valley mentorship
• Due diligence folder
• Financial plan for scaling
• Organizational development
• Talent management
• Marketing strategy and execution
• Operational excellence at scale

Duration of Scholarship: 10 months

How to Apply: Please read the Eligibility and Programme Details carefully before you apply here

Visit Program Webpage for details 

Award Provider: Santa Clara University, The Global Social Benefit Institute (GSBI)

Columbia University International Postdoctoral Humanities Fellowship 2018/2019 – USA

Application Deadline: 2nd October, 2017

Offered annually? Yes

Eligible Countries: All

To be taken at (country): USA

Field of Study: Humanities

About the Award: Fellows are appointed as Postdoctoral Research Scholars (Mellon Fellows) in the Society of Fellows in the Humanities and as Lecturers in appropriate departments at Columbia University (departments are listed in the link below).

In the first year, Fellows teach one course per semester. At least one of these courses must be in the undergraduate (“Core”) education program: Contemporary Civilization, Literature Humanities, Music Humanities, Art Humanities, Asian Civilizations, Asian Humanities, or Global Cultures.

The second course may be a departmental course, the design of which will be determined jointly by the Fellow and the Fellow’s academic department. In the second year, Fellows teach one course: either a Core course (if only one of the two first-year courses was in the Core) or a departmental course. This will leave one semester in the second year free of teaching responsibilities. In the third year, Fellows again teach one course, either a Core course or a departmental course (to be decided jointly by the Fellow and the Fellow’s department), leaving one semester again free of teaching responsibilities. Please note that all teaching–whether a Core class or a department one–is to be arranged by the Fellow through the Fellow’s home academic department. At least two of the three courses taught in the first two Fellowship years must be in the Core.

In addition to teaching and research, the duties of Fellows include planning a weekly Thursday Lecture Series, which is open for attendance to members of the University community, and participation in the intellectual life of the Society and of the department with which the Fellow is affiliated. The Society also cosponsors conferences and special events planned by Fellows around their special interests.

Type: Fellowship

Eligibility: Fellows newly appointed for 2018/2019 must have received their PhD between 1 January 2016 and 1 July 2018.

Number of Awardees: Not specified

Value of Fellowship: The Fellowship Stipend for 2018-2019 is $63,000. Medical benefits are provided, and subsidized housing is available. There is a $7,000 research allowance per annum. To aid in the research process, each Fellow is assigned to a private office with a phone, and access to campus Wi-Fi. The research allowance may be used to pay for research-related expenses such as conferences, professional memberships, and research materials.

Duration of Fellowship: The one-year Fellowship renews automatically for a second and a third year.

How to Apply: Go here to apply

Visit Fellowship Webpage for details

Award Provider: Columbia University Society of Fellows in the Humanities

Sydney Scholar Awards for International Undergraduate Students 2018 – Australia

Application Deadline: 2nd October 2017

Offered annually? Yes

Eligible Countries: All

To be taken at (country): Australia

About the Award: These prestigious scholarships will be offered to students who meet the eligibility and selection criteria below.  If you are an international student, have recently completed an International Baccalaureate or educational award equivalent to the HSC, and are applying for admission through UAC, you are also eligible to apply.

Type: Undergraduate

Eligibility: 

• Sydney Scholars Awards supports students with excellent academic ability who have faced significant challenges, such as financial, medical or disability issues, have refugee status or live in a rural area.
• To be eligible you will need to apply for a Sydney Scholars Award on hardship grounds.
• You will also need to submit a separate equity scholarship application to UAC. The University will link your Sydney Scholars Awards application to your UAC application for assessment purposes.
• An ATAR requirement of 95 and above also required. Students applying to the Sydney Conservatorium of Music and Sydney College of Arts require an ATAR of 90 or above. If you are an international student, have recently completed an International Baccalaureate or educational award equivalent to the HSC, and are applying for admission through UAC, you are also eligible to apply.

Selection Criteria: Selection criteria will be on the basis of equity and a broader level of academic ability.

Number of Awardees: Not specified

Value of Scholarship: Scholarships ranging from $6,000 to $10,000

Duration of Scholarship: From one year, up to 5 years

How to Apply: For Sydney Scholars Awards, you will need to complete an online application form and upload your most recent school report.

Provision for a personal statement will be included in the online application. We suggest that you complete a draft first and then cut and paste your final answers into the text boxes provided. Please note there is a 1000 character limit on each text box (approximately 150-200 words). Strict character limits apply.

Visit Scholarship Webpage for details 

Award Provider: University of Sydney

UNESCO/Czech Republic Joint Fellowships for Developing Countries 2018/2019 – Bachelors and Masters

Application Deadline: 30th September 2017 (Midnight Paris time)

Eligible Countries:

• Iraq
• Zimbabwe

To be taken at (country): Czech Republic

Eligible Fields of Study: Candidates who wish to study in the fields of medicine, natural resources and environment, agriculture and forestry, water and landscape management, technology and environmental engineering would be given priority.

About the Award: In order to promote human resource capacities in the developing Member States and to enhance friendship among peoples of the world, the Government of the Czech Republic has placed at the disposal of UNESCO three long-term fellowships for undergraduate studies (which comprises the Bachelor’s and Master’s study programmes for the academic year 2018-2019) for the benefit of certain developing Member States. Neither a citizen of the Czech Republic, nor a citizen of a Member State of the European Union, nor any other foreign national with a permanent residence permit on the territory of the Czech Republic may therefore be granted this type of scholarship.

The studies being conducted in Czech language, the candidates to benefit from these fellowships will be required to take a special language and preparatory course before starting their studies. The Czech language course will be provided by the Charles  University in Prague.

Type: Fellowship

Eligibility: Language requirement would be English or French

Selection Criteria: Selection will be made on a competitive basis and priority will be given to applicants who, apart from meeting the academic qualifications required, opt for the fields of study enumerated above. It is important to note that there is no possibility to change the field of study or the study programme once the fellowship has been awarded.  We would also wish to emphasize that only applications with complete documentation shall be considered for evaluation. 

Number of Awardees: Not specified

Value of Fellowship: 

Facilities offered by the Government of the Czech Republic

1. Tuition is free of charge
2. A monthly allowance of 14,000 Czech Crowns (1 euro = approximately 25 crowns) for students undertaking bachelor and master’s study programmes (Should this allowance be considered insufficient, the applying Member State may consider granting a partial contribution, or, the candidate may have to seek other funds from private sources to complement this allowance)
3. Accommodation at the student dormitories at reduced rates (to be paid by the fellow from the monthly allowance mentioned in (2) above)
4. Access to meals (to be paid with the monthly allowance) in the student dining halls
5. Access to discounts for urban transportation
6. The Ministry of Health provides medical care to fellows.

Facilities offered by UNESCO

1. UNESCO will cover international travel expenses within the framework of the Fellowships Programme under the Regular Programme.  Upon selection of the candidates, UNESCO will undertake the necessary action to authorize tickets to the beneficiaries before their departure for the Czech Republic.  And,
2. A special one-time allowance of US$200 to cover transit and other miscellaneous expenses.

Duration of Fellowship: 3 to 6 years

How to Apply: 

• All applications should be endorsed by the relevant Government body (such as the National Commission or Permanent Delegation), must be made on a Czech fellowship application form, filled out in English in electronic form until 30 September 2017 (http://registr.dzs.cz/registr.nsf/unesco).
• After filling out the application, the candidate is requested to submit an online motivation letter and take a test.

Visit Fellowship Webpage for details

Award Provider: UNESCO, Czech Republic

Important Notes: 

• All foreigners who are to study in the Czech Republic are required to obtain a long-term residence permit. Details of the procedures to be followed to obtain this visa will be provided to selected candidates.
• Selected candidates will be required to provide a certificate attesting a clean criminal record
• No provision to finance or lodge family members can be made. It is the National authorities’ responsibilty to ensure that all candidates are duly informed of the above conditions prior to submission of their applications for these fellowships.

Caine Prize for African Writing 2018. Full Travel Scholarship plus £10,000 Prize

Application Deadline: 31st January 2018.

Offered annually? Yes

Eligible Countries: African countries

About the Award: The Caine Prize for African Writing is a literature prize awarded to an African writer of a short story published in English. The prize was launched in 2000 to encourage and highlight the richness and diversity of African writing by bringing it to a wider audience internationally. The focus on the short story reflects the contemporary development of the African story-telling tradition.

Offered Since: 2000

Type: Contest

Eligibility: 

• Unpublished work is not eligible for the Caine Prize.
• Submissions should be made by publishers only.
• Only fictional work is eligible.
• Only one story per author will be considered in any one year.
• Submissions should specify which African country the author comes from and the word count.
• We require 6 copies of the work in its originally published version.
• If the work is published in a book or journal, we would like to receive at least one copy of the book / journal and five photocopies; but particularly where several stories are submitted from one anthology we would like if possible to receive six copies of the book / journal itself.
• If the work is published online, we would like to receive six photocopies.

Please note that works which do not conform to the criteria will not be considered for the prize. Please do not waste your own time and postage by sending in material which is unsuitable. Works not eligible for entry include stories for children, factual writing, plays, biography, works shorter than 3000 words and unpublished work. If you are not sure whether your work is eligible, please email us for advice.

Number of Awardees: 5

Value of Contest: Winning and short-listed authors will be invited to participate in writers’ workshops in Africa, London and elsewhere as resources permit. There is a cash prize of £10,000 for the winning author and a travel award for each of the short-listed candidates (up to five in all). The shortlisted candidates will also receive a Prize of £500. The winner is also invited to go to three literature festivals in Kenya, South Africa and Nigeria.

How to Apply: There is no application form. To apply please send six original published copies of the work for consideration to the Caine Prize office.

• If the work is published in a book or journal, we would like to receive at least one copy of the book / journal and five photocopies; but particularly where several stories are submitted from one anthology we would like if possible to receive six copies of the book / journal itself.
• If published in a magazine or journal we will accept one original copy plus five photocopies, but would prefer six original copies.
• If the work is published online, we would like to receive six printed copies.

Visit Contest Webpage for details

Award Provider: Caine Prize

Syria’s Survival

Barbara Nimri Aziz

I’m talking about Syria here. Knowing that I write this at my peril, I continue. Not as a defense, but as an argument, one from a different and, I believe, a worthy perspective. Because some acknowledgement must be made– especially by those who are aware of the terrible might of US power and Washington’s determination to destroy Syria at any cost–of that small, ancient nation’s astonishing ability to resist. Just as those who applaud Palestinians’ resolute pursuit of statehood; just as those who now regard Viet Nam with admiration for its emergence as a self-reliant, noble nation.

Syria’s current struggle against multiple assaults is not over by any means. It remains in a highly vulnerable state. Its people are scattered across the globe, its highly educated citizens lost to other nations ready to exploit their skills. Refugees in camps and those suffering at home are uncertain of anything at all. Syria’s military has lost tens of thousands of mortally wounded men. (And what about the injured?) Its youths flee conscription. Syria’s once strong economy is crippled and barely recognizable. Its social institutions are overwhelmed, and its cultural riches, including contemporary theater and television, are shrunken or destroyed.

Yet, more than six years into a war that’s caused such hardship and destruction, after so many attacks against it, Syria stands. Its leader, an inexperienced and fallible man but no tyrant, has thus far withstood Washington’s scurrilous pursuit of his removal. American-led military and diplomatic efforts to overthrow his government have failed, even with the Arab League’s shameless ejection of this founding member.

Not only is Syria still intact, albeit terribly crippled on so many levels. It has managed to sustain alliances with its few supporting powers—from Iran to China. Its military gains (regains really) in the past two years are astonishing by any standard, however high the cost and however unlikely it seemed, considering the formidable opposition it faced. (Compare this with US military impotence in Afghanistan.)

Assaults are directed at Syria by US-supported Arab forces, by ISIS and Al-Qaeda militants, by local insurgents, by Arab Gulf States lined up with the West and Israel, by Turkey on its northern border and by Israel and Jordan along its southern frontier, with Israeli and US fighter jets bombing at will. (One strike by US bombers killed dozens and maimed another hundred Syrian soldiers.) What an opposition lined up against a nation of under 30 million people! All this without Syrian (or Russian) retaliation against either Israel or the USA.

Unquestionably Syria’s military achievements have been possible with Russian air support. Russia’s diplomatic assistance has also been critical: first in arranging for the removal of chemical threats, and before that in preventing the UN Security Council backing an American anti-regime agenda.

Early in the crisis in 2011, living in Damascus, I spoke with a longtime colleague, an experienced bureaucrat but no longer a government official. I was struck by his confidence in the Russia-China veto just declared in the UN Security Council. (Both countries rejected the US-led attempt to censure and sanction Syria.) Six months on, when we met again, there was widespread belief among foreigners and some expectation within Syria too that Al-Assad’s government would soon collapse. My colleague however was emphatic in his assessment of the Russia-China veto: “Russia will stay with us”, he declared confidently. I guess government insiders and military leaders shared this judgment. But who could have anticipated how many months of war would follow before the tide began to turn?

In early 2016, Syria (and Russia) achieved the first of a series of impossible victories against its ISIS foes.   Meanwhile the western press (despondently) described successfully recovered territory as “falling into government hands”.  Even from afar, with no inside track about military strategies, one could sense that those victories exhibited a resolve of a special order, akin perhaps to the victories of Cuba and of Venezuela under Chavez—also targets of US imperial power.

Some American allies who had once endorsed the removal of the Syrian president now appear to be backing away from that position. Opponents have never been able to convincingly prove that Syria deployed chemical weapons, more so after research findings by MIT chemical weapons expert  Theodore Postol,  and following journalist Seymour Hersh’s investigations on the subject.(Hersh’s report has been ignored by the US media.) Wikileaks’ release of US state department exchanges on Syria that point to plans by the US to overthrow the Syrian government have also undermined Washington’s arguments.

As for “the people”, this month witnessed some easing of their hardships. Although US air strikes continue, aimed ostensibly at ISIS but taking a heavy civilian toll. A sign of renewed vitality for besieged civilians was the international fair that recently took place in Damascus.   It drew hundreds of exhibitors from many nations, and offered rare respite and pleasure to tens of thousands of citizens. That such an international gathering could even be arranged is remarkable. Yet, so threatening was this promise of renewed hope for peace that the site was bombed, resulting in the death of several fairgoers.

During the 1990s and up to the outbreak of conflict, Syria had achieved remarkable progress on a number of fronts– diplomatic, economic, educational, social and cultural. Yet, Washington and its allies, the U.K and Israel, persisted with their agenda. Sanctions against Syria remained and were enhanced, and vilification of its leader and attacks on Baath ideology by a compliant press persisted. In the face of Syria’s survival as a state, if ISIS is crushed, what are the options for an alliance of the US, UK and Israel who would never admit defeat?

Shia Insurrection in Saudi Arabia; The Battle for Awamiya

Thomas C. Mountain

Since May, 2017 an ongoing insurgency has been raging in the Shia heartland town of Awamiya in eastern Saudi Arabia and it’s only thanks to the BBC being allowed to enter the area and film the destruction that the world can see how the House of Saud’s war against the Shia population of Yemen has now expanded to include the Shia population of eastern Saudi Arabia.

The BBC World report shown on Wednesday, August 16, seemed to have come from Syria, with al-Zara, the ancient Shia capital of the Persian province of Bahrain and the rest of the town of Awamiya showing a level of devastation resembling that in Syria or to the Kurdish cities destroyed recently by Erdogan Ottoman’s Janissarris.

Block by block destruction of the Old City with no visible signs of the Shia people who once lived here for millenia with almost 500 buildings destroyed and over 20,000 driven from their homes by Saudi airstrikes, artillery and mortar fire.

The BBC crew was only allowed there in armored vehicles, filming through bullet proof windows while traveling as a part of an armored convoy. The one time they were allowed to stop and step outside the battlewagons they were riding, firing could by heard and they were quickly ordered to return to their vehicles so they could escape.

This short view of an almost unknown urban war in the midst of the Saudi oilfields, with 2 million barrels a day being pumped via Awamiya alone (20% of total Saudi exports) with the House of Saud, after Russia, being the 2nd largest oil producer worldwide, should be sending shivers down the spines of those occupying the seats of power both east and west.

How long the Shia rebellion in eastern Saudi Arabia, home to almost all Saudi oil reserves, will be able to maintain an armed resistance to the Saudi military assault is the 10 million barrel a day question.

The excuse given by the House of Saud royal family mouthpieces is they were driving the Shia from their ancient homeland for “urban renewal” purposes. Never mind the “renewing” would destroy world heritage sites such as the ancient town of al-Zara, capital of the Shia, Persian province of Bahrain for millenia past and sacred to the Shia population and in the process “relocate” the Shia population as far a possible from the Saudi oil fields.

Wahabi is as Wahabi does with the crimes committed in the name of Sunni Islam in Yemen now being carried out next door to their cousins, the Saudi Shia. Only the silence of the media lambs internationally alongside the UN, allows this to go unnoticed, for a double standard has long existed when it comes to condemning the crimes of the House of Saud. After the latest round of beheadings of Shia leaders protests turned to gunfire in Awamiya and the fires of armed revolution have been lit for the first time in Saudi Arabia.

The Shia of eastern Saudi Arabia are cousins to their rather unorthodox Houthi neighbors in Yemen with a long history of intermarriage and commerce. The flood of small arms that has plagued Yemen for decades past have over the years made its way into the hands of the Shia population in the midst of the House of Saud’s oil fields. While many waited in vain for the armed struggle to break out in Bahrain instead it exploded in the cultural heartland of this once Persian province and in a much more strategically critical location, in Awamiya and ancient al-Zara.

While still early, for almost 4 months now the armed resistance in Awamiya appears to have fought the Saudi army into a stalemate, surviving heavy air and artillery bombardment, with shots still ringing whenever the armed might of the House of Saud ventures within range of their small arms. If this very first armed uprising is able to maintain their determination to see an end to their oppression by their Wahabi occupiers similar to the relentless fight being waged by the mainly Houthi based resistance in Yemen then all hell could break lose.

Losing control of their oil fields would inevitably bring down the Royal House of Saud, in power since their installation by the British after WWI.

If this armed uprising survives the Saudi Army onslaught and can spread to villages and towns throughout Shia eastern Saudi Arabia and the over 3 million strong Shia people take up arms against the regime similar to their cousins in Yemen those shivers running down the spines of the lords of power east and west could quickly grow to be migraine headaches as a major portion of the world’s oil supplies could be threatened if not cut off.