Fully-Funded Commonwealth Scholarships (Masters & PhD) in UK for Developing Countries 2018

Application Deadline: 22nd February 2018

The EAS will open for applications for these scholarships at 17.00 (GMT) on 11 December 2017. A link to the EAS will be added to this page at that time.

Offered annually? Yes

Eligible Countries: Developing commonwealth countries

Subject Areas: All subject areas are eligible, although the CSC’s selection criteria gives priority to applications that demonstrate strong relevance to development.

Levels of study: Masters and PhD

About Scholarship: Each year, Commonwealth Scholarships for Master’s and PhD study in the UK are offered for citizens of developing Commonwealth countries. These scholarships are funded by the UK Department for International Development (DFID), with the aim of contributing to the UK’s international development aims and wider overseas interests, supporting excellence in UK higher education, and sustaining the principles of the Commonwealth.

Offered Since: 1959

Type: Masters (one-year courses only) and PhD

Who is qualified to apply? To apply for these scholarships, you must:

PhD

• Be a citizen of or have been granted refugee status by an eligible Commonwealth country, or be a British Protected Person
• Be permanently resident in an eligible Commonwealth country
• Be available to start your academic studies in the UK by the start of the UK academic year in September/October 2018
• By October 2018, hold a first degree of at least upper second class (2:1) honours standard, or a second class degree and a relevant postgraduate qualification (usually a Master’s degree)
• NOT be registered for a PhD, or an MPhil leading to a PhD, at a UK university before September/October 2018
• Be unable to afford to study in the UK without this scholarship

Masters

• Be a citizen of or have been granted refugee status by an eligible Commonwealth country, or be a British Protected Person
• Be permanently resident in an eligible Commonwealth country
• Be available to start your academic studies in the UK by the start of the UK academic year in September/October 2018
• By October 2018, hold a first degree of at least upper second class (2:1) honours standard, or a second class degree and a relevant postgraduate qualification (usually a Master’s degree)
• Be unable to afford to study in the UK without this scholarship

The CSC promotes equal opportunity, gender equity, and cultural exchange. Applications are encouraged from a diverse range of candidates.

Selection Criteria: Applications are considered according to the following selection criteria:

• Academic merit of the candidate
• Quality of the proposal
• Potential impact of the work on the development of the candidate’s home country

Selection process

Each year, the CSC invites selected nominating bodies to submit a specific number of nominations. The deadline for nominating bodies to submit nominations to the CSC is 22 March 2018.

The CSC invites around three times more nominations than scholarships available – therefore, nominated candidates are not guaranteed to be awarded a scholarship. There are no quotas for scholarships for any individual country. Candidates nominated by national nominating agencies are in competition with those nominated by other nominating bodies, and the same standards will be applied to applications made through either channel.

Number of Scholarships: Approximately 300 scholarships are awarded each year. The CSC invites around three times more nominations than scholarships available – therefore, nominated candidates are not guaranteed to get a scholarship. There are no quotas for scholarships for any individual country. Candidates nominated by national nominating agencies are in competition with those nominated by universities/university bodies, and the same standards will be applied to applications made through either channel.

Duration of Scholarships: 12 months for Masters and up to 36 months for PhD

Value of Scholarships: Each scholarship provides:

• Approved airfare from your home country to the UK and return at the end of your award (the CSC will not reimburse the cost of fares for dependants, nor usually the cost of journeys made before your award is finally confirmed)
• Approved tuition and examination fees
• Stipend (living allowance) at the rate of £1,043 per month, or £1,279 per month for those at universities in the London metropolitan area (rates quoted at 2016-2017 levels)
• Thesis grant towards the cost of preparing a thesis or dissertation, where applicable
• Warm clothing allowance, where applicable
• Study travel grant towards the costs of study-related travel within the UK or overseas
• For PhD Scholars, fieldwork grant towards the cost of fieldwork undertaken overseas (usually the cost of one economy class return airfare to your fieldwork location), where approved
• For PhD Scholars, paid mid-term visit (airfare) to your home country (unless you have claimed (or intend to claim) spouse and/or child allowances during your scholarship, or have received a return airfare to your home country for fieldwork)
• If your scholarship is at least 18 months long, the following family allowances:
• Spouse allowance of £224 per month if you and your spouse are living together at the same address in the UK (unless your spouse is also in receipt of a scholarship; other conditions also apply)
• Child allowance of £224 per month for the first child, and £110 per month for the second and third child under the age of 16, if you are accompanied by your spouse and children and they are living with you at the same address in the UK
• If you are widowed, divorced, or a single parent (irrespective of the length of your scholarship), child allowance of £448 per month for the first child, and £110 per month for the second and third child under the age of 16, if you are accompanied by your children and they are living with you at the same address in the UK The CSC’s family allowances are intended to be only a contribution towards the cost of maintaining your family in the UK. The true costs are likely to be considerably higher, and you must be able to supplement these allowances in order to support any family members who come to the UK with you.

To be taken at: UK Universities

How to Apply: You must apply to one of the following nominating bodies in the first instance – the CSC does not accept direct applications for these scholarships:

• National nominating agencies – this is the main route of application
• Selected universities/university bodies, which can nominate their own academic staff
• Selected non-governmental organisations and charitable bodies

All applications must be made through one of these nominating bodies. Each nominating body is responsible for its own selection process. You must check with your nominating body for their specific advice and rules for applying, their own eligibility criteria, and their own closing date for applications. The CSC does not impose any age limit on applicants, but nominating bodies may do so in line with their own priorities.

You must make an application using the CSC’s Electronic Application System (EAS), in addition to any other application that you are required to complete by your nominating body.

Your application must be submitted to and endorsed by one of the approved nominating bodies listed above. The CSC will not accept any applications that are not submitted via the EAS.

All applications, with full transcripts detailing all your higher education qualifications, must be submitted by 23.59 (GMT) on 22 February 2018 at the latest.

You are advised to complete and submit your application as soon as possible, as the EAS will be very busy in the days leading up to the application deadline.

You must provide the following supporting documentation, which must be received by the CSC by 23.59 (GMT)on 22 March 2018 in order for your application to be eligible for consideration:

• References from at least two individuals
• Supporting statement from a proposed supervisor in the UK from at least one of the institutions named on your application form

Visit PhD Scholarship webpage for details. Read carefully for guidance.

Visit Masters Scholarship webpage for details. Read carefully for guidance.

Sponsors: Commonwealth Scholarship Commission (CSC) and UK Department for International Development (DFID).

Trump’s Jerusalem Decision Risks Uniting the Entire Arab World Against the US

Patrick Cockburn

President Trump and the Israeli government will have foreseen and discounted a Palestinian “day of rage” and protests among Muslims everywhere in the wake of the US recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and plans to move its embassy there. They assume that this will all blow over because US allies such as the rulers of Saudi Arabia, UAE and Egypt will be satisfied with pro-forma protests, and the Palestinians are too weak to do anything except demonstrate ineffectively.

The US and Israel could be miscalculating: when I lived in Jerusalem I came to believe that many dramatic events in Israel, such as shootings and bombings, often had less effect than the outside world expected. But anything involving Jerusalem itself, and above all its Muslim holy sites, had a much bigger impact than anybody had imagined.

The immediate consequence of Trump’s action is that the US becomes weaker because it has carried out another initiative of which the rest of the world disapproves. A superpower at the height of its strength might get away with such a demarche, but not a politically divided US, its influence already ebbing because of failures in Iraq and Afghanistan. The move is so obviously against US foreign policy interests that it will further persuade other world leaders that Trump is an impossible ally.

The move could have other dangerous consequences. There is a myth that the Israeli-Palestinian struggle was not an issue that concerned Osama bin Laden or played a role in the rise of al-Qaeda. In fact, bin Laden’s speeches and writings are full of references to the Palestinians – and his first public utterances in the 1980s were calls for a boycott of American goods because of its backing for Israel.

The connection between the Palestinian question and 9/11 was played down at the time, particularly by neocon pundits and think tanks who claimed that the US could safely ignore the issue while pursuing an aggressive policy in Iraq. It is true that 9/11 damaged the Palestinians because they were marginalised as the US and its allies began a series of wars during which they largely disappeared from the news agenda.

But as the wars in Iraq and Syria come to an end, focus will shift back to Israel and the Palestinians. Isis and al-Qaeda have been defeated in their efforts to change regimes in Baghdad and Damascus. If they are going to survive and get support in the Muslim world, they will need to find a new enemy. Battered they may be, but they have far more activists and resources than bin Laden at the time of 9/11. The declaration on Jerusalem throws al-Qaeda-type movements a lifeline, just as they are facing complete defeat.

Trump inherited the war to eliminate the self-declared Caliphate from President Obama and has continued it unchanged. Most decisions about the conflict have in any case been taken by the Pentagon and not by the White House. Up to now the biggest change in US policy in the region has been the effort to end Obama’s détente with Iran and build up an anti-Iranian coalition. This will now become a more difficult job.

In October, Trump de-certified the nuclear deal with Iran, demonising the Iranians as the source of all instability in the region. He and his administration tend to conflate Iranians and Shias in much the same way as do Saudi Arabia and the Sunni monarchs of the Gulf. His National Security Adviser H R McMaster said in late October that “what is most important, not just for the United States but for all nations, is to confront the scourge of Hezbollah and to confront the scourge of the Iranians and the IRGC [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps].”

It is unclear how far this belligerent rhetoric is going to turn into real military action. If Trump does want to confront Iran and the axis of states and paramilitary organisations it leads, then he has left it a bit late. The Iranian Shia side has triumphed in the war in Syria and Iraq against predominantly Sunni resistance, which was once backed by Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey. The role of Hezbollah and the Shia paramilitary, Hashd al-Shaabi, will naturally diminish because there is no longer a war to fight and the central governments in Baghdad and Damascus are becoming stronger.

The recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital will make it easier for Tehran to call for all Muslims, Shia and Sunni, to stand together in defence of the Palestinians and the holy sites. It will make it more difficult, though not impossible, for Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies to act with the US, move closer to Israel and portray Iran as the greatest threat in the region.

There is a broader consequence of the switch in US policy: there are some 1.5 billion Muslims in the world who are the majority in some 50 states and make up 22 per cent of the world’s population. None of them will be pleased by Trump’s latest action. The population of many of these countries, including some of the largest such as Turkey (80 million) and Pakistan (193 million), were already very anti-American before the Trump presidency. In 2012, polls showed that 74 per cent of Pakistanis considered the US as an enemy. Even this high figure is surpassed by Turkey where 82 per cent said this summer that they had an unfavourable view of the US. Divided about everything else, Turks agree on their dislike of the US, which will again make it more difficult for the US to act against Iran.

President Putin is to visit Istanbul on Monday to speak to President Erdogan about Jerusalem and Syria, a sign that it may be difficult to isolate the issue of the Israeli capital from other conflicts.

All these important developments are happening, though nothing has really changed on the ground: Israel already treated Jerusalem as its capital, and the so-called peace process with the Palestinians has been a sham for years. The US can no longer pretend to be an even-handed mediator, but then it never was one in the first place.

By recognising Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, Trump and Israel may have broken a political rule which says it is dangerous to mess with de facto situations others have informally come to accept. Doing so can have unexpectedly disastrous consequences. A good example of this happened less than three months ago when President Masoud Barzani held a referendum demanding Iraqi Kurdish formal independence, though the Iraqi Kurds had enjoyed de facto near independence since 2003. The Iraqi, Turkish and Iranian governments, who had accepted the previous situation for years, reacted furiously and within three weeks the Kurds lost control of Kirkuk and much of their territory. It may be that President Trump and Israel will likewise find that they risked more than they imagined and will pay a heavier price than expected for formalising Israeli rule in Jerusalem.

The Invisibility of Poverty in Puerto Rico

Oscar Oliver-Didier

It has been more than two months since Hurricane María, a catastrophic category four hurricane, took a heavy toll on Puerto Rico’s infrastructure and dismally affected its local residents. People in the mainland saw pictures and videos of entire communities being physically disconnected due to bridges collapsing and roads being covered with debris. The news cycle kept repeating how extremely difficult it was to send rescue teams and aid to these heavily hit areas. And it is pretty common to know by now that any form of communication was basically inexistent—due to cellphone towers being torn down by strong winds—and that 100 percent of users were left without electricity right after the storm. Although some improvements have occurred, to this date, not much has changed. Only a little over half of the island has recovered electrical power—mostly intermittently.

Even though it has lost its persistent media coverage, what this dire aftermath and the subsequent relief and recovery effort have revealed is the island’s century-old unequal colonial relationship with the United States, and the local elites’ role in sustaining it. Recent controversy over the mishandling of the humanitarian crisis after Hurricane María should not surprise anyone. In the territory, as subaltern subjects, Puerto Ricans have been continuously subjected to a capitalist and racial hierarchical system.

These unjust core-periphery relations are a still evolving colonial condition that has made the territory a contested realm for economic extraction and injustices since the U.S. invaded the island in 1898. In fact, there is a similar case that dates back to an 1899 hurricane that devastated Puerto Rico called San Ciriaco—after which the U.S. quickly moved to devalue the local currency, raise property taxes, and put in place a corporate takeover of land that unleashed the sugarcane economic boom of this period.

As multiple recent news articles have highlighted, it has also laid bare the extreme inequality and conditions of poverty present throughout the U.S territory. Even the politically vocal Mayor of San Juan, Carmen Yulín Cruz pronounced recently in an interview that: “We will no longer be able to hide our poverty and our inequality with palm trees and piña coladas.”

It is important to note, however, that Puerto Rico has had a long history of obscuring poverty—especially after the Operation Bootstrap program was implemented in the island during the mid-twentieth century. This expedited modernization project was to become the Cold War’s antithesis to communist Cuba. Deemed a beacon for freedom and a laboratory for democracy in Latin America, huge amounts of federal money were transferred from the mainland to the territory in order to showcase Puerto Rico as capitalism’s success story.

However, this process of modernization was not working hand in hand with a long-term economic project that would actually lift most islanders out of poverty—today, more than 40 percent of residents live under the federal poverty line. By the 1970s, the economy started a downturn, so in 1976 Section 936 of the U.S. tax code was created to grant mainland corporations a tax exemption from their incomes originating from its Puerto Rico subsidiaries. Without a strong local economy—just a huge profit increase for mainland companies—when the tax exemption finally expired in 2006, Puerto Rico was left in economic shambles and has not recovered since.

Although throughout the twentieth century improvements to the quality of life of Puerto Ricans were felt in the U.S. territory, more often than not, it was equally important to erase or hide certain representations of poverty. This was done in order to uphold the highly symbolic nature of selling Puerto Rico as a success story—rather than actually doing away with the economic/political/colonial framework that benefitted only certain local and mainland stakeholders. In other words, this political project hid the many remaining representations of poverty—and the belligerent actions that sustained them—and re-imaged them into something that met the aesthetic standards of progress at the time.

In the 1950s, under the recently established commonwealth, new modernist buildings began housing government agencies, luxury hotels catered to the new tourism industry and, more importantly, public housing projects started accommodating the most impoverished sectors of the island—after relocating them from unsightly slums or arrabales, as they are commonly called in Puerto Rico.

Similarly to the mainland, since the first public housing project was erected through the Wagner-Steagall Housing Act of 1937, and the subsequent creation in Puerto Rico in May 1938 of the Puerto Rico Housing Authority (PRHA), the State relied on architecture to resolve the social ills that came about from segregation and poverty—which were spatially represented in the arrabal. It was thought that architecture could provide the working class and the unemployed with a means to access modernity in a plentiful fashion, and escape poverty in the process. Today, Puerto Rico has the second largest public housing system in the U.S. and about 250,000 island Puerto Ricans live in 58,000 public housing units.

In the public housing experiment undertaken in Puerto Rico, the spatial characteristics employed were both a product of a country that was modernizing itself—industrially and visually—and an inherited cultural assumption that understood that the poor had to be purged from any former tie with their rural past or with the spaces and community interactions of their former slum. Arrabales, were seen as spaces, where according to privileged sectors, crime and disease emanated. The government understood that they had to erase any trace or memory of the past and give way to progress. Although constantly evolving, to this day, this sense of Otherness is still very present in Puerto Rico.

Historically, in the island there has existed a generally ingrained idea that views the disenfranchised and their spaces of livelihood/engagement (be that the countryside, the arrabal or public housing—depending on the historical period) as inferior and with a need to be transformed, educated and disciplined. This political thought lives in the minds of local elites—be them powerful private citizens or government leaders—and is later turned into an actual political exercise through diverse spatial apparatuses: the walled colonial city, the sugar and tobacco plantations, public housing, etc.

However, in these spaces, this pre-established political thought that sees these sectors as inferior continues to operate. That is why the negative views with which these communities are understood and viewed as an Other has periodically been transferred for example from the plantation to the arrabal, and from the arrabal to public housing. They are the reproduction and constant redeployment of old racial/colonial hierarchies through a coloniality of power.

In Puerto Rico, local government administrations—aware of the politics of aesthetics—have taken bold steps to turn parts of the territory into something visually attractive to the local and foreign visitor’s gaze. The demolition of multiple public housing towers during the last decades, for example, was the immediate disappearance of these tall structures through an act of aggression that symbolically and physically purged the bodies considered and imagined as poor and violent. They were removed indefinitely by cleaning up the rubble that was left behind, and any other trace of their community and livelihood.

These demolitions of high-rise public housing in Puerto Rico, as in the case of Las Acacias (2000) and Las Gladiolas (2011), and the constant police occupation of other public housing projects in the island are all evidence of a complicated political condition. After its introduction at a national scale, a joint commission was set up in 1991 between HUD and the Puerto Rico Public Housing Authority (PRPHA) determining that due to their generally rundown state and an institutional lack of funds to maintain upkeep, all the island’s tall public housing buildings should be demolished and replaced by new mixed-income ones. Public housing was now being given the same negative characterization that had been conferred to slums just a few decades before. In order to sustain the symbolic prowess of economic progress, these towers had to be demolished as soon as possible.

In the case of Las Gladiolas’ former site, new renderings of the new four-story mixed-income building that will be built in its place have already been released. It is worrisome to see that the smaller scale of the development clearly cannot house all of the residents of the former tower-complex. Today, one would have to ask, is the current massive flight of Puerto Ricans to the mainland after the hurricane the most current version of this kind of socioeconomic purging?

Going back to hurricane María’s aftermath, the cloaking of poverty that was recently revealed—demonstrating how run down the infrastructure and the living conditions of many was—is strengthened by the centuries-old framework of political invisibility that was until now being partially revealed in U.S. media. In Puerto Rico, this contemporary political invisibility is a form of instability that strengthens neocolonial relations of power. The territory has no political representation in Congress, there is a lack of general knowledge of Puerto Rico’s political situation in the mainland, the island is heavily indebted (yet there are no reliable statistics to distinguish debt that was issued illegally), and there is an unelected oversight board with broad (yet unchecked) powers that was put in place by Congress in 2016 under a new law called PROMESA—with a clear neoliberal agenda of austerity and privatization of publicly owned land and corporations, and a reduction of both federal assistance programs and minimum wage for workers.

Today, what makes Puerto Rico unique is that neocolonial means of exploitation/expulsion take advantage of this surviving and often occulted colonial/political framework. In the wake of the crisis left by Hurricane María, local and mainland actors are likely to take advantage of the aesthetic/political project that has already been put in place—the local government has already unveiled a campaign to attract mainland investors called: “Paradise Performs”.

Additionally, as we have witnessed from President Trump’s tweets, blaming the victims and making them solely responsible for the hurricane’s catastrophic aftermath masks the old hierarchical system’s role in the constant yet evolving economic exploitation of the island. However, blaming Trump instead as the sole culprit, or blindly celebrating the “resilient” capacity of a population in dire need, also contribute to conceal this existing political framework of instability and the condition of poverty it reproduces.

As a matter of survival, new modes of exposing the structural colonial differences between the mainland and the island must be deployed. Additionally, Puerto Rico must claim for a structure of governance that strengthens new democratic processes of land use, sustainability, and social equity, while simultaneously empowering the emerging multitudes dealing with the environmental, economic and political aftermath of the hurricane.

In the end, images of Puerto Rico before and after Hurricane María paint a drastically different picture. Inequality and poverty were laid bare, and the sheer awe of destruction looms heavily. In the island, however, the political framework that supports the invisibility of poverty—repeating itself under the cloak of colonialism—has already been in place for more than half a century. This sets the perfect scene for disaster capitalism’s destabilizing maneuvers—selling destruction as an opportunity and offering a tropical paradise at bargain prices.

We must act fast. And never forget the interdependency that exists between redevelopment, aesthetics, and our cultural understandings of race and poverty.

How Afghan Jihad Triggered Insurgency In Kashmir?

Nauman Sadiq

In Pakistan, there are three distinct categories of militants: the Afghanistan-focused Pashtun militants; the Kashmir-focused Punjabi militants; and foreign terrorists including the Arab militants of al-Qaeda, the Uzbek insurgents of Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) and the Uighur rebels of the East Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM). The foreign, transnational terrorists number only in a few hundreds and are hence inconsequential.

Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), which is mainly comprised of Pashtun militants, carries out bombings against Pakistan’s state apparatus. The ethnic factor is critical here. Although TTP likes to couch its rhetoric in religious terms, but it is the difference of ethnicity and language that enables it to recruit Pashtun tribesmen who are willing to carry out subversive activities against the Punjabi-dominated state apparatus, while the Kashmir-focused Punjabi militants have by and large remained loyal to their patrons in the security agencies of Pakistan.

Although Pakistan’s security establishment has been willing to conduct military operations against the TTP militants which are deemed a security threat to Pakistan’s state apparatus, but as far as the Kashmir-centered Punjabi militants, including Lashkar-e-Taiba, and the Afghanistan-focused Quetta Shura Taliban, including the Haqqani network, are concerned, they are still enjoying impunity because such militant groups are regarded as ‘strategic assets’ by the security establishment.

For the half of its 70-year-long history, Pakistan was directly ruled by the army, and for the remaining half, the security establishment kept dictating Pakistan’s foreign and security policy from behind the scenes. The outcome of Ayub Khan’s first decade-long martial law from 1958 to 1969 was that Bengalis were marginalized and alienated to an extent that it led to the separation of East Pakistan (Bangladesh) in 1971; during General Zia’s second decade-long martial law from 1977 to 1988, Pakistan’s military trained and armed its own worst nemesis, the Afghan and Kashmiri jihadists; and during General Musharraf’s third martial law from 1999 to 2008, Pakistan’s security establishment made a volte-face under Washington’s pressure and declared a war against the Pashtun militants that ignited the fire of insurgency in the tribal areas of Pakistan.

Although most political commentators in Pakistan nowadays hold an Islamist general, Zia-ul-Haq, responsible for the jihadist militancy in the tribal areas; however, it would be erroneous to assume that nurturing militancy in Pakistan was the doing of an individual scapegoat named Zia; all the army chiefs after Zia’s assassination in 1988, including Aslam Beg, Asif Nawaz, Waheed Kakar, Jahangir Karamat and right up to General Musharraf, upheld the same military doctrine of using jihadist proxies to destabilize the hostile neighboring countries, Afghanistan, India and Iran, throughout the 1980s and 1990s.

A strategic rethink in the Pakistan Army’s top brass took place only after the 9/11 terror attack, when Richard Armitage, the US Deputy Secretary of State during the Bush administration, threatened General Musharraf in so many words: “We will send you back to the Stone Age unless you stop supporting the Taliban.” Thus, deliberate promotion of Islamic radicalism and militancy in the region was not the doing of an individual general; rather, it has been a well-thought-out military doctrine of a rogue institution. The military mindset, training and institutional logic dictates a militarist and aggressive approach to foreign affairs and security-related matters. Therefore, as a matter of principle, military must be kept miles away from the top decision-making organs of the state.

Regarding Kashmir, the insurgency in Kashmir erupted in the fateful year of 1984 of the Orwellian-fame when the Indian Armed Forces surreptitiously occupied the whole of Siachen glacier, including the un-demarcated Pakistani portion. Now, we must keep the context in mind: those were the heydays of the Cold War and the Pakistan Army’s proxies, the Afghan so-called ‘mujahideen’ (freedom fighters), were winning battle after battle against the Soviet Red Army, and the morale of the Pakistan Army’s top brass was touching the sky.

Moreover, Pakistan’s security establishment also wanted to inflict damage to the Indian Armed Forces to exact revenge for the dismemberment of Pakistan at the hands of India during the Bangladesh War of 1971, when India took 90,000 Pakistani soldiers as prisoners of war. All the military’s top brass had to do was to divert a fraction of their Afghan jihadist proxies towards Kashmir to ignite the fire of insurgency in Kashmir. Pakistan’s security agencies began sending jihadists experienced in the Afghan guerilla warfare across the border to the Indian-administered Kashmir in the late 1980s; and by the early 1990s, the Islamist insurgency engulfed the whole of Kashmir region.

Finally, after losing tens of thousands of lives to terror attacks during the last decade, an across the board consensus has developed among Pakistan’s mainstream political parties that the policy of nurturing militants against regional adversaries has backfired on Pakistan and it risks facing international isolation due to the belligerent policies of Pakistan’s security establishment. Not only Washington but Pakistan’s ‘all-weather ally’ China, which plans to invest $62 billion in Pakistan via its China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) projects, has also made its reservations public regarding Pakistan’s continued support to jihadist groups.

Thus, excluding a handful of far-right Islamist political parties that are funded by the Gulf’s petro-dollars and historically garner less than 10% votes of Pakistan’s electorate, all the civilian political forces are in favor of turning a new leaf in Pakistan’s checkered political history by endorsing the policy of an indiscriminate crackdown on militant outfits operating in Pakistan. But Pakistan’s military establishment jealously guards its traditional domain, the security and foreign policy of Pakistan, and still maintains a distinction between the so-called ‘good and bad Taliban.’

Rebels attack UN base in Congo, killing 20 soldiers

Eddie Haywood 

In the early morning hours on Thursday, armed militants carried out a raid on a UN base in Eastern Congo, killing 15 UN soldiers and five troops with the Congolese army. Some 40 more were critically wounded. The UN casualties, all soldiers from Tanzania, were deployed to the Congo under the United Nations Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUSCO).

Thursday’s attack is the deadliest assault on UN forces since 1993 in Somalia, when 22 UN soldiers were killed in the course of supporting the US military effort to prop up its puppet government. That military effort resulted in a devastating setback when 18 US special forces soldiers were killed during a raid on Mogadishu.

MONUSCO officials characterized the attack as “a well-coordinated and complex operation launched at dusk by attackers armed with mortars and rocket-propelled grenades,” declaring the attack represented a “serious escalation.” In addition to the casualties, the militia took out two armored personnel carriers and an ambulance and truck before withdrawing.

United Nations Secretary General António Guterres condemned the attack, and said it constituted a war crime. “I want to express my outrage and utter heartbreak at last night’s attack on United Nations peacekeepers in the Democratic Republic of Congo. It is another indication of the enormous sacrifices made by troop-contributing countries in the service of global peace.”

Spokesperson for the US State Department Heather Nauert stated that Washington was “appalled by the horrific act.”

MONUSCO head Maman Sidikou issued a statement condemning the attack: “Attacks against those who are working in the service of peace and stability in the Democratic Republic of the Congo are cowardly. MONUSCO will take all actions to ensure that the perpetrators are held accountable and brought to justice.”

In fact, the so-called UN “peacekeepers” are doing anything but keeping the peace. With their mandate as a “rapid force brigade”, the UN troops stationed at the base carry out offensive military operations, executing deadly raids and carrying out “seek and destroy” missions to neutralize rebel militias.

The UN’s deployment of its “Force Intervention Brigade” in 2013 to Eastern Congo marked a new stage in the UN’s offensive operations in the country, and was directed against the Rwandan M23 militia, marking a complete turn from the previous mandate restricting it to defensive operations.

Thursday’s attack took place near Semuliki in North Kivu province, by the Ugandan border. Officials with MONUSCO claimed the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) were behind the attack.

Rebel militias have carried out attacks across North Kivu for the last several years in the aftermath of the Congo War, which devastated the country between 1996-2003. The war drew the military forces of six African countries into the conflict, resulting in an estimated 5 million killed. The ADF, along with other militias, have increased their ranks and influence amid the collapse of Congolese society, in particular Eastern Congo, which the seven-year war left in ruins.

In recent years, the 18,000-strong MONUSCO force has become a frequent target of various rebel militias in the mineral-rich region of Eastern Congo, with the militias battling for control over the spoils.

The ADF attack on the UN base is only the most recent offensive by the group. In October, ADF rebels ambushed a convoy of Congolese officials and civilians near the town of Beni, also located in North Kivu and close to the Ugandan border. Twenty-six people were killed and 12 wounded; two UN soldiers were killed in a separate attack.

Frequently crossing the porous border between Congo and Uganda, the ADF have waged war with government forces from both countries since 1995. A key component of the conflict is the vast economic resources of the region, in the form of minerals and precious stones, such as diamonds.

Speaking to the UK Guardian, Jason Stearns, the director of the Congo Research Group at New York University, stated, “The ADF is an Islamist armed group which imposes discipline based on a strict interpretation of the sharia and which is known to be extremely brutal. It is very likely the ADF were involved but also other groups... The ADF have been in the area for 20 years and has deep links with all kinds of people.”

Despite its members holding religious affiliation with Islam, US officials have found no substantial ties or allegiances to other Islamist groups in Africa, such as Al-Shabaab in Somalia or Boko Haram in Nigeria.

The escalating conflict between various militias and UN forces takes place against the backdrop of a dire refugee crisis, economic deterioration, and political instability in the Congo.

Amidst the chaotic stew created by decades of imperialist interventions from Washington and Europe, the country has experienced a sharp increase of impoverishment and social misery, with 80 percent of the population living on a mere $1.25 a day. Treatable diseases run rampant, with health care nonexistent over vast areas of the country while the use of child labor is rampant.

Speaking to the refugee crisis, last week Ulrika Blom, the director of the Norwegian Refugee Council for the DRC, said, “The scale of people fleeing violence [in the DRC] is off the charts, outpacing Syria, Yemen and Iraq.”

The escalation of conflict in the Congo coincides with the expansion of US military influence across the continent, particularly in Somalia and West Africa.

Roughly the size of Western Europe, the Democratic Republic of Congo has been the stage for an array of imperialist forces circling the country, above all the United States, which is seeking to exploit Congo’s vast economic resources and impoverished working class in the interest of American corporations and banks.

In its scramble for Africa, Washington aims to secure for American capitalists the vast economic resources of the continent and to neutralize its economic rival China, which has procured significant economic influence across Africa over the last decade.

Washington’s relationship with its erstwhile partner in the ruling government of President Joseph Kabila has soured after the latter’s refusal to hold elections in 2016. Kabila is facing growing calls to step down.

Notably, Kabila recently provoked the ire of Washington when he secured deals with Beijing for the development of Congo’s mining sector and infrastructure, essentially cutting out American firms from the negotiations. Washington has indicated it is weary of Kabila, and is looking to place a more pliant government in Kinshasa, raising the specter of a wider military conflict which could surpass the horrors of the Congo War.

Mass eviction of rural migrant workers from Chinese capital

Robert Campion

Tens of thousands of Chinese rural migrant workers are being forcibly evicted by authorities in Beijing as part of the local government’s campaign against so-called over-population. With some given as little as 15 minutes warning, the most exploited workers in China are being expelled from the city in droves with their homes demolished behind them.

To forestall resistance, water and electricity have been cut off from entire migrant neighbourhoods. The timing of the evictions is particularly callous; the onset of winter has seen recorded night-time temperatures plummet below freezing point.

Wang Yongxian, a top official of Beijing’s Fengtai district, urged police to “act hard, mercilessly, and quickly.” Footage has been leaked online of police breaking down doors for those failing to comply, and arresting them for risking public safety.

The heavy-handed moves come in the wake of a chemical fire that broke out in a two-storey apartment building in Beijing’s southern Daxing district on November 18. Thirty-four fire engines with 14 fire-fighting teams took three hours to extinguish the fire.

The blaze claimed the lives of 19 people including 8 children, 17 of whom were migrants. Eight others were also injured. According to Xinhua News, the fire had been started by faulty refrigeration in the basement of the building, with the only emergency exit blocked by flammable materials. Eighteen suspects had been detained.

House fires are common in the slum districts of Beijing. For Daxing district, this was the third serious fire this year. Many buildings in migrant areas in China are of poor construction and difficult for fire engines to access.

Beijing rents are skyrocketing with the average rental prices hovering around 1.2 times the average income—one of the least affordable renting markets in the world. This forces migrants into cramped, unsafe conditions that amount to death-traps. The apartment building in Daxing housed 400 workers.

It is not uncommon for living quarters to be placed adjacent to their respective factories and restaurants, which entail further safety hazards.

Authorities are seizing upon the fire as a matter of public safety to rid the city of “illegal structures and businesses” through “fraction dispersal measures” over an area of 40 million square miles.

Communist Party Chief of Beijing, Cai Qi announced: “The lessons of the fire are extremely grave…the city must be on high alert. We must take actions and protect people’s lives and safeguard the safety and stability of the capital.”

The government’s understated aim is to advance long-established plans for “urban rectification” to “beautify” areas of the capital and reduce its population.

In 2016, government publications revealed an economic and social development plan to cap its population at 23 million by 2020 and reduce the number of its “low-end” population—the bureaucratic term for its migrant population of 8 million. Downtown districts in 2018 were to be reduced by 15 percent compared to 2014, which equates to a relocation of roughly 1.9 million people.

“We are emptying the cages to change the birds,” Tan Xuxiang, director of Beijing Municipal Commission of Development and Reform, told the People’s Daily in July. He detailed a strategy of phasing out underperforming markets and services to stimulate growth in favour of industries such as technology and finance. Eleven square miles have already been demolished in the first half of this year.

Authorities have found it difficult to convince migrant workers to move elsewhere since it unveiled its plans. The sheer lack of employment opportunities in the countryside, not to mention the absence of available housing and services such as health and education, mean the bulk of migrants prefer to stay.

According to a recent study by the Health and Human Rights Journal, rural-urban workers (another term for Chinese migrants) reportedly struggle with high levels of mental health problems, such as depression, anxiety, hostility, social isolation and insomnia. Suicide rates are three times the national average, according to the World Health Organization.

There are reportedly over 282 million migrant workers in China, a third of the labour force, who constitute an industrial reserve army to suppress wages and conditions. With the slowing of the Chinese economy, these workers are now deemed disposable by the regime and a hindrance to Beijing’s further development as a financial hub.

The city of Beijing has swollen from 10.1 million people in 2000 to 21.7 million in 2016. A key role in its expansion has been the super-exploitation of cheap labour in services and the construction industry, particularly for the infrastructure for the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games.

In the lead-up to the Olympics, some 90 percent of the construction industry was composed of migrant workers from the countryside, who were denied proper wages, access to medical and social services, and insurance for dangerous conditions.

Many migrant construction workers reportedly felt like “cattle” or “slaves” because of the strenuous conditions and long hours. Some were roused in the middle of the night to work. One government survey revealed that on average they were working 10 hours a day, 27 days a month. Six deaths were reported during in the Olympic Games construction.

In China, the hukou system, a form of household registration used since the 1950s, is used to block access by migrant workers to essential social services in the cities such as housing, healthcare and education. Many involved in the Olympic construction were unable to file complaints against their employers simply because they originated from rural areas.

Prior to the start of the Olympics, when the completion of all construction was assured, over a million workers were evicted to present a “clean and harmonious” image of the city. One irate worker, Li Ming, recently spoke to an SBS news reporter, “In 2008 you welcomed us at the railway station and treated us like gods, in order to construct the city. Now how do you treat us?”

With the move to gentrify Beijing, many services, such as retail and logistics, that rely on cheap labour will be impacted. Evicted workers will face longer commutes than before, should they manage to rebuild their lives. It is an indictment of the Chinese capitalist system, hell-bent on profit, and an embittering process that will lead workers into mass struggles.

Mexico’s Interior Security Law: The ruling class prepares for mass uprisings

Alex González

The Mexican Senate is set to approve a new law that would mark a qualitative step in the militarization of Mexican society. The law would put the military in charge of “internal security” and give the armed forces the authority to conduct massive spying operations under the guise of fighting against organized crime. The Interior Security Law was passed by the Chamber of Deputies on November 30, will soon be voted on by the Senate, and is expected to be signed by President Enrique Peña Nieto in the coming months.

The Interior Security Law (Ley de Seguridad Interior) would authorize the president to deploy the Armed Forces in cases of “grave danger to the collective integrity of people and/or the functionality of institutions,” or even in situations that could “potentially become threats to internal security.” Any such operation would supposedly last up to one year. However, the bill specifies that the president can, without any congressional or judicial approval, extend this period if he or she considers that a “threat” is still present. Under current conditions of deep social and political crisis, the law opens the door to establishing what would amount to a military dictatorship. Small but substantial protests have taken place throughout the country against the law.

The phrase “internal security” is purposely vague and could encompass activities ranging from natural disasters to strikes and protests. While the law claims that the military will not be used against social or electoral activities, the law specifies that these must be “peaceful,” thereby opening the door for isolated acts of violence to be used as an excuse to crack down on entire groups or organizations. The laws are expansions of earlier state laws used to justify the military suppression of various strikes and protests that have broken out since 2006, including the “Ley Atenco” which was passed in the aftermath of a police rampage against protesting flower vendors in San Salvador Atenco in the State of Mexico.

The armed forces will also be authorized to “use any form of data collection” to carry out “intelligence activities.” The law’s broad language has been widely interpreted as a way for the military to force service providers to establish encryption back-doors and hand over their users’ personal information. Earlier this year, the government was found to have hacked the phones of journalists and political opponents. Now, the ruling elite are expanding its scope to spy on an increasingly defiant working class.

The Interior Security Law would provide a legal framework for the Armed Forces to carry out operations for the “war on drugs,” given that the military has been carrying out such tasks informally for over 11 years.

As the country has become increasingly militarized, levels of violence have recently hit record highs. When the war on drugs began in 2006, over 6,500 members of the military were deployed nationwide. Since then, over 750,000 members of the armed forces have been given police powers across the country. Levels of violence are now worse than they were a decade ago, with 24,000 people killed in 2017 alone. This represents a higher figure than the number killed in the war-torn countries of Afghanistan and Iraq this year.

The root cause of this crackdown lies in the need for the ruling class to defend its wealth by force. However, the timing of its introduction also coincides with preparations for next year’s presidential elections. Dominant sections of the ruling elite do not want the current leader in polls—Andrés Manuel López Obrador of the “left” National Regeneration Movement (Morena)—as the next Mexican president.

Peña Nieto has single-digit approval levels under conditions in which over half of the population lives in poverty and two thirds of the country’s income is held by the top ten percent of the population. The likely presidential candidate for the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), José Antonio Meade Kuribreña, is a former finance minister who would accelerate the austerity and privatization policies he helped implement during the Peña Nieto administration.

Last summer, the country’s largest gubernatorial election, in the State of Mexico, was marked by signs of fraud as the PRI’s candidate narrowly defeated Morena’s candidate. In case of a comparable situation during the presidential elections, the ruling elite wish to use the Interior Security Law to crack down on the inevitable social unrest that would follow.

López Obrador, however, is peddling a right-wing program that represents no real threat to the status quo. He combines populist claims of reducing the salaries of government employees and fighting corruption with promises not to raise taxes or increase social spending. He has described his platform as one of “austerity” to balance the fiscal budget. He recently pledged not to raise taxes on corporations in a video message aimed at appealing to the Mexican and US business elite.

López Obrador has opposed the Interior Security Law by offering an alternative way of centralizing the military. His proposal, known as Single Command, would combine municipal police departments into a national guard. “It was laid out in the Constitution some time ago that there could be a national guard and that all agencies, both police and military, could be integrated so that everyone could face the grave problem of insecurity in a coordinated manner,” said López Obrador.

He advocates further integrating the military brass into executive decision-making by holding daily briefings with senior military officials and the president. López Obrador has also suggested granting amnesty to members of organized crime as a way of reducing violence.

Morena’s program will not make any significant improvements in the lives of the Mexican masses. López Obrador opposes a class analysis of Mexican society and is looking to scapegoat government employees for the poverty facing millions. Single Command is simply a cosmetic change that would not prevent the Armed Forces from violently cracking down on social opposition.

As the World Socialist Web Site has noted, he offers a middle-class program that would leave capitalist social relations intact, and is primarily aimed at blocking the growth of social opposition, which has flared up in Mexico in the form of growing demonstrations against the Ayotzinapa massacre (2014), the Oaxaca massacre of striking teachers (2016), and the Gasolinazo tax hike (2017).

No section of the Mexican political establishment opposes the militarization of Mexican society and the preparations for the possibility of open military rule. When Arturo Alvarez, a legislator from the Ecologist Green Party of Mexico, was asked to respond to claims the Internal Security Law is unconstitutional, he said: “Blablablabla.”

UK “Magnitsky bill” escalates US-led anti-Russia offensive

Julie Hyland

Labour MP Ian Austin introduced a sanctions (Human Rights Abuse and Corruption) bill in parliament Wednesday. It was tabled as a private member’s bill, which is a mechanism for backbench MPs to gain a first reading of any proposed legislation.

The bill is trailed as a means of giving the British home secretary powers to impose sanctions against those found guilty of corruption and human rights abuses in general. More properly, it is part of the US-led campaign of anti-Russian hysteria, aimed at legitimising an escalation of preparations for war against Moscow.

Austin’s bill mirrors the US Magnitsky Act, passed under the Obama administration in 2012 with overwhelming bipartisan support. This enabled the US government to impose financial and visa sanctions against Russians accused of involvement in the arrest, prosecution and detention of Sergei Magnitsky, an accountant for Hermitage Capital Management, who died in a Russian jail in 2009.

Earlier this year, the UK passed a “Magnitsky” amendment to the Criminal Finances Bill, enabling the government to freeze the UK assets of those deemed to have violated human rights. However, Austin complains that the British government has thus far not utilised these powers. The right-wing Labour MP is part of a cross-party effort--currently by a minority within parliament--to build pressure for a far more aggressive stance against Moscow.

Presenting his bill, Austin praised Conservative MP Dominic Raab for introducing the amendment to the Criminal Finance Bill, but said it was necessary to “give the government powers to sanction individuals found guilty of corruption and human rights abuse with visa bans, asset freezes and public placement on a list of banned foreign criminals.”

Although the bill cannot concern a specific case, Austin made sure it was peppered with references to Magnitsky and denunciations of Moscow. In an anti-communist diatribe, he accused Russian President Vladimir Putin--one of the chief protagonists of capitalist restoration in the Soviet Union--of representing the continuity of the “Soviet era.”

Claiming that Magnitsky’s murderers are being protected by “Russia’s thuggish president,” he argued, “It is easy to boast about our country’s commitment to its values--democracy, freedom, fairness and respect for the rule of law--but they must stand for something, and that is why we cannot ignore appalling crimes like the murder of Sergei Magnitsky.”

It is impossible to know the truth or otherwise of the various charges and counter-charges surrounding Magnitsky’s death. Clearly, he was denied his basic rights at the hands of the Russian criminal justice system, being held without trial for almost a year and having urgent medical care withheld when he became sick. Sadly, such brutal treatment is by no means unique to Russia, but it is widespread in Russian prisons, as well as those in the US.

It is also the case that Putin is the representative of an oligarchy that has enriched itself from the plunder of Soviet assets. But so too is William F. Browder, the London-based multi-millionaire hedge fund founder who is leading the campaign for anti-Russian sanctions, using Magnitsky’s death as the pretext.

Browder was a key financial player and ally of Putin and the Russian oligarchy from 1995 to the late 2000s. But they fell out over Browder’s investments in Gazprom when he was accused of attempting to illegally purchase shares, leading to the closure of his Russian operation.

Browder says that Magnitsky was jailed on trumped-up charges and murdered because he uncovered a giant multimillion-dollar tax fraud involving Russian government officials.

Opponents accuse Browder of being involved in the fraud uncovered by Magnitsky and of being linked to the accountant’s death. Putin has even accused Browder of being a “serial killer” for his alleged involvement in the mysterious deaths of three other men, also connected to the fraud.

In this fall-out among thieves, one fundamental principle must be observed: The task of dealing with Putin and the gangsters in the Kremlin belongs to the Russian working class, not the US and British bourgeoisie, who are, if anything, even more criminal and venal than their Moscow counterparts.

When Austin invokes human rights, he does so on behalf of a ruling elite that concocted false “evidence” against Iraq over supposed weapons of mass destruction. This was part of a conspiracy with the US to launch an illegal war that destroyed the country and initiated a series of pre-emptive interventions across the region.

The numbers present at the bill’s reading were small, but Austin was most enthused at the fact that it drew cross-party backing, including Green MP Caroline Lucas and several Tories. Yvette Cooper and Dame Margaret Hodge were present from Labour. They, like Austin, are leading critics of party leader Jeremy Corbyn for supposedly being “soft” on Russia.

In the House of Lords, Labour’s Baroness Helena Kennedy QC is piloting a similar measure to that proposed by Austin, titled the “Cancellation of UK Visas for Gross Human Rights Abuses Bill 2017.”

In November, Austin and Kennedy helped organise a forum in parliament involving the Henry Jackson Society to discuss a Magnitsky Justice campaign. The Henry Jackson Society is a right-wing British-American think tank closely associated with the Iraq war. It is represented by the likes of Richard Perle, former US assistant secretary of defence, and William Kristol, founding editor of the neo-conservative Weekly Standard and co-founder of the notorious pro-war think tank Project for a New American Century.

The political character of this campaign is underscored by its supporters internationally.

In December 2016, Estonia passed a Magnitsky law involving travel bans against Russian officials. It is leading the drive for an extension of such bans across Europe. This small Eastern European country is now in the front line of the US and NATO military encirclement of Russia, hosting NATO combat troops. In September 2014, then-US President Barack Obama gave Estonia’s right-wing government carte blanche to launch a provocation against Moscow and receive NATO and US military assistance, assuring “people in Estonia: their security is our security.”

Estonia’s parliament has praised Estonian members of Hitler’s Waffen-SS as “freedom fighters” against the Soviet Union, and August 28--the day the Waffen-SS recruited members of the Estonian Defence League--is celebrated each year as a national holiday.

Estonia currently holds the rotating presidency of the Council of the European Union. It is in this capacity that an alliance of Members of the European Parliament, led by former Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt, has called on Estonia to use its position to “act and finally adopt EU-wide sanctions, visa bans and asset freezes” against Russia, using Magnitsky's death as justification.

In November, Lithuania, another key player in the military build-up against Russia in the Baltics, unanimously passed its own version of the Magnitsky Act, which will become active in January.

One month before, Canada, which is also playing a leading role in the NATO build-up in Europe, adopted its version of the Magnitsky Act with all-party support. The Justice for Victims of Corrupt Foreign Officials Act (Bill S-226) enables the government to freeze Canadian assets of foreign officials and prevent them from entering Canada.