Niger’s junta cancels military agreement with the United States

Athiyan Silva

On March 16, the military junta in Niger, which took power amid mass protests against the French military presence last July, unilaterally canceled a military agreement signed last year, allowing US military personnel and contractors to operate in Niger. Now, after the French withdrawal last year, about 1,100 US military personnel are to leave Niger.

In this photo taken Monday, April 16, 2018, a U.S. and Niger flag are raised side by side at the base camp for air forces and other personnel supporting the construction of Niger Air Base 201 in Agadez, Niger [AP Photo/Carley Petesch]

Niger junta spokesman Colonel Major Amadou Abdramane said on national television: “The government of Niger, taking into account the aspirations and interests of its people, decides with full responsibility to denounce with immediate effect the agreement relating to the status of military personnel of the United States and civilian employees of the American Department of Defense in the territory of the Republic of Niger.”

The announcement by the military follows an unannounced meeting in the Nigerien capital of Niamey on March 12-14 between Nigerien officials and a high-level US delegation led by the US Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Molly Phee. General Michael Langley, the commander of the US Africa Command, also participated in this meeting.

Abdramane accused the US delegation of being “disrespectful” and “disrespecting diplomatic procedures.” He stated that Niamey was not informed of the details of the US delegation, the date of their arrival or the agenda. Therefore, he said, “This agreement is not only profoundly unfair in its substance but it also does not meet the aspirations and interests of the Nigerien people.”

Abdramane added, “the government of Niger forcefully denounces the condescending attitude accompanied by the threat of retaliation from the head of the American delegation towards the Nigerien government and people.”

During this visit, the US delegation demanded to meet General Abdourahamane Tchiani, the head of the Nigerien junta. However, Tchiani refused to meet the US delegation.

Washington began developing military ties with Niamey in 2003, after the September 11, 2001 attacks and the fraudulent “War on Terror” under the George W. Bush administration. After this, about 1,100 US military personnel and civilian security personnel started operating in Niger under a Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) signed between the United States and Niger concluded in 2012.

The US military operates Airbase 101 in Niamey. It has also built Airbase 201, one of its largest aircraft and drone bases in Africa, near Agadez, 920 km (572 miles) southwest of Niamey. Under the guise of “war against Jihadi groups” in the region, the base operates a fleet of drones. At the same time, US forces do the dirty work of stopping refugees from West Africa and the Sahel region from coming to Europe, placing them instead in detention camps in Agadez.

Intelligence, surveillance and drone reconnaissance operations are carried out from this base across the entire Sahel, from the Red Sea on Africa’s eastern coast to the Atlantic Ocean. The base currently plays a key role not only in NATO wars in West Africa, but in NATO attacks on Houthi forces in Yemen who are attacking Israeli shipping in the Red Sea in retaliation for the genocide in Gaza.

Nigerien military spokesman Abdramane also accused Washington of trying to deny Niger’s right to choose its diplomatic, strategic and commercial partners. He said, “Niger regrets the intention of the American delegation to deny the sovereign Nigerien people the right to choose their partners and types of partnerships capable of truly helping them fight against terrorism.”

Pentagon Deputy Press Secretary Sabrina Singh responded that US officials had “lengthy and direct” talks with members of the Junta, over US concerns about Nigerien relations with Russia and Iran. “We were troubled by the path Niger took,” Singh said.

White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Washington is monitoring Russian military activities in Africa to “assess and mitigate potential risks to personnel, American interests and property,” AfricaNews reported.

Washington, Paris and other NATO imperialist powers are notorious for toppling African governments and assassinating political figures they see as obstacles to their domination. They view the economic and military ties African countries including Niger are developing with China, Russia, Iran and other countries as an intolerable threat.

France is the former colonial overlord in Niger, and its corporations plunder Niger’s vast natural wealth, particularly its uranium mines. It plunged Niger and the entire Sahel into bloodshed by invading neighboring Mali in 2013 on the false pretext of waging a “war on terror.” However, as massacres mounted across the Sahel, there were widespread accusations in the population—echoed even by top state officials—that Paris was secretly arming Islamist terror groups to justify keeping troops to its former empire.

A uranium mine in Niger. [Photo by Korea Open Government License/Korea Aerospace Research Institute]

Amid mass protests across the Sahel and in Niger against the French military presence, a faction of Niger’s military, previously a fixture of a French-dominated regime, launched a coup and seized power last July. France’s response was ruthless: as it grudgingly moved to withdraw its troops, Paris pressed countries of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) to impose sanctions on Niger. France was forced to completely withdraw its army and diplomatic staff from Niger last December.

That same month, a delegation led by the Russian Deputy Defense Minister Colonel General Yunus-Bek Yevkurov was received by Tiani, the head of the Nigerien junta. At the end of this meeting, both countries agreed “to the signing of documents as part of the strengthening of military cooperation between the Republic of Niger and the Russian Federation,” Nigerien authorities reported. After the talks in Niamey, the Russian delegation went to the Malian capital, Bamako, for similar talks.

In January, Nigerien Prime Minister Ali Mahaman Lamine Zeine, Defense Minister Salihou Mody, and the ministers of petroleum and trade made a long diplomatic visit to Russia and Iran. They met Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexei Overchuk in Moscow for talks aimed at deepening the two countries’ economic and military relations.

During the talks, Overchuk declared, “The Russian Federation regards the Republic of the Niger as a friendly state, with which it has built up mutually beneficial and constructive relations over a long period. We are interested in expanding our trade, economic and investment ties, as well as in boosting trade. For this, it is necessary to take further joint steps to promote our partnership in promising areas such as agriculture, energy, infrastructure, and geological exploration.”

In Tehran, the Nigerien delegation reportedly discussed how to deal with ECOWAS sanctions, as Iran has long suffered under crippling US-European sanctions.

These events show how the Sahel and all of Africa have been drawn in to the global war the NATO alliance is waging on Russia, China and their allies. The war hysteria of French President Emmanuel Macron, who is calling to send European ground troops to Ukraine to fight Russia, reveals how the imperialist powers will brook no challenge to their hegemony. They are determined to cut across any economic ties between Africa and the rest of the world that call into question their domination of the world economy.

Instant denials of Ukrainian intelligence involvement in Russian terror attack are not credible

Clara Weiss

Friday’s terror attack at the Crocus City Hall in Moscow, which killed at least 137 people and wounded over 180, is a dangerous new stage in the imperialist war against Russia. 

People lay flowers at a spontaneous memorial in memory of the victims of Moscow attack in St. Petersburg, Russia, Sunday, March 24, 2024. [AP Photo/Dmitri Lovetsky]

According to Russian President Vladimir Putin, the perpetrators were captured on their way to the Ukrainian border, where “a window” had been prepared for them to cross into Ukraine. The four main suspects were identified as immigrants from Tajikistan, a desperately impoverished former Soviet republic in Central Asia. They have pleaded guilty and claim to have acted on behalf of as yet unidentified intermediaries for money. The Afghan-based Islamist terrorist group ISIS-K has claimed responsibility for the attack.

The principal mouthpieces of US imperialism, the New York Times and the Washington Post, have promptly initiated a campaign to deny the involvement of the US and Ukraine in this attack. Both outlets immediately dismissed Putin’s statement about a connection to Ukraine, citing unnamed “US security officials.” Without providing any evidence, they simply echoed the claims of the White House and Kiev, made almost as soon as the attack occurred, that neither the US nor Ukraine were involved. 

How is it possible for the major US media outlets to immediately exclude any connection between this attack and a war raging between Russia and Ukraine, with significant US involvement?

In fact, their claims have no more credibility than their earlier denials of US and Ukrainian involvement in the bombing of the German-Russian Nord Stream gas pipeline. There have been many instances where US denials of culpability later proved to be false. This places the burden of proof on them to prove their innocence. The attack has the mark of the CIA and its proxies in Kiev all over it.

The war propaganda in the media about the terrorist attack reveals its political purpose. The Times wrote, with barely concealed glee, that the attack was “a blow to Mr. Putin’s aura as a leader for whom national security is paramount.” Now, the Times surmised, Russians “might ask whether Mr. Putin, with the invasion and his conflict with the West, truly has the country’s security interests at heart—or whether he is woefully forsaking them, as many of his opponents say he is.”

Taking an almost identical line, the Washington Post published a piece under the headline, “Terrorist attack in Russia exposes vulnerabilities of Putin’s regime.” It gloated that the attack “smashed through Putin’s efforts to present Russia as strong, united and resilient” and quoted a “Moscow businessman” criticizing the “lack of responsibility for security at large public events” under Putin.

The same line was taken in the Financial Times, which declared that Russian allegations of Ukrainian responsibility serve to “deflect attention from gaps in Moscow’s security system, which have widened since Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine two years ago.”

The claim that Putin was “distracted” by the Ukraine war does not refute US-Ukrainian involvement in the attack. Rather, it might have been a factor that led NATO plotters to believe that an attack had a high probability of success.

Central to the imperialist propaganda about the supposed “non-involvement” of the US and Ukraine is the fact that ISIS-K has claimed responsibility for the attack. But the involvement of ISIS-K would not disprove Ukrainian and US involvement. On the contrary. 

ISIS-K is largely a creation of US imperialism and its decades-long wars in the Middle East and Central Asia. In 2021, the Wall Street Journal reported that US-trained intelligence agents and elite counterinsurgency troops were joining ISIS-K in Afghanistan. Tajikistan, from where the suspected terrorists hail, has long been entangled in the armed conflicts in Afghanistan, going back to the 1980s when the US trained and funded Islamist fundamentalists in its war against the Soviet Union. 

In this context, the March 7 warning by the US embassy in Moscow of an impending major terrorist attack in Russia, can only be interpreted as an attempt to create an alibi for the US in the lead-up to the operation of its proxies.

The involvement of Ukrainian intelligence, which coordinates its day-to-day operations closely with NATO and the US, is also all but evident. In January 2023, the Times reported that nationalist and far-right elements from across the former Soviet Union, including Russia’s North Caucasus and Central Asia, had flocked to Ukraine to fight in NATO’s war against Russia. 

As the Times wrote, “most of them harbor long-term political ambitions to return home and overthrow the Russian and Belarusian governments. … The volunteers themselves say that they are acting with the full knowledge and under the orders of the Ukrainian Army and intelligence services. Many of their operations are covert, including dangerous reconnaissance or sabotage missions behind Russian lines.”  

And just days before the Moscow terror attack, the Times hailed Russian neo-Nazis, which “were openly backed by Ukraine’s military intelligence agency” for an incursion of the country during the presidential elections as “rebellious Russians.” Their “daring attacks,” the Times wrote, could help “undermine the sense of stability in Russia and divert the country’s military resources from Ukraine.”

The line of argument developed by the Times and rebroadcast in the world press reveals the political purpose of the terrorist operation. With NATO’s proxy forces in Ukraine facing a military debacle, the terror attack in Moscow was part of the efforts to open up a second front in the war, within Russia itself.

The aim is three-fold: First, to embolden opposition to the Putin regime within the oligarchy and state apparatus; second, to provoke a military response by the Kremlin that can serve as the pretext for a further escalation of the war by NATO; and third, to foster ethnic and religious tensions within Russia that would destabilize the regime and facilitate the carve-up of the entire region by the imperialist powers.  

This strategy stands in a long and sinister tradition. The Nazis mobilized nationalist and far-right forces of the so-called Intermarium alliance throughout Eastern Europe and the Caucasus when they invaded the Soviet Union in World War II. During the Cold War, the US deployed these fascist networks in its covert warfare against the Soviet Union. The Stalinist destruction of the Soviet Union and the restoration of capitalism enabled the imperialist powers to pursue this reactionary strategy on a hitherto unprecedented scale.

This goes not least for Russia itself. For over a decade, the imperialist powers have systematically built up an anti-Putin faction in the Russian oligarchy and state around the late Alexei Navalny. While glorified by the Times as a “democrat,” Navalny for years co-organized Russia’s largest annual fascist event, the “Russian March,” denounced immigrants from the Caucasus and Central Asia as “cockroaches” and maintained close ties to separatist tendencies throughout the country. Other prominent opposition leaders, the ex-oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky, and Ilya Ponomaryov openly advocate the break-up of the Russian Federation into a series of separate statelets.

While over 70 percent of Russia’s population of about 140 million are ethnic Russians, the country is home to over 190 ethnic groups. Muslims comprise at least a tenth of the population. Many of them live in a few largely Muslim republics as well as the North Caucasus, where the Kremlin has waged two brutal wars against Chechen separatists between 1994 and 2009. In addition, there are some 17 million immigrants living in Russia who mostly come from former Soviet republics such as Tajikistan and belong to the most exploited sections of the working class. 

The social basis and politics of the oligarchic Putin regime make it highly vulnerable to the machinations of the imperialist powers. Its invocation of Great Russian chauvinism and nationalism serves to disorient, divide and demobilize the working class and, ultimately, aids the imperialist war aims. 

There is a real danger that the Putin regime and other right-wing forces will try to direct the popular shock toward the targeting of different national and ethnic communities while stepping up state repression. Already, on Saturday, Moscow police launched raids of immigrant living quarters, and social media reports indicated a developing boycott of predominantly Tajik cab drivers.

Massive budget cuts and layoffs announced for K-12 will devastate school districts across the US

Renae Cassimeda

School districts across the US face an unprecedented fiscal cliff for the approaching 2024-2025 school year. Preliminary budget proposals have been announced by districts throughout the nation this month and outline a clear jobs bloodbath and massive cuts to resources and programs in K-12 education. 

Various factors have been cited in the mainstream media as contributors to the ongoing financial crisis for K-12 schools, which include the ending of COVID-19 relief funding, overall decline in enrollment, declines in birth rates. Numerous other factors, including increased homelessness, the growth of enrollment in charter schools and homeschooling as the result of decades-long budget cuts to public schools largely go unreported in corporate news outlets.

The final installment of Federal Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) funds, will expire in September 2024. The COVID-19 relief money, which has totaled roughly $190 billion, was meant to help schools address needs arising from the pandemic, including making up for learning loss during the pandemic, but many districts have used it for one-time staffing costs to keep districts budgets afloat.

Much of state and federal funding for public education is tied to district enrollment figures. US public schools have seen a significant decline in enrollment over the past few years while the number of students in charter and private schools has increased. The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools reported a 2 percent increase in charter school enrollment for the 2022-2023 school year. Figures from the Washington Post indicate that the number of homeschooled children in America has almost doubled from 1.5 million children in 2019 to 2.7 million in 2023.

It is also worth noting the 2023 study by Stanford University and the Associated Press which found over 240,000 “missing” students who were no longer attending public schools between the 2020-2021 and 2021-2022 school years but not accounted for. Numerous factors play a role, including the significant impact of Long COVID, the growth of homelessness, parents being forced to work more than one job and other forms of social and economic distress that cause students to drop out of school.

In addition to the approaching end of federal COVID-19 relief funding this September, Congress approved early Saturday morning the second half of resolutions for the 2024 federal budget. According to a recent report by K-12 Dive, the federal budget includes $500 million less for the Department of Education as compared to the 2023 fiscal year and represents the first major cut to education since 2015. 

The federal cuts to public education come as Congress and the Biden administration have allocated vast sums for war and expansion of the military. More than half of domestic discretionary spending, $886.3 billion, will go to the Department of Defense. Biden is also calling for more military aid to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan to ramp up America’s wars for global conquest. Less than half of the remaining discretionary funds are to be divided up among various agencies, including public education, healthcare and others. 

While several compounding factors have contributed to the attacks on public education, all of them emerge from the prioritization of Wall Street profit-taking and US imperialist wars over the lives of children or the jobs of school workers.

Mass opposition is mounting throughout the country to the slashing of budgets and their impact on public education. In every district where cuts have been announced, students, parents, teachers and school staff have spoken out. School board meetings have seen hundreds of people lining up to call for revoking the cuts that would all greatly impact the quality of education in their respective districts. In multiple cases, students, parents and teachers have organized walkouts, protests and sickouts in support of their teachers and schools. 

West Coast

San Diego Unified School District (SDUSD), the second largest district in California, recently announced over 400 preliminary layoff notices to teachers and school staff to close a $94 million budget deficit. Teachers have organized a rally this next week in opposition to the cuts. 

In the Los Angeles region’s Anaheim Union High School District (AUHSD), students and parents protested a school board decision to gut 10 percent from the school budget, including the layoff of an estimated 120 teachers. Eighth grade student Hailey Sotelo helped organize the protest in support of her teachers and school staff. Speaking to local news media at the protest, Sotelo said, “We’re concerned about how big class sizes are going to be. Class size does determine how well a teacher can teach.”

A petition is circulating online among students and community members opposed to the cuts which has received over 3,000 signatures. One AUHSD student, Carol Huang, wrote, “Teachers aren’t just numbers; they are the people who help students grow and learn, the ones that are guiding our futures. Think about all the people aspiring to be teachers too. All this does is disappoint and discourage future teachers and educators. Can I really say I’m proud of my school district if the teachers are not even protected? If some of the most important influences on my life can just be erased after all their hard work?”

On Friday, teachers in Salem-Keizer School District in Oregon voted by 94 percent to authorize a strike amid contract negotiations with the district. While calling for major cuts due to an estimated $60 million budget deficit, district officials have claimed there is no money for teachers’ demands to lower heavy workloads, decrease large class sizes and for pay raises. According to Tyler Scialo-Lakeberg, the president of the Salem-Keizer teachers union, cuts might include reducing many full-time positions to part-time work. 

The school board in Vancouver, Washington, recently voted to slash $35 million from the budget resulting in over 260 layoffs of teachers, counselors, librarians and other school staff.  Walkouts at multiple high schools were carried out by students throughout last week in opposition to the cuts and layoffs. A flyer circulating among students and staff at Vancouver School of Arts and Academics (VSAA) stated, “VSAA is ultimately getting gutted as an art school so please walk out, email the superintendent and talk to everyone you know about this. Transparency and visibility are so important right now!” Students carried signs including, “Fund our Future” and “Fund School Not War.”

Also in Washington, the Seattle Public Schools faces a massive $105 million deficit for the coming 2024-2025 school year, and officials have announced initial plans for sweeping cuts to the district which include the closure or consolidation of dozens of schools in the district. The cuts for the next school year come in addition to $100 million in cuts that have already been carried out for the 2023-2024 school year. 

Midwest

Last week, teachers in Flint Public Schools (FPS) in Michigan carried out a powerful one-day sickout and unanimous vote to strike. Teachers in the district face untenable conditions, with many working multiple jobs to make ends meet. In January, the district rescinded a contract agreement made with the United Teachers of Flint (UTF), citing a $14 million budget deficit. Teachers are outraged over the rejection of the agreement by the district. For its role, the UTF had failed to call a strike vote until after teachers carried out a sickout. Teacher wages have been frozen since 2012. 

Sweeping budget cuts are also being carried out throughout the Detroit region. On Thursday, the Ann Arbor school district announced mass layoffs of school staff to cut $25 million from the 2024-2025 budget. Wayne-Westland School District had planned to pass a multimillion-dollar budget cut plan at Thursday’s board meeting but voted to delay the decision after the meeting erupted in opposition from teachers, bus drivers and other school workers. 

According to the Association of Metropolitan School Districts, more than 70 percent of Minnesota’s metro school districts expect deficits this next school year. Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) teachers have been fighting the Democratic Party’s funding reductions since July. MPS announced a $90 million budget deficit and an initial proposal for major cuts for the upcoming school year which include cuts to over 200 full-time positions in the district. 

Having recently averted a strike with the help of the Saint Paul Federation of Educators union, Saint Paul Public Schools recently announced its preliminary plans to close its own $100 million budget deficit, which will include cuts to afterschool programs, teacher prep time, food service and custodial staff funding. 

The South

The Houston Independent School District, the largest district in Texas, recently announced punitive budget cuts to schools. Superintendent Mike Miles has required dozens of schools in the district to cut up to 12 percent from their sites for the upcoming school year, resulting in part of his plan to cut $15 million from an over $250 million deficit. The cuts will target 140 schools in the district that have not yet implemented the superintendent’s reform program, the “New Education System” (NES). Twenty-five schools will be required to cut the full 12 percent. A major decrease in enrollment—by over 32,000 students since the 2016-2017 school year—is being used as the justification to drastically reduce state funding. 

Kanawha County Schools in West Virginia is facing multiple school closures and job cuts for the upcoming school year. Fifty-two school staff face potential layoffs, and the district has announced the closure of three schools in the county where the state capital of Charleston is located. This occurs as state educators mark the sixth anniversary of the wildcat strikes in 2018 that sparked a national wave of educators’ walkouts against bipartisan austerity and school privatization.   

In Arkansas, school districts in financial distress can be taken over by charter school companies. Little Rock School District (LRSD) announced its plans to cut $16 million from the budget to avoid privatized takeover. Cuts include rearranging of middle school schedules in such a way that would necessitate cutting 11 positions and save close to $1 million. Further cuts include laying off support staff, leadership and office jobs.

New Hanover County Schools (NHCS) in Alabama has a $20 million shortfall and has proposed slashing 224 school staff positions and 56 school office staff positions. 

East Coast

New York City Public Schools face an ongoing massive budget crisis. In January, $100 million in cuts were announced by the Democratic administration of Mayor Eric Adams for the upcoming school year in the face of a $700 million shortfall. The district is planning over $100 million in cuts to Pre-K services, which has received enormous opposition from parents.

Also in New York state, middle and high school students at Hamburg Central School District just south of Buffalo, New York, walked out of classrooms over the layoff of 27 teachers and school staff. At last week’s school board meeting, hundreds of teachers, parents and students opposed the cuts.

Brockton Public Schools (BPS) in Massachusetts faces a shortfall of up to $25 million for the 2023-2024 school year. The district is carrying out significant cuts to cover the deficit and avoid a state takeover. Schools have reported a major staffing crisis, and students are being left unattended in the cafeteria for hours. In February, several members of the Brockton school committee requested that the Massachusetts National Guard be deployed to manage safety concerns in the high school.

D.C. Public Schools officials anticipate an estimated 200-450 positions will be eliminated from the district. Given the drying up of COVID-19 relief funds, many of the layoffs will be of support staff, who have provided critical services for students. Mayor Muriel Bowser recently stated that individual school sites will have to decide which positions are cut. 

On Wednesday, elementary students and parents protested budget cuts in Howard County, Maryland. Howard County Public Schools (HCPS) recently announced cuts to important student programs for the 2025 school budget. Programs are being slashed for gifted and talented students, and the entire third grade strings program is being gutted. The latter program is an integral part of the district’s beloved and revered instrumental music program. 

Layoffs have been announced, as well as the increasing of class sizes by two students. A petition to restore third-grade strings has more than 5,700 signatures, and a petition to restore elementary gifted and talented programs has over 1,700 signatures. During last week’s protest outside one of the Howard County government buildings, multiple elementary school students played their violins and cellos to demonstrate their opposition to the cuts to their music education. 

The current growing opposition among teachers and school workers to decades of austerity in public schools comes after the wave of teacher rebellions in 2018-2019 and has continued throughout the ongoing pandemic. Since 2022, teachers and school workers have carried out strikes and sickout actions in Los Angeles, Sacramento, Minneapolis, New Haven, Durham, Flint, Seattle and elsewhere. Even further, tens of thousands of educators demanded strike action over the deepening assault on public education as funds are drained from social programs to pay for war. 

With each struggle the treachery of the trade union bureaucracies led by the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association have resulted in concessionary contracts, no guarantees of staffing, and enshrined cuts to real wages, lack of resources and now massive budget cuts. The union bureaucracies also enforced Biden’s back-to-school orders despite the ongoing pandemic and the lack of elemental ventilation systems in decaying school systems. Above all, the AFT and NEA bureaucracies are deeply entrenched in the Democratic Party and its reckless military confrontations with Russia and China, which threaten the nuclear annihilation of civilization.

At least 60 dead, 145 wounded, in Moscow terrorist attack

Clara Weiss

A terror attack at a popular Moscow concert hall, Crocus City Hall, Friday evening local time left at least 60 dead and 145 injured. Russian authorities declared that the number of dead may well rise. Among those injured are several children. The Afghan-based fundamentalist Islamist group ISIS-K has claimed responsibility for what is the largest terrorist attack in Russia in two decades.

A Russian Rosguardia (National Guard) servicemen secures an area as a massive blaze seen over the Crocus City Hall on the western edge of Moscow, Russia, Friday, March 22, 2024. [AP Photo]

The attack involved a group of at least four armed men who began shooting at the crowd of some 6,000 people shortly before the beginning of a concert by the popular rock group “Piknik” (Picnic) at 8pm local time. Video footage of the attack has widely circulated on social media and survivors of the attack have described horrific scenes to the media. A woman called Eva told Gazeta.Ru, “First we saw something that looked like fireworks, and then the sounds of gunfire began, people shouting to run. Of course, people were in panic. People in Crocus were building barricades, trying to break the windows.”  

The Russian secret service FSB and Russia’s national guard stormed the building but reports indicate that the rescue operation took well over an hour. According to Russian media reports, drivers who passed by the building helped people evacuate the site of the attack. 

In addition to the machine gunfire, several explosive devices went off, setting the theater ablaze and leading to the collapse of its roof. Russian media reports indicated that the fire extended to an area of almost 13,000 square meters.

As of this writing, fire-fighting operations were ongoing and Russian authorities were still looking for the perpetrators. Heightened security measures were introduced at metro stations throughout the capital as well as the airports in the Moscow area, and all large-scale public events in the capital were canceled for this weekend. Russian President Vladimir Putin has not yet issued a statement. 

The terror attack took place as tensions between NATO and Russia, which are engaged in a proxy war in Ukraine, were reaching fever-pitch. Days before the attack, Vladimir Putin was confirmed the victor in last weekend’s presidential elections. The elections were preceded by announcements of French President Emmanuel Macron that NATO was considering to deploy troops to Ukraine amidst a severe crisis of the NATO-backed Ukrainian army. In the days leading up to the election, a series of missile strikes on the border region of Belgorod killed at least 5 civilians and forced the closure of schools and shopping malls. During the election itself, Russian neo-Nazi militias, backed by Ukraine and NATO, launched in incursion of Russian territory. It was the first attack on Russian territory involving tanks since the defeat of the Nazis by the Red Army in World War II.

Over the past two years of the war, terrorist attacks, mostly targeting prominent supporters of the Kremlin in the war, drone strikes on Moscow as well as Russian oil refineries and ports, have become a central component of NATO’s and Ukraine’s war strategy. Hours before the attack took place, Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin’s press secretary, for the first time used the term “war”, as opposed to the official term of a “special military operation”, to describe Russia’s conflict with NATO in Ukraine. Peskov stated, “Yes, it started as a special military operation. But as soon as this gang developed and the collective west started participating in the conflict on the side of Ukraine, for us it became a war.”

Volodymyr Zelensky and several of his advisers were quick to deny wide-spread speculations that Ukraine was behind the terrorist attacks and John Kirby, Coordinator for Strategic Communications for the National Security Council, declared that the US believed that Ukraine was not involved in the attack.

On March 7, the US embassy in Moscow had issued a security alert, urging Americans to avoid crowded places in the Russian capital for the next 48 hours in view of “imminent” plans by terrorists to target large gatherings, including concerts. Several Western embassies repeated the warnings. On Tuesday, Putin denounced these warnings as “provocative statements” and “blackmail” aimed to “destabilize” the country.

When asked about the March 7 warning of the US embassy on Friday, John Kirby stated that “I don’t think that was related to this specific attack.”

Shortly thereafter, ISIS-K (Islamic State-Khorasan), the Afghanistan-based group of the Islamist terrorist organization Islamic State (ISIS), claimed responsibility for the attack on social media. US officials confirmed the claim and told the New York Times that they had gathered intelligence in March about an impending attack. According to the Times, which routinely functions as a mouthpiece for the US intelligence services, US officials “had privately told Russian officials about the intelligence pointing to an impending attack.” 

As of this writing, the Russian authorities have not commented on the claims by the US or ISIS-K. In February, the Russian secret service, FSB claimed that it had broken up an ISIS cell in Kaluga, a city southwest of Moscow, and killed two ISIS members from Central Asia. In early March, the FSB reported that it had “liquidated” another ISIS cell in the Kaluga region, which was composed of militant Islamists from Afghanistan. 

Friday’s attack was the deadliest attack in Russia since the 2004 Beslan school siege by Islamist fundamentalists, which killed at least 334 people, roughly half of them children, and the deadliest in the Russian capital since the 2002 siege of a Moscow theater which resulted in more than 170 dead.

These sieges were part of a series of Islamist terrorist attacks that rocked Russia, especially in the 2000s. There have also been several Islamist terrorist attacks over the past decade, but virtually all of them took place in the predominantly Muslim North Caucasus. 

That wave of terrorist attacks took place in the context of two brutal wars that the Kremlin waged on Chechnya and an Islamist separatist movement between 1994 and 2009 to prevent the break-off of the predominantly Muslim North Caucasian republic from the Russian Federation. It is estimated that up to a tenth of the Chechen population was killed in these wars. 

Especially in the 1990s, Chechen separatist forces enjoyed the backing of US imperialism which has long sought to foster separatist, ethnic and religious tensions in the multi-national country, in order to bring about the destabilization and break-up of Russia. The country is home to about 14 million Muslims (roughly ten percent of the population.)

Islamist separatists from the North Caucasus are known to have developed close ties with al-Qaeda, ISIS as well as the Taliban which have ruled Afghanistan since the US troop withdrawal in 2021. Other Chechen radical Islamists have joined US-backed Islamist militias that have been fighting against the Russian-backed Assad government in the civil war in Syria.

The close ties between Chechen Islamist separatists and various Islamist fundamentalist groups throughout Central Asia and the Middle East, many of which have connections to the US, have been a central concern of the Kremlin for many years.

In 2021, the Wall Street Journal reported that US intelligence agents and elite counterinsurgency troops, who had been trained by the CIA and the Pentagon during the 20-year US occupation of Afghanistan, were joining the Islamic State-Khorasan (ISIS-K), the group that now claims responsibility for the attack in Moscow. As the WSWS explained at the time, the CIA had “intimate connections to the emergence of ISIS.” The CIA had also trained Osama bin Laden and other future al-Qaeda leaders as part of the US-funded mujahideen guerrilla war in Afghanistan against the Soviet Union in the 1980s.

Regardless of the immediate culprit of Friday’s terrorist attack, it is clear that it took place in a context of an expanding and escalating war against Russia by the imperialist powers. This conflict already extends well beyond Ukraine to the Middle East and other parts of the world. It has destabilized the entire former Soviet Union, large parts of Central Asia and Eastern Europe, and the forces unleashed by this growing global conflict involve not only Russian and Ukrainian neo-Nazis but also Islamist militias that have been bred by decades of US wars of plunder in the Middle East.

Homeless Australians dying 30 years younger than the national average

Vicki Mylonas

Homeless people in Australia are dying on average 30 years earlier than the general population, according to several recent studies. The reports, which suggest that even a brief period of rough sleeping can have an enormous impact on health and life expectancy, are of particular concern amid a rise in homelessness, including of people with paid jobs.

Homelessness on the rise in Australia [Photo: Mission Australia]

The true extent of this crisis remains concealed to the general public, as no Australian government compiles specific data on deaths among the homeless population.

The Guardian’s “Out in the Cold” series is based on a 12-month investigation into the cause of 627 homeless deaths it was able to identify between January 2010 and December 2020. This involved combing through 10 years’ worth of non-public death reports to state coroners and an analysis of inquest findings.

As not all deaths are reported to the coroner, and the fact that a person was homeless is frequently not noted in the coronial records, the Guardian considers this to be a “vast undercount.”

Of the 627 deaths that could be identified, the average age at death for homeless men was 45.2 years and for women, 40.1 years. The median age at death among the general population is 79 years for men and 85 years for women.

The overwhelming majority of the deceased—87.1 percent—were men. Indigenous Australians were also significantly overrepresented, making up 21.5 percent of the 627 deaths despite comprising 3.2 percent of the total population.

Natural causes were responsible for 158 of the deaths, while 130 were from intentional self-harm. At least 24 were caused by assault. Drug toxicity was the most common external factor, as the primary contributor to 203 deaths, while 74 were from asphyxiation by hanging.

Deborah Di Natale, chief executive of the Council to Homeless Persons, described the premature deaths as the “stark reality” of homelessness. “It is really dangerous to be experiencing homelessness,” she said, adding that living on the streets poses an increased risk of death due to untreated illnesses and lack of adequate access to health care.

The overrepresentation of “deaths of despair”—suicide and drug overdose—points to both the demoralising and debilitating effect of homelessness and poverty, as well as the broader crisis of public mental health care.

Another study, of 324 deaths in Sydney, by Macquarie University researchers found that the mortality rate of homeless people was 80 percent higher than that of the general population, across age groups.

A 15-year longitudinal study by Melbourne researchers determined that people who experienced even a single episode of homelessness were almost four times more susceptible to premature death than the average.

In Perth, a study led by the University of Notre Dame Australia’s Professor Lisa Wood, based on hospital records, found that the median age of death for homeless was 50 years. Their research revealed that in 2021, at least 70 homeless people died in Perth, a city of around 2.2 million people.

Wood said, in response to the refusal of governments to track homeless deaths, “I can’t help but think it’s such an uncomfortable truth that in some ways, it’s less confronting for governments and others if it remains hidden.”

In 2021, David Pearson, chief executive of the Australian Alliance to End Homelessness, wrote to Greg Hunt, then health minister in the federal Liberal-National government under Scott Morrison, warning that the failure to collect even the most basic data about homelessness deaths was a national emergency.

Pearson called on the government to develop a reporting framework that would allow hospitals and other services to report on these deaths. He said that Hunt did not respond to this appeal and that the Morrison government referred him to the (predominantly Labor) state governments. Most of the states, he added, did not even respond.

The Australian Medical Association has called the premature deaths of homeless Australians a national tragedy and has advocated for the government to both invest in a monitoring regime and improve housing and health services.

The Guardian investigation has prompted a degree of hand-wringing in parliament.

Federal Housing Minister Julie Collins described the premature deaths as “completely unacceptable,” but refused to commit to the establishment of a federal reporting scheme. Instead, she reiterated the Labor government’s paltry pledge to deliver 30,000 new social and affordable homes over the next five years, not even 5 percent of the expected shortfall.

Reforms to the reporting of homeless deaths are now being considered in New South Wales, South Australia and Victoria. But while tracking these figures is critical, it would not in and of itself address the roots of the crisis—an acute lack of affordable housing and the slashing of real wages and social spending, spearheaded by Labor governments at state and federal level.

Confronted with unprecedented and growing demand, homelessness services are facing a $73 million funding cliff by the end of 2024, which would put at risk 700 critical support jobs.

The tragedy of premature homeless deaths is not an isolated phenomenon but the sharpest expression of the broader impact of social inequality on health outcomes. A study by Victoria University in 2021 revealed that wealthy Australians live up to 6.4 years longer than those on the lower end socio-economic scale. The report added that even middle-income Australians are 23 percent more likely to die early of a preventable illness compared to the top income earners.

This underscores the fact that the capitalist system is fundamentally incapable of satisfying even the most basic needs of human life. This has been starkly revealed during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The profit-driven “let it rip” policies embraced by governments worldwide have caused some 30 million preventable deaths. In Australia, overall life expectancy declined for the first time since World War II as a result.

Greek government enacts private university laws, facing down mass protests with police repression

Robert Stevens

Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis pledged this week to continue the brutal crackdown on students, youth and workers fighting new university legislation. The bill opens university education to the private sector and is aimed at dismantling the right to free universal higher education. It was passed by 159 to 129 votes in the 300-seat parliament in which New Democracy holds a clear majority.

Greece has 24 accredited public universities, as well as several private colleges. More than 650,000 students are currently enrolled at state-run universities.

Riots police clash with students in front of the Parliament during a demonstration in Athens, Greece, March 8, 2024 [AP Photo/Thanassis Stavrakis]

The new measures allow private universities to operate as Greek branches of foreign educational institutions and will be able to offer degrees equivalent to those offered by public universities. Although operating under a “nonprofit” status, they would be able to charge tuition fees.

The law will favour wealthy families able to pay exorbitant fees. By eroding public provision, it will harm young people’s job prospects in a country where youth unemployment has been at record levels for over a decade.

Passing the law was unconstitutional as private institutions have been prohibited from operating as independent universities for almost 50 years. Following the fall of the military junta in 1973, Article 16 of the 1975 Constitution stipulated that tertiary education is exclusively “public and free of charge”.

Greece’s ruling elite, with many ties to those in power during the junta era, wants to restore private sector control over campuses and quell an area of society that has long been a bastion of left-wing ideology and activity.

Tens of thousands of students have protested nationwide over the last months, with riot police brutally attacking demonstrations. By the third week of January, around 250 out of Greece’s 450 faculties and departments were under occupation, with hundreds of academics signing petitions opposing the private university plans. The conservative daily Kathimerini referred to student assemblies as “battlefields” and occupations as a “virus” that had “also spread to secondary education”.

On March 9, tens of thousands protested in Athen’s Syntagma Square, with the participation of nearly 200 student groups from universities nationwide, alongside others protesting Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Riot police attacked demonstrators with tear gas and stun grenades and waded into them with batons and shields.

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Anna Adamidi, a philosophy student on the protest, told Associated Press, “This government wants to privatise everything ... but at the same time, the cost of living is going up and up and our wages remain pitiful. The private sector comes in and dismantles public education, making use of resources that they will pay nothing for.”

On March 16, riot police smashed into Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and arrested 49 students involved in the occupation of several departments at the School of Applied Sciences. The arrested, aged between 19 and 30, were charged with obstruction of justice and serious disruption of the smooth operation of a legal entity under public law.

At the same time, police raided the University of Athens’ Zografou campus, making two arrests.

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On Tuesday, Mitsotakis vowed to continue the crackdown, saying, “I want to again repeat that illegal acts will not be tolerated; the government and Greek Police will be at the forefront in rendering university institutions to those who really belong there, students and professors, so that universities remain centres of knowledge and not a refuge for those… who seek to turn them into dens of violence and a space for barren conflicts”.

Every previous attempt by right-wing conservative-led governments to allow private universities was prevented by mass protests.

Almost 20 years ago—in 2006 and prior to the onset of mass austerity imposed in Greece by successive governments from 2010—students and academic staff held months of mass demonstrations, rallies and occupations of universities. The movement against the Karamanlis ND government saw 350 of Greece’s 456 faculties under occupation by students, with more than 100,000 students participating in rallies and protests.

The ability of ND to sweep into office last year, pursue its class war agenda, and finally pass the laws, is entirely the responsibility of Syriza (Coalition of the Radical Left-Progressive Alliance.)

Taking power in 2015 under Alexis Tsipras, Syriza, with staunch backing from pseudo-left groups internationally—who hailed it as the wave of the future—deepened an austerity offensive in alliance with the trade unions, without precedent on the European continent. Tsipras authorised the use of police units to break up a student occupation at the Technical University of Athens within months of taking office.

In July 2019, Syriza was booted out of office as millions of workers deserted this rotten party. Routed again in the 2023 election, though still the main opposition party in parliament, Syriza now reaches barely 10 percent in the polls.

Greece's Prime Minister and New Democracy leader Kyriakos Mitsotakis, right, and leader of the main opposition Syriza party, Alexis Tsipras, laugh before a debate at the premises of public broadcaster ERT in Athens, Greece, Wednesday, May 10, 2023. Heads of Greece's political parties participate in a televised debate ahead of the country's May 21 elections. [AP Photo/Thanassis Stavrakis]

The ruling class seized on this opportunity. In 2021, ND passed its authoritarian Education Bill, again in the face of large protests, establishing a special campus police force for the surveillance of universities. The force is not only allowed on campus but empowered to arrest those deemed troublemakers by the authorities. It is answerable to the Hellenic Police rather than to the education institutions they patrol. Since 2019 there have been around 45 police operations in occupied university premises.

These moves built on the abolition in 2011 of the Academic Asylum law by the social democratic PASOK government.

The 1982 law, under which police could only enter university campuses with permission, and which guaranteed students sanctuary from arrest or state brutality, was born from the bloody legacy of the junta. It was enacted in response to popular anger over the brutal state murder of students who took part in the uprising at the Polytechnic in Athens on November 17, 1973. On that day students had launched strike action under the slogan of “bread, education, freedom” against the military, which had taken power in 1967.

In November 2011, Lucas Papademos’s coalition government—including PASOK, ND and the far-right Popular Orthodox Rally—authorised police entry into a public university, at Thessaloniki, for the first time since 1982.

The abolition of the 1982 law was demanded by the United States. Among the huge haul of diplomatic cables published by WikiLeaks in 2010 was one from Daniel V. Speckhard, the former US ambassador in Athens. Calling for its scrapping, Speckhard described the law as “nothing more than a legal cover for hoodlums to wreak destruction with impunity”.

Syriza is duplicitous. Its 36 deputies voted against the new university legislation, but its new leader, Stefanos Kasselakis—a former trader at Goldman Sachs in the US as well as the owner of several shipping companies—has been a long-time advocate of private universities operating in Greece.

Kasselakis wrote a series of anti-working-class screeds for the right-wing Greek-American National Herald newspaper between 2007 and 2015. In 2007, he expressed support for the attempts of Karamanlis to establish private universities. These proposals were also shelved in the face of massive student opposition.

Stefanos Kasselakis, newly elected leader of main opposition party Syriza, speaks to supporters outside the party's headquarters in Athens, Greece, September 25, 2023. [AP Photo/Yorgos Karahalis]

Attacking PASOK for opposing the measures after having initially supported them, Kasselakis wrote, “If [PASOK] had the political courage to support the change, with which [it] initially agreed, students would still have been beaten up by the riot police, but at least the state of education would have been radically challenged and would have changed.”