Potentially Earth-like planet found in habitable zone of nearest star

Don Barrett

A team of 31 astronomers from 13 institutions around the globe have announced the discovery of a planet slightly more massive than Earth orbiting in the habitable zone of the nearest star to our Solar System. The results were published in Nature on 25 August.

The planet, Proxima b, was discovered by ground-based observations using what is known as the radial velocity method. This method takes advantage of the fact that starlight is a composite of a whole spectrum of colors and that the gravitational tug of a planet on a parent star produces distinct fingerprints in the emitted light that can be observed from Earth. Essentially, one can watch how the motion of a star is influenced by an orbiting planet.

Proxima Centauri in the sky of the Southern hemisphere. Credit: European Southern Observatory

This method is different from how the Kepler spacecraft discovers exoplanets, which instead looks at periodic drops in the intensity of light coming from a star to infer the existence of a planet, which passes between the star and the observer in its orbit, blocking some of the light. However, the two techniques are complementary. While Kepler indicates roughly an exoplanet’s size, a study of the changing spectrum of a star tells us the lower limit of an exoplanet’s mass.

As a result of this, the astronomers calculated that Proxima b is at least 1.3 times the Earth’s mass, though we have no knowledge yet of its size, its composition or the nature of its atmosphere (if any). Our limited knowledge of solar systems suggests that such a planet would be of rocky composition and retain some sort of atmosphere.

What makes this system most unlike the Earth and Sun is the parent star. Proxima Centauri is a star only 12 percent the mass of the Sun, a “red dwarf”, and this low mass is reflected in vastly different physical characteristics. The star is about 12 percent the Sun’s size, half its temperature and a fraction of its brightness. Despite the fact that it is the nearest star to our Solar System, Proxima Centauri is 100 times too faint to see with the naked eye.

Since Proxima Centauri is so dim, its habitable zone, the orbit where liquid water could exist on a planet’s surface, is much closer to the star than the Sun’s. Proxima b, which orbits its star at 5 percent the distance between the Earth and Sun, about 4.6 million miles, falls within that zone. It receives about 60 percent of the radiation that Earth does.

Such a close world would find its rotation locked to its orbit over a timescale short compared to the life of the system—just as Mercury is locked to our Sun and the Moon to the Earth. Depending on the nature of the lock, it could be that only one hemisphere is illuminated, the other remaining in perpetual darkness, just as the Moon shows only one face to the Earth.

A comparison of the Proxima Centauri system to our own Solar System. Credit: European Southern Observatory

Another possibility is that the orbit and rotation are intertwined such that the same face of the planet is aligned to the star during the planet’s closest approach. This would mean that if liquid water exists, it may occur only near the Equator or towards the center of a perpetually sunlit hemisphere.

The close orbit produces another challenge to potential habitability: while the star, even so near, provides less heat than the Sun, it can irradiate the planet’s surface irregularly with ultraviolet and x-ray bursts 400 times that delivered by the Sun to Earth. The impact on the planet’s atmosphere over the long term is unknown.

If human beings set foot on Proxima b, they will find the view of the sky considerably different from that on Earth. Proxima would appear three times the Sun’s size in the sky. The nearby binary components of Alpha Centauri A and B would outshine our own Venus by a factor of 10, and appear to the eye as a barely resolvable star-like pair. Other stars would be invisible from the star-lit side of the planet.

The discovery of Proxima b comes 21 years after the first detection of a planet around another ordinary star. In that time, over 3,500 such planets have been found. Nearly 1 billion stars have now been cataloged, but detection of the smaller, lighter and immensely fainter planets around them represents a considerable technical challenge. This is true for all methods of finding exoplanets.

The nearness of Proxima b means it stands as a sterling target for further inquiry toward an understanding of Earth-like worlds. It has also ignited the imagination of millions of people around the world as they wonder at a planet potentially like Earth that is, with some esoteric but feasible ideas for space travel, not so far away.

Labour Party makes empty promises to New Zealand students

Tom Peters & Chris Ross

New Zealand Labour Party leader Andrew Little announced on August 10 that a Labour-led government would consider partly writing off student loan debt for tertiary graduates who fill certain public service jobs, such as teaching in areas outside the main cities.

Little told Victoria University of Wellington student radio station Salient FM that Labour had no “particular promise to make” but was “looking at ways we can assist students to effectively write-off at least a part of that student debt.” The country’s regions had difficulty recruiting graduates, he said, “so it’s about matching solutions to those particular problems.”

Little’s announcement follows Labour’s pledge in January to eventually offer three years of free university or polytech courses or trade apprenticeships. In February, Little described student debt as a “burden strangling the future of our young people” and harming the economy.

Labour, however, shares the National Party government’s austerity agenda. It agrees that working people must bear the cost of the continuing economic crisis that began in 2008. This has included thousands of public sector job cuts, attacks on welfare recipients, an increase in the regressive Goods and Services Tax, and underfunding of health and education.

Even if implemented, both Labour’s tertiary education proposals are limited. They would do virtually nothing to reduce student debt, which this year reached a total of around $15 billion owed by 728,000 people, more than one in five adults. The average loan balance is $20,371, up from $14,246 in 2004. For many, tuition debt is preventing access to a home loan or starting a family.

None of the 180,000 current students would be eligible for Labour’s “free” education policy. The policy would only be fully implemented in nine years’ time and apply to people who have not studied previously. Many who qualify would still have to borrow for living costs, which make up a large part of student debt. Those studying courses longer than three years, such as medicine and law, and all postgraduate courses, would still pay fees.

Labour’s suggestion that it would “wipe” some student debt for graduates who take public sector jobs outside the main cities would, at best, assist a tiny handful of graduates. Little refused to say how many people would benefit, telling Radio LIVE, “specific numbers are going to depend on what we think we can afford.”

A similar “voluntary bonding” scheme introduced by National in 2009 offered payments of $3,500 per year, for up to five years, for graduates who took medical, teaching or veterinary jobs in hard-to-staff areas. As of this February, only 1,099 healthcare workers and 620 teachers had received payments through the scheme.

There are few well-paid, secure jobs in regional towns, which have been decimated by factory and sawmill closures, ballooning farm debt and the shutdown of industries such as coal mining. According to the 2013 census, Gisborne, Wairoa, Rotorua, Ruapehu, Whanganui, the West Coast, Northland and Kawerau all have declining populations. While Little claims to want to attract new teachers to regional areas, the 1999–2008 Labour government closed more than 200 schools, mainly in rural communities.

The Green Party hailed Little’s proposal, with co-leader Metiria Turei telling Fairfax Media it would reduce graduates’ debt and “grow jobs in the regions.” The Greens hope to become a coalition partner in a future Labour-led government. Over the past decade, the party has ceased to campaign for free tertiary education, as it has shifted ever further to the right.

Notably absent from Little’s comments to the media was any acknowledgement of Labour’s responsibility for the present situation. The 1984–1990 Lange-Douglas Labour government carried out a free market restructuring of the economy, resulting in an endless onslaught on public education. In 1989, Labour shifted public education onto a market basis with the imposition of the first fees.

Under successive governments, funding cuts have forced university administrations to raise fees and seek business sponsorship. In 1991, the National Party government introduced the student loan system and allowed tertiary institutions to set their own level of fees. This saw fees rise by an average 13 percent during the 1990s, while government funding fell from nearly three-quarters of operating revenue to 50 percent.

Students and young people should recall the record of the 1999–2008 Labour government of Helen Clark. Before the 1999 election, Labour promised to increase the affordability of tertiary education. Once in office, it kept the student loan system intact. In 2000, when total student loan indebtedness was $3 billion, students protested against the Labour government’s broken promises and demanded free education. Labour introduced interest-free student loans in a cynical election ploy in 2005, but this policy did not stop debt from increasing. By 2008, total debt had reached $10 billion.

The National Party government has carried out further attacks, including cuts to student allowances, which are available only to a small number of students. It has increased the loan repayment rate from 10 to 12 percent of a graduate’s income, and imposed restrictions on how much students can borrow.

Most students are living in poverty. A recent Child Poverty Action Group report said the average student rent in Auckland was $218 a week in 2014. The maximum student allowance is $210 and the maximum someone can borrow for living costs is $176. Many students live in substandard or overcrowded conditions. The number suffering from mental health problems soared between 2009 and 2014, with universities reporting a 24 percent increase in the demand for counselling.

The government passed draconian legislation in 2014 allowing police to arrest people who defaulted on student loan repayments. More than 110,000 borrowers live overseas, and almost 70 percent have defaulted, so they could be detained if they return to New Zealand. So far, two people have been arrested at the border. Labour voted against the legislation but has not opposed the arrests.

Labour and National are both parties of big business. If Labour returns to office it will deepen the attacks on students and on the living standards of the working class as a whole. The struggle for the right to free public education for all must be guided by a socialist perspective, based on meeting the social needs of the majority, not the private profit interests of the wealthy elite.

Government of Finland imposes further austerity

Ellis Wynne

Finland’s trade unions are fully signed up for major attacks being implemented by the government and corporations.

In June, the general council of the Finnish Metal Workers’ Union voted by 32 to 24 to accept the right-wing coalition government’s Competitiveness Pact.

The union, with over 140,000 members, is the largest in the private sector and the last to sign up to the agreement—the other unions having formally agreed in March.

This enabled the Centre Party-led government of Prime Minister Juha Sipilä, to announce on June 14 that the “social partners” (trade unions and employers) had signed the Competitiveness Pact.

The Centre Party rules in coalition with the conservative National Coalition Party and right-wing populist Finns Party.

The pact covers 86.5 percent of Finnish wage and salary earners. Behind the pact is the need of Finland’s capitalists to “restore competitiveness,” as Sipilä stated in his New Year message. The economy, he said, had been in a “seven-year decline” and the “labour market is inflexible and has not been able to adjust as we promised when we joined the euro.” The Competitiveness Pact is central to the coalition’s aim to close a “10 billion euro sustainability gap,” he added.

To this end, the government proposed a new “social contract,” entailing the abolition of two paid public holidays, the cutting of sick pay entitlement, the slashing of public services and social programmes across the board and the driving down of wages by 5 percent.

First announced in July last year, the contract was originally to be imposed by decree. The government was forced, however, into a series of negotiations with SAK, the central trade union body, in the face of growing hostility of the working class. This was seen in last September’s strike by Post Office workers that received wide public support.

The basic objection of the trade union bureaucracy to the pact was its compulsory character and their lack of involvement in policing the working class.

Once at the negotiating table they proceeded, with a pose of reluctance, to agree to a yearlong wage freeze, increased deductions from employees for pensions and sickness benefits, with a corresponding decrease in employers’ contributions and a 30 percent cut in holiday pay for public employees for the period 2017-2020. Workers will also have to work an additional 24 hours a year with no extra pay.

The Centre Party now intends to press ahead with the abolition of the premium for Sunday working.

Laury Lyly, the then head of the SAK union bureaucracy, said of the deal’s consequences: “A business with a staff of sixty employees will be in a position to hire the work input of three employees with no extra labour costs at all. Two of these employees’ positions will be made available by reduced employer contributions while one will be a consequence of longer working hours.”

Although both big business and the press urge measures to increase productivity and cut social spending, these circles are not satisfied that the Pact goes far enough in attacking the working class.

Yle, the state broadcasting service, reported July 4, “The hard-fought deal, which was the centre piece for Prime Minister Juha Sipilä’s plan to get the economy growing again, saw unions agree to cuts to pay and benefits in return for the government withholding 1.5 billion euros worth of austerity measures.

“However a survey of finance directors carried out by the consultancy Rainmaker has found that the majority believe that the hard-fought deal will have only a modest effect on the competitiveness of their own business.”

Blunter still were the responses recorded in the Helsinki Times July 15. Kristiina Helenius, chief executive of Amcham Finland, a network promoting Finnish business, opined “….reforms are being implemented very very slowly... Finland not only has a competitiveness problem but also a competitive drive problem… Europe is like an elderly home looking from the United States. Lying around in a safety net is a disincentive for entrepreneurship.”

The trepidation in Finnish business circles is backed up by the response of the international credit rating agencies. In early June, Moody’s Investor Service downgraded Finland’s debt rating from Aaa to Aa1. Fitch had already downgraded Finland in March and Standard and Poor as far back as 2014.

Central to this lack of confidence is their assessment of developments in the “real economy.” Yle reported last month that Finnish exports were “continuing to slide,” noting, “there has been no growth in monthly exports since a year ago in July 2015.”

In July, Statistics Finland published figures showing that the values of orders in manufacturing had declined 0.1 percent year on year in May, while industrial output had increased by roughly 1 percent from the previous year but had declined a half percent since May. Finnish Customs meanwhile published preliminary data indicating a fall of 7 percent in the value of goods exported from Finland to 4.3 billion euros in May.

The Finnish ruling elite is seeking to impose harsh austerity measures. In April, Alexander Stubb, then Finance Minister and leader of the National Coalition Party, notorious for his role in insisting on the forcing of austerity measures upon the Greek working class, defended the government’s record before the European Commission.

Yle reported that he pointed “to progress in wide ranging reforms and positive signs in recent budget deficit figures.”

The following month Stubb confronted criticism from within his own party that the government had not shown itself ambitious enough in attacking wages and working hours by responding, “The measures we would have liked to utilise may have brought us farther than the social contract but it is still a step in the right direction.”

This prospect proved insufficient for the National Coalition Party. Stubb was challenged for the leadership by Petteri Orpo, the Interior Minister, who won in the ballot on June 11. On becoming leader of the National Coalition Party, Orpo took over as Finance Minister.

The party (also known as the Conservatives), has shifted even further right, proposing, among other things, that the upper retirement age be removed, that working pensioners be allowed to work outside collective labour agreements, that the double rate Sunday pay premium be abolished and that companies be allowed to make their own agreements with staff.

These proposals are not yet approved by the other coalition partners.

The True Finns, the anti-immigrant nationalist party whose leader Timo Soini is Foreign Minister, has called for Finland to leave the European Union (EU). Soini came under fire for visiting Britain for talks after June’s Brexit referendum vote to leave the EU. Soini visited not as a government representative but as chairman of the True Finns.

The leader of the party’s youth wing, Sebastian Tykkynen, organised a petition after the UK’s vote to leave the EU, for a referendum in Finland. By the middle of last month it had some 27,000 signatures.

Adopting a populist stance, the party opposes the abolition of double time pay on Sundays and opposes other austerity measures being proposed by Finnish capital. The party represents those sections of the ruling elite that believe that a return to the markka would ease the pressures on Finnish capitalism.

The government agenda to escalate its assault on the working class takes place amid rising discontent at growing levels of social inequality in Finland.

Last week President Sauli Niinistö drew attention to a new report, “Who Has Had Their Fill?” by the e2 think tank. The study found that 74 percent of Finns estimate that the preconditions for leading a good life have deteriorated. The Helsinki Times said the report found that discontent is increasing among low-paid workers who are “especially displeased with the status quo, while high-income earners, managerial staff members and people with higher education qualifications do not share the concerns and discontent of the rest of the public.” Another finding is that, more than four in five, or 82 percent, of the public consider inequality a threat to social stability.

Niinistö warned, “When those in society who view themselves as having lost out are roused, the consequences can be difficult to predict.”

London landlords renting out dangerous "floating shacks"

Allison Smith

The high cost of living in London is driving a record number of people to turn to renting riverboats. Since 2012, applications for continuous cruiser licenses, which cost around £1,000 per year and require users to move every 14 days, have increased 153 percent, leading to overcrowded conditions on some parts of the London waterways.

In an interview for CNN, long-time riverboat resident David Akinsanya said, “People do it now because they have to, not because they want to. We had a very lovely existence—it was like our secret. But over the past five years it has gone absolutely crazy. When I come into London I can’t stop because there are so many boats.”

Many of these new boaters are facing exploitation from unscrupulous riverboat landlords and are forced to rent dangerous and unfit boats.

Former boater Sam Forbes—who chronicled the harrowing experience of being evicted from his riverboat when a safety inspector found “significant faults … which put the occupants at risk and in immediate danger”—commented that many boats were merely “floating shacks ... without running water, central heating or adequate sanitation facilities.”

Canals are only monitored periodically, and it is not possible to know the full extent of the problem of unfit riverboats.

London’s Admiralty Arch flat for sale for staggering £150 million

Last month, a flat in the Grade I public landmark Admiralty Arch was listed for sale at a record £150 million—£10 million more than the previous record of £140 million for One Hyde Park.

The 1912 public landmark was commissioned by King Edward VII—in honour of his mother Queen Victoria—as a ceremonial route to Trafalgar Square. It once served as the residence of the First Sea Lord and other Admiralty offices.

In 2012, the British government sold a 250-year lease to the historic site to Spanish property speculator Rafael Serrano, who developed it into a 12-bedroom flat, luxury hotel with spa, and private club. Sale of the flat includes access to private parking, a private entrance and dedicated elevator, 24-hour concierge service, and a lifetime membership to the private club.

London School of Economics evicts student suffering acute mental illness

Academic leadership at the elite London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) evicted a student suffering from acute mental illness, leaving the student homeless in London.

After the student interrupted studies and went into hospital to address health issues, the student was notified by the LSE that he/she was no longer considered a student for the 2015/16 academic year and had one week to vacate the hall of residence.

Ayesha Fekaki, LSE’s Student Union Community & Welfare Officer, and two National Health Service doctors intervened on behalf of the student to stop the eviction. Many students were appalled, with more than 1,000 signing an online petition in protest.

However, the LSE only granted a two-week extension, which was inadequate because the student could not return home and did not have anywhere to go upon release from hospital.

The student’s current status is unknown.

Commenting on the draconian response by the LSE, Fekaki said, “I had contacted seven different people within the school who all referred me to each other for an answer over the two week period. How can students be put through this when they are reaching out for support? When speaking with Residential Life [the body which helps students with accommodation issues], we were told that they need to support other students who are actually staying at LSE and well enough to do their exams and that they cannot support everyone. The staff member expressed directly to the student that they want to ‘see a healthy student come back in the New Year and finish their exams like all other students do at LSE’”.

Fekaki added, “This to me was not only a huge contradiction, but a complete lack of understanding of mental health difficulties that students experience. This was a complete failing both institutionally and personally to the detriment of the student.”

Rents likely to rise due to London’s night Tube

Twenty-five percent of Association of Residential Letting Agents (ARLC) said they expect rent increases near London Underground stations that are connected to the 24-Tube hour service.

ARLC spokesperson Nic Mada said, “Transport links are a major player in influencing demand, and in turn rent costs, so as end-of-the-line areas become better connected, there’s a chance we’ll see prices rise. It will mean less time spent on late night buses for those living in Epping or Walthamstow, and will make the prospect of living further out of London more attractive for renters—especially as rent costs continue to rise in the centre.”

Housing and high cost of living force most emergency service workers to live outside capital

A report by the London Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI) draws attention to the fact that of 54 percent of frontline fire-fighting, paramedic staff and police now live outside London and have to commute into the capital.

The report, “Living on the Edge: Housing London’s Blue Light Emergency Services,” found that 54 percent of those deemed “Blue Light” commute in mainly due to high housing costs in London. The LCCI took evidence on how NHS workers’ earning had risen by just 3 or 4 percent, compared to an increase in travel costs of 35 percent and housing costs of a third.

It reports, “London consistently features among the top of global cost of living reports, with consumer prices considerably higher than elsewhere in the country, and public transport fares ranking among the highest in the world,” before noting, “However, it is the cost of housing that has been the primary pressure point on Londoners, pushing many to move out of the capital in recent years.”

It cites a previous LCCI report, “Getting our House in Order,” that found “London’s chronic under supply of homes had resulted in house prices—as well as rent levels—greatly outstripping average wage increases so making living in London unaffordable for many.”

The staggering cost of accommodation is cited by the LCCI who note, “Average house prices in London are more than five times their level in 1970, even adjusting for inflation. In 2015, the average house price in London was £515,000, compared to £292,000 across England. Over 2014/15, the average private sector rent for a one-bedroom dwelling in London was £1,200 per month, around twice the level of surrounding regions, while the average two-bedroom rent was £1,450, compared to less than £600 across England as a whole.”

The report raises concerns that the situation poses serious issues about how about responses to major incidents in the capital can be planned and dealt with.

Small businesses hit as employees increasingly unable to afford London rents

The Federation of Small Business (FBS) in London says that this year the number one concern among its members is the high cost of living for employees, which is leading to increasing staff turnover.

It stated that the increase in the minimum wage to £7.20 an hour for people over 25 isn’t nearly enough, as employees are experiencing rent increases of 200 to 300 percent in London and asking employers for salary increases of 10 percent just to stay afloat.

Sue Terpilowski, London policy chair for the Federation of Small Businesses, says, “Staff are now much more transient because they’re Generation Rent. They don’t have the same loyalty and hold to an area via a mortgage, so they tend to come to London, do their London thing for a couple of years then move out.”

UK home ownership at lowest level since 1986

A new report by the Resolution Foundation think tank reveals that the skyrocketing cost of homes across most of Britain has led to a decrease in home ownership to levels not seen since 1986.

The report finds that between 1995 and 2003 house prices and incomes across the UK grew at a similar rate, leading to the 2003 home ownership peak of around 71 percent. However, since 2012, incomes and government benefit payments have decreased while home prices have soared, leading to a decrease of the home ownership rate to as low as 58 percent in areas such as outer London and Greater Manchester.

The report states, “It is wrong to see housing as a living standards challenge only in the South of England. Indeed, we see the North and South converging on some, if not all, affordability measures, with households in parts of the North now having a housing cost to income ratio approaching that witnessed in London two decades ago.”

Young people and private renters are the most vulnerable because they “consistently spend a higher proportion of their incomes on housing than any other tenure group, with significant implications for both their immediate living standards and longer term prospects.”

Polish PiS government encourages anti-Semitism

Clara Weiss

The Polish government in Warsaw is calling for a revision of history aimed at downplaying Poland’s involvement in anti-Semitic crimes. The centrepiece of the right-wing conservative government’s campaign is the pogrom in Jedwabne, a village in the northeast of Poland. There, in the summer of 1941, Polish anti-Semites killed more than 350 Jews with the agreement of German occupying forces.

Education minister Anna Zalewska asserted in a television interview she was not clear who was responsible for the pogrom in Jedwabne, as well as the pogrom in Kielce in the summer of 1946. Shortly before, Jarosław Szarek, the new director of the Institute for National Memory, which is under government control, denied the responsibility of Polish nationalists for the Jedwabne pogrom.

Soon afterwards, right-wing Lublin-based historian Ewa Kurek announced plans to collect signatures over the summer for a petition calling for the exhumation of the remains of the victims of the Jedwabne pogrom. The mayor of Jedwabne, Michael Chajewski, backed the exhumations, telling theGazeta Wyborcza, “Yes, I would do that. It is necessary to clarify how many were killed and by whom, in order to overcome doubts.”

The exhumation of the victims’ remains was already ordered in 2001 under the presidency of Lech Kaczynski. But it was never implemented, above all due to worldwide protests. The Jewish religion prohibits exhumations, which are considered to be a desecration of the dead. Representatives of Jewish organisations in Poland and internationally repeatedly spoke out against the exhumations.

Prior to the Second World War, the Jewish community in Poland was the largest in Europe, numbering 3.5 million. In virtually every Polish city, the Jewish population amounted to between 30 and 50 percent of the total, and in some even more. In the country as a whole, which was still dominated by agricultural production, the Jewish community amounted to 10 percent of the entire population.

During the Second World War, the Nazis turned occupied Poland into the main location for the extermination of European Jewry. All six concentration camps (Auschwitz, Treblinka, Chełmno, Sobibór, Majdanek and Bełżec) were located on current Polish territory. Only around 350,000 Polish Jews survived the war, most of them in the Soviet Union. At least 1.5 million Jews from other European countries were transported to camps in Poland and murdered there.

Polish anti-Semites also carried out pogroms against the Jewish population prior to, during and after the war. The Jedwabne pogrom, which occurred soon after the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, is the most well known of these. In 2000, the Polish-American sociologist Jan Tomasz Gross published a book on the pogrom titled “Neighbours,” unleashing the most wide-ranging debate on historical and political questions since 1989.

Gross played an important role in the student protests of March 1968 in Poland and then emigrated in 1969 with his family as a result of the Stalinist regime’s anti-Semitic campaign. In his book, he utilised generalisations and an ahistorical method recalling that employed by Daniel Goldhagen in his book Hitler’s Willing Executioners. Like Goldhagen, Gross, whose writings are riddled with anti-communism, opposes a class analysis of fascism and anti-Semitism. Instead, he makes use of national abstractions and declares “the Poles as a nation” to be “perpetrators.”

By contrast, he says nothing about the history of the Polish workers’ movement, which in the 1930s led a struggle against the anti-Semitism of the government and extreme right-wing forces. Gross paid just as little attention to the crimes of Stalinism, which made possible Hitler’s victory in Germany, beheaded the socialist movement in the 1930s and prepared the way for the Second World War with the Stalin-Hitler pact.

However, in contrast to the claims of the Polish government, there is no historical doubt about the responsibility of Polish anti-Semites for the Jedwabne and Kielce pogroms. A comprehensive investigation by the Institute of National Memory (IPN), which was commissioned by the government in the wake of the publication of Gross’s book, came to the conclusion that at least 340 Jews were killed in the summer of 1941, broadly agreeing with Gross’s figures.

Many victims were burnt alive in the village’s church. Research by historian Anna Bykont confirmed the findings by the IPN and Gross. According to Bykont, the pogrom was carried out by nationalist elites in the village.

The memorial for the victims of the Jedwabne pogrom

With over 40 fatalities, the Kielce pogrom of July 1946 was the worst of a series of attacks and bombings that killed more than 200 Holocaust survivors between 1945 and 1948. The pogrom was covered up by the Catholic Church as well as the Polish Nationalist Armija Krajowa (Home Army), which was waging a guerrilla war against the Stalinist government and its troops at the time, and deliberately stoking the spectre of a “Żydokomuna” (Jewish commune).

Confronted with this anti-Semitic violence, 150,000 of 250,000 Holocaust survivors who had returned to Poland after 1945, left the country by 1948. In the 1950s, and particularly in response to the student protests of 1968, the Stalinist regime conducted a series of anti-Semitic campaigns that forced tens of thousands more to emigrate. According to various estimates, between 5,000 and 25,000 Jews live in Poland today. (Some estimates, which include fully assimilated descendants of Jews, put the figure at 100,000).

In response to the education minister’s comments, several teachers wrote an open letter to the education ministry that has been signed by 1,300 teachers to date. In it, they resist “the manipulation of Poland’s recent history.” In Polish schools, neither the Holocaust nor Polish anti-Semitism are compulsory subjects, but a growing number of teachers are attending training courses at their own expense to be able to teach the subject.

Shortly thereafter, dozens of renowned researchers on Polish-Jewish relations at universities in the US, Israel and France published a letter opposing the comments of the Polish education minister.

The Law and Justice Party (PiS) government is directly appealing to the far right with its actions. The denial of the responsibility of Polish nationalists for anti-Semitic pogroms has been a key plank of extreme right-wing ideology for decades. A major campaign of agitation against Gross has been waged in Poland for years with unmistakable anti-Semitic undertones.

The Polish attorney general filed a lawsuit against Gross last autumn for “insulting the honour of the Polish people.” The right-wing Gazeta Warszawska, Zakazana Historia published an anti-Semitic caricature and a vile article agitating against Gross. The radical right-wing “Fortress for Poland’s good reputation–Polish anti-defamation League” backed the campaign with petitions against Gross.

The campaign is pursuing the goal of suppressing all historical research which contradicts the nationalist falsification of history. This is in keeping with the anti-communist law from earlier this year, which criminalises “communist propaganda” and requires the removal of all symbols associated with the socialist workers’ movement and the Polish People’s Republic (PRL) from public spaces.

Like the right-wing Polish nationalists in the 20th century, the PiS government combines anti-communism with anti-Semitism. Since the Russian revolutions of 1905 and 1917, the anti-Semitic spectre of the “Jewish commune” has been a central component of Polish nationalist ideology and of a large section of the bourgeoisie.

In the face of the economic crisis, the Polish government encouraged right-wing tendencies in the 1930s, which carried out pogroms on Jews, organised economic boycotts of Jewish businesses and drove Jews out of the universities. From 1936, the elimination of the Jews from Polish economic life and the “Polandisation” of major cities were official policies of the government, which collaborated closely with fascist groups and drew inspiration from the suppression of Jews in neighbouring Nazi Germany.

In 1937, Polish justice minister Witold Grabowski travelled to Germany to discuss with senior Nazis the adoption of the Nuremberg race laws in Poland. This was not firmly pursued, but between 1935 and 1939, the Polish government implemented several anti-Jewish laws, which dramatically worsened the economic and political position of Polish Jews.

Several professional associations, above all doctors, lawyers and traders, imposed bans to exclude Jews from their professions. De facto ghetto benches and a numerical limit were enforced for Jewish students at universities. Between 1936 and 1938, clashes took place almost daily between right-wing students and Jews or socialists. In some cities, especially Lvov (today Lviv and part of Ukraine), numerous Jewish students were murdered on campus.

Bloody street battles occurred in many villages and towns between fascist bands and armed self-defence groups for Jewish and Polish workers’ parties in the years prior to the German occupation of Poland in September 1939. The government gave free rein to the right-wing Endecja group led by Roman Dmowski, which carried out numerous pogroms.

Although the Nazis persecuted the Polish right wing during the war and drove the nationalists into the resistance movement, some of them supported the Nazis’ “final solution” of the “Jewish problem.” The pogroms by Polish nationalists during the Second World War, above all in rural areas, took place in this context.

Education minister Anna Zalewska is not the only government representative to dispute the responsibility of Polish nationalists for the pogroms in Jedwabne and Kielce. Current defence minister Antoni Macierewicz edited the radical right-wing newspaper Głos (the Voice) in the 1990s, where he published several anti-Semitic articles himself and denied the Jedwabne and Kielce pogroms. Macierewicz declared in an interview in the early 2000s that the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” an anti-Semitic pamphlet, was in essence correct.

The encouragement of anti-Semitism is part of the preparations for war against Russia and the militarisation of society, through which far-right forces are being systematically mobilised and integrated into the state. Macierewicz personifies this policy. As a notorious anti-communist and anti-Semite, he is also among one of the sharpest critics of Russia. At the recent NATO summit, he shook hands with US President Barack Obama and other heads of Western governments who agreed to the demands of the PiS government for the stationing of NATO troops in eastern Poland.

French woman arrested, fined for wearing Muslim headscarf on Cannes beach

Anthony Torres

In a fundamental attack on freedom of religion, a French Muslim woman was detained and fined by police solely because she was wearing a Muslim headscarf. Siam, a former flight attendant from Toulouse who was vacationing with her family in Cannes, was on the beach when police received a call criticizing the “ostentatious” character of her headscarf.

Mathilde Cusin, a France4 journalist who was on the same beach, told the story to NouvelObs: “I saw three policemen who were watching the beach. Two of them had their fingers on the trigger of their tear gas grenades, probably pepper spray. Then I saw them cross the beach, moving towards a veiled woman who was just wearing a headscarf on her hair.” Though it is legal to wear a headscarf in France, local police demanded that the young woman leave the beach, citing a recent ordinance against the burkini body-covering swimsuit.

Siam told NouvelObs, “[A policewoman] said, ‘Are you aware that there is an ordinance in the city of Cannes?’ I said no, that I did not know exactly what this was all about, that I had not followed the controversy.’” The confrontation with police mounted, and according to Siam, “My children were crying, they witnessed my humiliation, together with my family. … I myself was unable to stop myself from crying. They were humiliating us.”

A hostile crowd, that Cusin described as “pretty violent,” gathered around Siam, who recounted later that “Racist speech has been totally liberated. I was stunned. I heard things that no one has ever said to my face, like, ‘Leave and go home!’ or ‘Ma’am, the law is the law, we are tired of your trouble-making’ or ‘Here we are all Catholics!’”

Siam’s family and their friends asked, “If you are targeting ostentatious religious signs, as you say, why are you not looking for crosses?” and the police replied: “We will not hunt for crosses. Go on the road, ma’am, we have asked you to leave the beach.’”

Siam concluded that it is her practice of Islam that was the issue, as police implied by telling her, “You will understand that in the current climate, we have to write you up.”

Siam later concluded, “Because people who have nothing to do with my religion kill people, I no longer have the right to go to the beach! Because they commit terrorist attacks, I am deprived of my rights. We are in France, I have the right to go where I want! It’s scandalous … Today, we are not allowed on the beach. Tomorrow, on the street? The day after tomorrow, will we be banned from practising our religion at home? In the land of the Rights of Man, I see no trace of liberty, equality, or fraternity. I am revolted that this can have happened in France.”

Siam was later forced to leave Cannes, NouvelObs reported: “The person who was hosting them in Cannes was ‘uneasy,’ and asked them not to prolong their stay in Cannes as planned, a bit because of the ‘shame’ of the scandal, too.”

Siam complained to the Collective against Islamophobia in France in order to publicize the event. She declared, “I concluded that we cannot let this go in our country. On top of it all, I am not an immigrant. My parents are French, my grandparents are French … When people tell me ‘Leave and go home,’ I just have to laugh, it’s really hard-core racism.”

The persecution of Siam is the product of the burkini bans imposed by several right-wing and PS mayors after far-right protests in Corsica over a brawl between locals and a Muslim family, one of whose members was wearing a burkini. The mayors decreed ordinances banning the burkini amid a hysterical campaign in French media denouncing the body-covering swimwear.

The general director for public services in the city of Cannes, Thierry Migoule, told AFP: “We are not banning the wearing of religious signs on the beach, but ostentatious outfits that refer to an allegiance to terrorist movements that are at war with us.”

Under cover of the “war on terror” and a so-called defense of secularism and women’s rights, the French state is carrying out unprecedented and drastic attacks on the Muslim population. Such statements, like the police’s decision to write up Siam, amount to an attempt to criminalize the practice of Islam. The clear implication of Migoule’s statement is that a Muslim woman, simply because she is wearing a headscarf as a visible sign of her religious faith, can be treated as a supporter of Islamist terrorism.

This is a repugnant political lie. In fact, the terror attacks in France are above all the product of the foreign policy of the NATO alliance, including the French state, in the Middle East.

Paris and the other NATO capitals back Islamist militias fighting the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, falsely claiming that they represent a popular, democratic uprising against Assad. Today, the same terrorist methods are used in France by Islamist forces trained in Syria, who have exploited the protection that they enjoy from the security services, as instruments of French foreign policy, as cover to organize attacks on European soil.

These terrorist attacks, which always involve individuals known to and watched by the state, are then exploited to shred democratic rights and impose the state of emergency in France.

A few days after Siam was written up, the Council of State issued a ruling suspending the mayors’ decision to ban the burkini on public beaches. Remarkably, the mayors and Prime Minister Manuel Valls publicly defied the ruling, insisting that they are determined to step up their hysterical anti-Muslim campaign.

According to Valls, “The ruling of the Council of State does not settle the debate.” He added that “remaining silent, as in the past, is a little betrayal. It’s one more capitulation.”

Such comments are a warning to the working class. President François Hollande’s decision to impose a state of emergency and his proposal to inscribe the principle of deprivation of nationality in the constitution—legitimizing a measure that allowed the Nazi-collaborationist Vichy regime to launch the Holocaust of the Jews in France—was neither an accident nor an anti-terrorist measure. It corresponded to a deep crisis of French democracy, amid the escalation of war and social opposition, notably against the PS’ reactionary labor law scrapping workers’ social rights.

In the French ruling elite, powerful forces are debating whether to react to this crisis by establishing an authoritarian regime that would carry out a policy of persecuting entire religious communities, or even of outright ethnic cleansing.

Hollande had to back down earlier this year when he tried to inscribe deprivation of nationality in the constitution; the mood of social opposition among workers and youth was too explosive in the run-up to the protests against the labor law, and the political situation was not ripe for such a policy. Now, with its persecution of veiled women, the ruling class is back on the offensive.

Sarkozy launches French presidential bid based on anti-Muslim hysteria

Kumaran Ira

Last Thursday, former right-wing President Nicolas Sarkozy of the Les R épublicains (LR) party declared his candidacy in November’s LR primary for next year’s presidential election, with calls for unprecedented attacks on Muslims’ basic democratic rights. Sarkozy served as president from 2007 to 2012, when he lost his re-election bid to current Socialist Party (PS) President François Hollande.

With France still under a state of emergency, Sarkozy made proposals whose political character is unmistakable: they would convert Muslims to second-class citizens deprived of basic social and democratic rights. He called for trampling Muslim women’s right to exercise their religious freedom and their democratic right to dress as they please, with plans to ban the veil and burqa in workplaces and universities. This means placing Muslim women before an intolerable choice: they must either give up their religion, or the right to work and obtain an education.

Sarkozy had chosen to issue his appeal from the town of Châteaurenard in southern France, where the neo-fascist Front National (FN) made significant electoral gains in the last regional elections.

Most of Sarkozy’s remarks were taken from his new book, Everything for France, which came out last week. In it, he announces his candidacy and calls for suspending the right for immigrants’ families abroad to join immigrants in France, drastically reducing the number of migrants, imposing harsh conditions for obtaining French nationality, and eliminating state medical aid for migrants.

Speaking at Châteaurenard, Sarkozy called for banning the veil including “in the schools, universities, public services, and in the workplaces.” He charged that such practices threaten French identity, brazenly declaring: “Our identity is threatened if we allow minorities to force upon us a lifestyle which will never be ours.” He added, “I want to be the president that re-establishes the authority of the state on every square centimeter of the Republic.”

Such remarks from a former head of state testify to a staggering disintegration of French bourgeois democracy. It is ever clearer that, amid an escalating economic and military crisis of the capitalist system, the French ruling class’ decades-long strategy of dividing the working class along ethnic lines with appeals to anti-Muslim sentiment is taking on vast new dimensions.

An entire religious community of millions of people, consisting of racial minorities largely drawn from the most oppressed sections of the working class in France, is effectively being accused of treason. The implication of Sarkozy’s remarks is that the simple act of peacefully practising a religion shared by millions of people in France means defying the authority of the state and committing an act of disloyalty to the identity of the French ethnicity.

The resurgence of racist policies underscores the deep crisis of bourgeois rule in Europe amidst rising class tensions. As made clear by the growth of neo-fascist movements across Europe—from the FN in France to the far-right Svoboda party in the NATO puppet regime in Ukraine, or the incorporation of the far-right Independent Greeks into the Syriza government in Athens—the European bourgeoisie is moving towards fascistic methods of rule.

Sarkozy’s proposals to ban Muslim women from jobs and universities recall several of the initial anti-Semitic laws of the Nazi-collaborationist Vichy regime during World War II, when it barred Jews from key professions, like medicine and the public service, and limited their access to university posts. This paved the way for Vichy to ultimately deprive Jews of French citizenship and carry out mass deportations of Jews from France to death camps across Europe.

Then as now, the targeting of entire ethnic and religious groups for persecution by the state was bound up with escalating class tensions and the eruption of imperialist war on a global scale.

Sarkozy’s Châteaurenard speech comes as the French bourgeoisie faces explosive opposition in the working class to the PS’ reactionary labor law, which scraps basic social protections for working people, and a danger of world war unprecedented since World War II. France is deeply implicated in NATO’s ongoing war preparations against Syria in the Middle East and Russia in Europe, and in Washington’s “pivot to Asia” against China.

In this context, Sarkozy pledged in Châteaurenard to introduce the compulsory military service for youth aged 18 who are unemployed or in full-time education. Accusing Hollande of failing to fight terrorism, Sarkozy declared that he would step up the war against terrorism: “In the face of the terrorist threat, I want the French people to feel certain that they are protected, instead of asking themselves why those who should govern react so weakly.”

In fact, if the PS has responded weakly to the rash of terror attacks in France and Belgium, it is because they were carried out by Islamists involved in the NATO wars in the Middle East, who continue to enjoy unofficial protection as tools of French and NATO foreign policy.

Sarkozy himself bears substantial political responsibility for this state of affairs. It was under his presidency that France played a key role in pressing for a NATO war in Libya in 2011, arming and financing Islamist proxy militias to topple Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s regime. Hollande continued this strategy, stoking a war in Syria and supporting Al Qaeda-linked Islamist militias against the Syrian regime of President Bashar al-Assad.

If Sarkozy can re-emerge to launch a presidential bid, after having been one of France’s most unpopular presidents in history, it is above all due to the filthy role of the PS government and its pseudo-left allies. Their policies of austerity, war, and law-and-order hysteria paved the way for the reassertion of ethnic and religious discrimination as a key aspect of French politics.

After last year’s Charlie Hebdo and November 13 terror attacks in Paris, both carried out by Islamists known to European intelligence services, Hollande repeatedly invited FN leader Marine Le Pen to the Elysée presidential palace to establish “national unity” against terrorism.

Hollande seized on the terror attacks to legitimize the FN, while imposing a permanent state of emergency in France. The PS imposed a state of emergency, scrapping basic democratic rights, and advocated inscribing the principle of deprivation of nationality in the French constitution.

After Sarkozy’s speech, Prime Minister Manual Valls postured as an opponent of Sarkozy, denouncing “the brutality of his proposals.” Valls added, “He is following the far right, he is taking the democratic right into its camp, and he is dragging the other candidates in the primaries, including Alain Juppé, in this direction, in this path, and it worries me.”

Valls’ comments reek of hypocrisy, as he himself favors anti-democratic policies and the incitement of anti-Muslim sentiment, supporting calls for a burkini ban. He also played the central role in cracking down in social protests against the PS labor law during the spring and early summer.

More broadly, the entire French political establishment is implicated in the stoking of anti-Muslim sentiment over more than a decade. The right-wing government of President Jacques Chirac imposed a headscarf ban in public schools in 2004, followed by a burqa ban introduced by Sarkozy and the Stalinist French Communist Party (PCF) in 2010.

Pseudo-left groups including Lutte Ouvri è re (Workers Struggle, LO) and the New Anti-capitalist Party (NPA) backed the headscarf and burqa ban, fraudulently claiming it was a “secular” measure aimed to defend women’s rights. While supporting anti-Muslim hatreds, they also supported imperialist wars launched on “humanitarian” grounds, including in Libya and Syria. They bear political responsibility for creating the conditions for Sarkozy to run a far-right campaign calling for unprecedented acts of religious discrimination.

China-India: Beijing's Intransigence over the South China Sea

Prashant Dikshit


History always plays a major role in the sovereignty disputes between nations in the global system. Since the history of the dispute in the South China Sea (SCS) is itself part of the dispute, the initiative by the Philippine regime to seek an arbitration by the Permanent  Court of Arbitration (PCA) at The Hague was logical. This PCA was rightfully constituted under the Annex VII of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). It was expected to consider all claims on a legal framework to address the conflictual condition created by the claims of the regime in the Peoples Republic of China (PRC). But its July 2016 award ruled against the PRC's maritime claims. Importantly the “fact of history” in the latter's claims were outright rejected. The PRC chose “not only” to not acknowledge the legitimacy of this award but rejected it and claimed that any resolution of the dispute should be through bilateral negotiations between claimants. Analysts are viewing this attitude as that of “strong arming” the claimants into submission.

The vastness and gross intermingling of interests of several key players in the SCS exacerbates the situation with PRC on one side and Brunei, Taiwan, Vietnam, Malaysia and the Philippines on the other.  It is not merely about the Spratly and Paracels Islands as was largely understood. There are several disputes involving both island and maritime claims of these Southeast Asian countries, each of which is linked with a different collection of countries; but at the heart of this dispute is the Nine Dash Line area claimed by the PRC, which covers most of the SCS and aggressively overlaps Exclusive Economic Zones of the abovementioned countries. The Chinese rhetoric smells of enforcement of maritime control of tracts of the sea they claim. Throughout the period of deliberation by the PCA, the PRC inflicted a continuous barrage of media harangue against the process whilst publicly abstaining from participation.

However, all sea faring nations, including India, would want the SCS to remain as international waters, with the US conducting operations quite evidently in the conceptual edifice of the “Freedom of Navigation in the International Waters” as spelt in the UNCLOS, notwithstanding that Washington is not a signatory to this protocol.

Several postures emanating from the PRC clearly and deliberately aim at interfering with Indian interests in the affected region. There is a report of INS Airavat, an Indian Naval Ship, whilst on a friendly visit to Vietnam, having been told that the Indian ship was entering Chinese waters. This incident occurred on 22 July 2011 when the Indian ship was about 80 kilometers from the Vietnam's coast when it was communicated with by a source that “identified” itself as the Chinese Navy. Although there was no confrontation faced by the naval vessel, the communication clearly conveyed an obstruction to the “Freedom of Navigation and right of passage in international waters.”

A little over a month later, in September 2011, after the PRC and Vietnam signed an agreement with a view to contain the dispute over the SCS, India’s state-owned foreign oil exploration arm, “ONGC Videsh Limited” signed a three year agreement with the Vietnamese “Petro Vietnam” for exploring some segments in the SCS. This legitimate deal elicited a rather ominous response from the PRC when a member of their foreign ministry tersely broadcast that “China enjoys indisputable sovereignty over the South China Sea and the island. China's stand is based on historical facts and international law. China's sovereign rights and positions are formed in the course of history and this position has been held by Chinese Government for long ……we are opposed to any country engaging in oil and gas exploration and development activities in waters under China's jurisdiction. We hope the foreign countries do not get involved in South China Sea dispute.”

Recently, on 08 August 2016, during Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi's visit to New Delhi, a Chinese state run daily warned that “India should avoid "unnecessary entanglement" in the SCS dispute to prevent it becoming yet "another factor" to impact bilateral ties. In the immediate backdrop of the PCA award, this move was clearly viewed as an attempt at containing the legitimate Indian point of view on the SCS. Or for that matter, even the progress on the border dispute between the two countries. During the visit of the Foreign “a carrot and stick policy” was quite evident, with the Chinese officials in New Delhi making it known that the doors to the Nuclear Suppliers Group can still be opened - which is a matter of great interest to India.

The vast maritime expanse of the SCS encompasses major sea lanes traversing the waters. These are the arteries of trade of deep interest to not only countries straddling the sea but also to the rest of the world including India. The PRC regime therefore, should not play war games.

Iraq's Hashd Militias: Ineluctable Politics on the Road to Mosul

Derek Verbakel

On 26 July, the Iraqi government officially declared its intention to integrate the mostly-Shia militias known as al-Hashd al-Shaabi (Popular Mobilisation Units) as an ''independent military formation'' part of the Iraqi Security Forces (ISF). The move, which somewhat reiterates an April 2015 cabinet order, was approved in February 2016 by Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi through a decree called Office Order 91; and will nominally place the Hashd under his command. Abadi claims the Hashd – accused of widespread human rights abuses, but a crucial part of the Iraqi government's strategy against the Islamic State (IS) – will be subject to military law and barred from maintaining political party affiliations. Abadi will struggle to implement Order 91, and to what extent he does, this development is unlikely to improve. Contrarily, it has the potential to worsen, instability in Iraq.

Abadi's declaration to incorporate the Hashd into the ISF is inseparable from power struggles over Iraq. Broadly, Abadi and aligned nationally-oriented Shia groups have been set against a collection of Iran-backed militias and their political wings. Militias connected to both camps comprising the Hashd saw their power expanded following its formation as a government-approved umbrella organisation in June 2014. This took place after the Iraqi army's near-collapse in the north prompted a call by Shia cleric Ali al-Sistani for all Iraqis to join the fight against IS. Heretofore exercising little control over the militias, Abadi has attempted to change that perception while marginalising, and signalling strength to political rivals, including prominent militia leaders. Abadi, who is under pressure as corruption and dysfunction plagues his government, is trying to consolidate power in the run-up to an attempt to re-take Mosul from IS.

Contextualising HashdOffice Order 91 states the Hashd will be detached from “all political, party, and social organisations, and political work shall be prohibited within its ranks.” However, severing the leading militias' political affiliations is unlikely, given the extent of ideological, material, and financial ties to Iran and the fact that many of the militias function as military appendages of longstanding Iraqi Shia political parties. For instance, nationalist Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's Peace Companies, while loyal to the Iraqi state rather than Iran, is an outgrowth of his political movement and party; the Badr Brigade is the armed wing of the formidable Badr Organisation and is still rooted to its founding in Iran, and as with Asaib Ahl al-Haq, receiving Iranian support; the head of Kataib Hezbollah, who has acted as the official commander of the Hashd, works hand-in-hand with Iran's special operations Quds Force in Iraq; the leader of the Harakat al-Nujaba militia proclaimed in November 2015 that he would overthrow Iraq's secular government if ordered by Iran's Supreme Leader Khamenei.

Integrating Hashd members into the ISF as a distinct formation would entail imposing a hierarchical military structure on horizontally organised factions. This would meet with resistance and prove difficult to sustain, as there is no reason to believe that militias will accept their own disempowerment. Nor will they cease following existing leaders or reverse efforts to pursue their own political ambitions, especially given the increasing illegitimacy of those currently leading the government. Given the fragmented dispensation of power in Iraq, it is unclear whether the integration of the Hashd into the ISF would represent the state taking over the militias or vice-versa.

Implications: InternalAs they become more powerful, the Hashd militias risk fuelling sectarian tensions and violence, and closer association with the state risks exacerbating national disunity. In enabling government efforts to reclaim population centres from IS control, Hashd militias have on numerous occasions perpetrated violence against Sunni civilians. For many inhabitants of predominantly Sunni areas, the expulsion of IS may be welcomed, but their replacement with Shia militiamen is viewed as hostile re-occupation. Participation of Iran-backed Shia militias in Iraqi government military operations in Sunni areas also fuels the IS's propaganda and recruitment by ostensibly validating IS narratives of the Iraqi government being an Iranian pawn. Such dynamics render Shia Hashd forces ill-suited to stabilise Sunni-majority Mosul and entice inhabitants to return.

Implications: ExternalA deepened integration of the Hashd could complicate the US assistance in Iraq, including Mosul. In the recent years, while insisting on restraint, particularly in Sunni areas, Washington has gradually softened its opposition to Baghdad’s instrumentalisation of Shia militias. Already siding awkwardly with forces variously supported by Iran, to be seen as more directly backing officially designated 'terrorist groups' such as Badr or Kataib Hezbollah would provoke thorny political disputes in Washington. These and other Hashd militias have in past years fought American forces in Iraq and more recently raised uncomfortable questions by threatening to target US advisors to the ISF, whose move closer to the battlefront since April has corresponded with IS losing ground.

And, despite Abadi’s politicking around the issue, allegiances to Iraqi political parties and Iran will preclude the transformation of the Hashd into a non-sectarian national force representing all Iraqis.

Even if it were feasible, the Hashd's incorporation into the ISF would scarcely allay concerns regarding what might unfold vis-a-vis Mosul, including in terms of US involvement and its far-reaching implications for future stability in Iraq.