2 Jan 2017

Higher Education Scholarships in Taiwan for Undergraduate, Masters and PhD International Students 2017/2018

Application Deadline: For 2017 Scholarship program, the application period runs from January 1 to March 17, 2016
Offered annually? Yes
Eligible Countries: The students of eligible countries of the region of Asia Pacific, West Asia, Africa (Burkina Faso, Republic of Cote d’Ivoire, Nigeria, Sao Tome and Principe, South Africa, Swaziland), Caribbean, Central America, South America, Europe can apply for this scholarship.
To be taken at (country): Universities in Taiwan
Accepted Subject Areas: For undergraduate, masters and PhD courses offered at any of the participating University in Taiwan
About Scholarship: International education and training has long been one of the TaiwanICDF’s core operations, among many others. Human resources development programs play a vital role in assisting partner countries achieve sustainable development, and education is a crucial mechanism for training workforces in developing countries.
The TaiwanICDF provides scholarships for higher education and has developed undergraduate, graduate and Ph.D. programs in cooperation with renowned partner universities in Taiwan.
The scholarship recipients gets a full scholarship, including return airfare, housing, tuition and credit fees, insurance, textbook costs and a monthly allowance.Higher Education Scholarships
Type: Undergraduate, Masters and PhD Scholarship
Who is eligible to apply? An applicant must:
  • -Be a citizen of List of Countries Eligible (including select African countries) for TaiwanICDF Scholarship, and satisfy any specific criteria established by his or her country and/or government of citizenship.
  • -Neither be a national of the Republic of China (Taiwan) nor an overseas compatriot student.
  • -Satisfy the admission requirements of the partner university to which he or she has applied to study under a TaiwanICDF scholarship.
  • -Be able to satisfy all requirements for a Resident Visa (Code: FS) set by the Bureau of Consular Affairs, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and an Alien Resident Certificate (ARC) set by the Ministry of the Interior, of the ROC (Taiwan) government (this means that the TaiwanICDF has the right to revoke a scholarship offered if an applicant cannot satisfy the visa requirements).
  • -Upon accepting a TaiwanICDF scholarship, not hold any other ROC(Taiwan) government-sponsored scholarship (such as the Taiwan Scholarship) in the same academic year in which the TaiwanICDF scholarship would be due to commence.
  • -Not be applying for a further TaiwanICDF scholarship in unbroken succession — applicants who have already held a TaiwanICDF scholarship must have returned to their home country for more than one year before re-applying (note: to apply for a 2014 scholarship, an applicant must have graduated and returned to his or her home country before July 31, 2013).
  • -Have never had any scholarship revoked by any ROC (Taiwan)government agency or related institution, nor been expelled from any Taiwanese university.
Number of Scholarships: Not Specified
Scholarship Benefits and Duration: The TaiwanICDF provides each scholarship recipient with a full scholarship, including return airfare, housing, tuition and credit fees, insurance, textbook costs and a monthly allowance.
  • Undergraduate Program (maximum four years): Each student receives NT$12,000 per month (NT$144,000 per year) as an allowance for food and miscellaneous living expenses.
  • Master’s Program (maximum two years): Each student receives NT$15,000 per month (NT$180,000 per year) as an allowance for food and miscellaneous living expenses.
  • PhD Program (maximum four years; four-year PhD programs start from 2012): Each students receives NT$17,000 per month (NT$204,000 per year) as an allowance for food and miscellaneous living expenses.
How to Apply: Applicants must complete an online application (found in link below). Then submit a signed, printed copy along with all other application documents to the ROC (Taiwan) Embassy/ Consulate (General)/ Representative Office/ Taiwan Technical Mission or project representative in their country.
Please note that each applicant can only apply for one program at a time. The applicant also needs to submit a separate program application to his/her chosen universities.
Visit Scholarship Webpage for the Online Application System and more details about this scholarship.
Sponsors: Taiwan International Cooperation and Development Fund (TaiwanICDF)

Apply for Tony Elumelu Entrepreneurship Programme – $100 million to create 10,000 African Entrepreneurs in 10 Years

Application Period: Interested entrepreneurs will be able to submit their applications to join the programme as from 1st January 2017 until Midnight WAT on March 1, 2017.
Offered annually? YesFor a period of 10 years
Opportunity is open to: All citizens (18 and above) and legal residents of all African countries with businesses that operate in Africa.
About Entrepreneurship Programme: Nigerian billionaire investor and philanthropist Tony Elumelu has committed $100 million to create 10,000 entrepreneurs across Africa over the next 10 years. Elumelu made the commitment on Monday during a press conference in Lagos to announce the launch of The Tony Elumelu Foundation Entrepreneurship Programme (TEEP).
TEEP, a Pan-African entrepreneurship initiative of the Tony Elumelu Foundation, is a multi-year programme of training, funding, and mentoring, designed to empower the next generation of African entrepreneurs.
The Tony Elumelu Foundation Entrepreneurship Programme
Starting From: 2015
Programme Type: Funding for African Entrepreneurs
Number of Entrepreneurs: There are 1,000 positions available annually for 10 years
Value of Programme: The 10,000 start-ups selected from a pool of applicants across Africa will participate in a comprehensive programme which will include;
  • A customized 12-week business skills training course
  • Start-Up Enterprise Toolkit
  • Mentoring
  • Resource Library
  • 2-Day Boot Camp
  • Seed Capital Funding
  • Elumelu Forum
  • Alumni Network
Duration of Programme: The programme will identify and help grow 10,000 start-ups and young businesses from across Africa over the next 10 years. These businesses will in turn create 1,000,000 new jobs and contribute $10 billion in annual revenues to Africa’s economy.

How to Apply: All applications must be submitted online through the TEEP Portal. Answer a series of mandatory questions and upload additional documents and identification materials. You will receive a confirmation email within 1 working day of submission.
More details about the program, including eligibility and the application and selection processes are available on the Tony Elumelu Foundation website at: www.tonyelumelufoundation.org/TEEP.
Sponsors: Tony Elumelu Foundation
Additional note:
  • In 2015, TEEP empowered 1,000 African entrepreneurs, selected from over 20,000 applicants, with start-up investment, active mentoring, business training, an entrepreneurship boot camp and regional networking across Africa.
  • Entrepreneurs, with an average age range of 21-40, from 51 African countries completed the programme and received $5,000 in seed capital for their start-up businesses.
  • The Tony Elumelu Foundation invested a total of $4,860,000, including $1,405,000 in agriculture; $410,000 in education and training; and $365,000 in manufacturing.  The sector-agnostic programme funded start-ups across a further 20 industries, all based in Africa.

Nestle Nutrition Postgraduate Fellowship Program for Young Professionals – Up to 40,000CHF in Grants

Application Deadline: 1st March 2017. 
Offered annually? Yes
Eligible Countries: Developing countries
To be taken at (country): Any scientific institution offering a program in the fields of Maternal and/or Child Health and Nutrition
Brief description: The Nestle Nutrition Institute Fellowship Program is offering Young professionals in healthcare the opportunity to study Nutrition and Maternal and/or Child Health in leading institutions.
Eligible Field of Study: Maternal and/or Child Health, Nutrition and any related field(s)
About the Award: The Fellowship offered by Nestle Nutrition Institute regularly offers young professionals from developing countries training in research skills and knowledge on Nutrition. Since 1981, more than five hundred (5oo) doctors and scientists have benefited from this fellowship and clinical grants in different ways, which have directly impacted the health sectors of Africa and other regions.
Offered Since: 1981
Type: Postgraduate Scholarship
Eligibility: 
  • Potential candidates should submit an application describing their interest in participating in the NNI Research training Fellowship.
  • Priority consideration for this prestigious fellowship will be given to candidates in junior positions from emerging countries.
  • The candidates’ history of previous or alternate grants will be taken into consideration.
  • Candidates will be notified of their eligibility by letter.
  • The application form must be accompanied by the following:
    1. Curriculum Vitae,
    2. A plan of the proposed training/activity clearly indicating its specific outcomes and
    3. Two letters of recommendation (1 from the institution where the candidate is working and 1 from the host institution*).
    4. Letter stating intent to return to the home country upon completion of the training program
    5. Details of their current level of training
Selection Criteria:
  • Fellowships are available for post graduate qualifications only
  • Applicant has to be affiliated with an academic/clinical institution
  • Successful candidates will be required to start their training within 1 year of being notified of the fellowship award
  • Duration of the support for the research training lasts for a maximum of 12 months
  • Upon certification, fellowship awardees must return to their home countries.
The Panel will not accept applications, which are submitted by:
  • Candidates who have already spent more than 12 months outside their home country during the 3 years preceding the application. Exceptions could be made if the applicant can justify how this additional training will supplement the one(s) already obtained
  • Candidates who have already left their country at the time of applying for the fellowship
  • Candidates who have completed more than one half of any training programme they may already be enrolled in
  • Candidates who, at the time of submitting their application, already have a grant from any other training program
  • Applications will not be entertained if the applicant’s home country law prohibits the nature of this activity.
Number of Awardees: Not specified
Value of Scholarship:  The grant includes learning a specific laboratory technique, statistics, nutrition, etc. The NNI grant up to 40’000 CHF can be used to pay course registration fees, round trip travel to the host institution, lodging and living expenses and health insurance coverage for the duration of the course.The grant offer of 40’000 CHF is also given and can be used to pay course registration fees, round trip travel to the host institution, lodging and living expenses and health insurance coverage for the duration of the course.
Duration of Scholarship: Maximum of twelve (12) months
How to Apply: 
  • Applications should be sent by email to NNI@nestle.com or by fax to + 41 21 924 2836.
  • Applicants should plan to start their program not sooner than 3 months after the application deadline to give time for approval process and administrative arrangements with a host institution.
  • Applicants are urged to submit only one application and for a single programme. If you have more than one project, decide which is your best option and submit that one.
  • Applications without all documentation, including a letter of acceptance by the faculty at the hosting institution will not be considered.
Award Provider: Nestle Nutrition Institute
Important Notes: The NNI grant will be given to the Host Institution which will disburse it to the fellow. In no case will any money be given directly from the NNI to the fellow.
Before any money can be allocated to the research training fellowship, applicants will need to produce proof of health insurance for the country they will be visiting for the whole duration of stay.

Bangor University, Commonwealth Shared Scholarships for African Students 2017/2018 – UK

Application Deadline: 28th March 2017 (23.59 BST)
Offered annually? Yes
Eligible Countries: Preference will be given to students from East and Central African Countries. We are especially interested in applications from strong candidates resident in Uganda and Kenya who are refugees, internally displaced or have otherwise been affected by conflict.
To be taken at (country): UK
Eligible Field of Study: The scholarships are open to students applying for the following taught masters programmes to begin their studies in September 2017:
  • MSc Agroforestry
  • MSc Conservation and Land Management
  • MSc Environment and Business Management
  • MSc Environmental Forestry
  • MSc International Banking
  • LLM International Criminal Law and International Human Rights Law
  • MSc Public Health and Health Promotion
  • LLM Public Procurement Law and Strategy
  • MSc Wetland Science for Conservation

Type: Masters
Eligibility: To apply for these scholarships, you must:
  • Be a Commonwealth citizen, refugee, or British protected person
  • Be permanently resident in a developing Commonwealth country, preference will be given to students from Central and East African Countries
  • Be available to start your academic studies in the UK by the start of the UK academic year in September/October 2017
  • By August 2017, hold a first degree of at least upper second class (2:1) honours standard
  • Not have studied or worked for one (academic) year or more in a developed country
  • Be unable, either yourself or through your family, to pay to study in the UK
Number of Awardees: 6
Value of Scholarship: 
  • Approved airfare from your home country to the UK and return at the end of your award
  • Tuition fees
  • Stipend (living allowance) at the rate of £1,034 per month,
  • Thesis grant towards the cost of preparing a dissertation, where applicable
  • Warm clothing allowance and visa reimbursement, where applicable Study travel grant towards the costs of study-related travel within the UK or overseas
No additional allowances are available for spouses or other dependants
How to Apply: You must make your application using the CSC’s Electronic Application System (EAS). Click here for full information on how to use the EAS, including detailed guides.

Do not apply directly to Bangor University. Shortlisted candidates will be invited to make an application to Bangor University.

Award Provider: Commonwealth Scholarship Commission

UK: University of Sussex Nigeria Scholarships 2017

Application Deadline: 1st August 2017
Offered annually? Yes
Eligible Countries: Nigeria
To be taken at (country): University of Sussex, UK
Eligible Field of Study: The scholarships relate to all full-time taught Masters degree courses at the University of Sussex (e.g. MA, MSc, LLM. MRes) with a few exceptions
About Scholarship: The scholarship is worth £3,000 for applicants that meet the eligibility criteria and will be awarded as a fee reduction upon registering at Sussex.
For applicants holding/expecting to achieve a First Class degree, equivalent to a British Bachelors Honours degree from a Higher Education Institution in Nigeria, the award will automatically be enhanced to £5,000.
Type: Postgraduate taught masters
Eligibility Criteria: In order to be eligible for a scholarship you must
  • be a national of Nigeria,
  • be a self-financing student
  • have accepted an offer of a full-time place on a Masters course at the University of Sussex commencing in September 2016.
  • meet the published academic requirements for your chosen course.
If your offer of a place is conditional you will need to meet the conditions of your offer before you are admitted to the University and awarded the scholarship. To receive the enhanced award, you will be required to provide evidence of your First Class degree from a recognised institution in Nigeria.
Number of Scholarships: not specified
Value of Scholarship: Scholarship will be awarded as a fee reduction of up to £5,000
Duration of Scholarship: to one year of study
How to Apply: You must apply for admission to an eligible Masters course via the University’s PG Apply online application system.
It will be possible to register for the scholarship from January 2017. If you are made an offer of a place and are eligible for the scholarship, you will need to register your interest via PG Apply as part of the acceptance process from January. If you have received an offer, you will be notified by email as soon as the declaration is available. You must submit this declaration by 1 August 2017 in order to receive the scholarship.
Visit Scholarship Webpage for details
Scholarship Provider: University of Sussex UK
Important Notes: If you accept a Sussex Scholarship Nigeria you will be required to undertake occasional promotional or support duties for the University of Sussex at times agreed between yourself and the University (e.g. providing text for the prospectus or web page). Schools of study may have specific duties they wish you to assist with.
The scholarship will be awarded automatically as a tuition fee reduction to eligible students upon enrolment at the University of Sussex.

False Unities: Brexit in the New Year

Binoy Kampmark

London.
The pile of detritus in Tooting had been growing ahead of the New Year’s Eve gatherings. The pubs were initiating their usual trick of closure and charging for tickets in the hope of getting some ruddy cash ahead of 2017. In parts of London, an air of dark pessimism lingered like a cold fog. Ominously, bad weather threatened Heathrow at points with grounded flights and cancellations.
With the celebratory fireworks in London, the city’s mayor had come out with the rather feeble remark that the city was ‘open’. (For what? Business, or perhaps defiantly open in the face of another round of renewed security threats.)
The Prime Minister, Theresa May, was even less convincing. Another year would usher in the crude realities of a Brexit negotiation process her servants are ill-prepared for. It is a point she wishes to keep from discussion in Parliament. The Labour Party’s Jeremy Corbyn has even accused May of being an autocrat akin to Henry VIII. If so, she is at best a confused one.
Across the various departments, and in the interest of austerity, the Brexit section charged with engineering Britain’s departure from the European Union has been rapacious and unrepentant in its demands.
The minister overseeing that side of government business, David Davis, has not impressed his European counterparts with either his negotiating stance, or management. German MEP Manfred Weber, chairman of the centre-right European People’s Party, wondered whether Davis and May were even on the same, confused page.
In November, Weber tut tutted any idea that Britain could stay in the single market and continue to ‘have very close cooperation in legal issues.’ Brexit, after all, meant Brexit, necessitating a pruning ‘back on our relationships.’
May has entertained the British public with a vast array of inanities to soften the effects of Europe’s threatening hammer. She has proposals, so he claim, for a ‘truly global Britain’, a poor assertion suggesting that it was not global to begin with. Her new year message was a patchwork of similar comments in an effort to claim that Britons were not as divided as thought.
‘If 2016 was the year you voted for that change, this is the year we start to make it happen.’ The referendum, however, had ‘laid bare some further divisions in our country.’ The June referendum had been ‘divisive at times. I know, of course, that not everyone shared the same point of view or voted in the same way. But I know too that, as we face the opportunities ahead of us, our shared interests and ambitions can bring us together.’
Before the European negotiators, she has promised ample visions of jam and richness, claiming that ‘the right deal’ will be forthcoming for all – including the shell shocked remainers. ‘This is the year we need to pull down these barriers that hold people back, securing a better deal at home for ordinary, working people.’
The ‘ordinary working people’ as a concept is, at best, a rickety one. In the European zone, citizens have been crossing borders, inhabiting and enriching various economies with their subsidizing industrious presence. Germany has two million Poles; France 650,000 Portuguese, and Spain over a million Romanians.
What made the British case before Brexit odd was how Europeans were made an object of swamping terror, a shift of sorts from traditional targets of racial opprobrium (Africa, the subcontinent, the Caribbean).
This was fed by the customary manipulation of the working class vote, ever vulnerable to concepts of loss and privation in a changing economy. The British problem here is a broader one of internal organisation of a lopsided labour market rather than external one of uncontrollable borders.
Britain, after all, has shortages in health workers, not to mention areas that require such personnel as painters, carpenters, electricians and plumbers. That is not a point being made by the Davis-May team.
What The Independent envisaged was a gloomy attack on Britain’s estranged working classes if discrimination against European citizens was to go ahead. ‘That massive blow to the material economy would be far more damaging to Britain’s working class than allowing Lithuanians to pull leeks from Lincolnshire fields in freezing weather.’
As for broader sentiments of unity, very little of that liquor is available for consumption, especially with May behind the bar. ‘This is the year’, suggested William Keegan rather grumpily in The Guardian, ‘when our politicians and the so-called “people” – all 28 percent of the population who voted to leave the European Union – will reap what they have sown.’
So, as the booze inflicted headaches wear off this morning, Britain remains fractured and disillusioned, marked by a government of enormous confusion and inconsistencies. As this continues, the biggest barker in favour Brexit, Nigel Farage, continues to draw an EU salary. A most compromised political attack dog, if ever there was one.

Eternal Hostility: a New Year’s Resolution

KATHY KELLY

This New Year’s Eve, 750 heavy wooden crosses were distributed to a gathering of Chicagoans commemorating the victims of gun violence killed in 2016. Rev. Michael Pfleger and the Faith Community of St. Sabina Parish had issued a call to carry crosses constructed by Greg Zanis. The crosses, uniform in size, presented the name and age and, in many cases, a facial photo of the person killed. Some who carried the crosses were relatives of the people killed. As the group assembled, several sobbed upon finding the crosses that bore the names and photos of their loved ones.
Those carrying the heavy crosses along Chicago’s “Magnificent Mile” of high end shops and restaurants knew that other arms than theirs were aching…aching with longing for loved ones who would never return. In 2016, more people were killed in Chicago by gun violence than in New York City and Los Angeles combined. The number killed represented a 58% increase over the number killed in 2015.  “How could this happen?” – was the question asked on the front page of the Chicago Tribune.
It was a year of social service program shutdowns driven by the Governor’s office in Springfield.  The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King’s description of a triplet of giant evils, each insoluble in isolation from the others, helps us identify an answer to the Tribune’s question.  King spoke of the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism and militarism.  Training for, and the diversion of money to, wars overseas was a crisis inextricable from the race crisis at home, as were policies promoting radical wealth inequality. Representative Danny Davis, of Chicago, whose grandson was killed by gun violence in 2016, insists that “poverty was fueling the city’s bloodshed, and that Chicago needed to make investments ‘to revamp whole communities.’”
Poverty and racism clearly interact: Blacks and Latinos comprise 56% of the incarcerated population, yet only 30% of the U.S. population. A report documenting the rates of incarceration for whites, African Americans, and Hispanics in the Illinois state prison system notes that over half of this prison population is black. For every 100,000 people in the state, 1,533 black people are imprisoned as compared to 174 white people and 282 Hispanic people. The consequences of incarceration affect entire communities: former prisoners are restricted in terms of employment, their families are disrupted, housing becomes unstable, they become disenfranchised, and stigmas persist.
Yet we ignore the militaristic triplet at our peril.  Gun violence in Chicago is condemned, as it should be, and yet a message to every one of the 9,000 Chicago Public School children participating in U.S. military junior ROTC programs is that killing is acceptable if you are following orders, or avenging the honor or advancing the goals of a loyal group. Killing of civilians by the U.S. military is considered regrettable but acceptable “collateral damage.” These killings eliminate “high value targets”. The mere suspicion of harboring a targeted person in a home, restaurant, or mosque becomes an excuse for an airborne drone attack to execute whole families or communities. Ironically, this policy enacts an airborne version of a drive-by shooting.
Soldiers who have seen combat are less likely to praise the virtues of military life. “The myth is that the military teaches discipline,” say the Chicago area Veterans for Peace, in their ‘education not militarization’ campaign. “The reality is that the military teaches children to follow orders without question and to use the military solution to conflict resolution – that is, death and destruction.”
President Obama had tears in his eyes in January, 2016, calling for relief from record breaking shootings and killings in the U.S. Yet 2016 became a record breaking year for U.S. export of weapons to other countries.  The U.S. is responsible for nearly 33% of worldwide weapon exports—by far the top arms exporter on the planet.
“Arms deals are a way of life in Washington,” writes William Hartung. “From the president on down, significant parts of the government are intent on ensuring that American arms will flood the global market and companies like Lockheed and Boeing will live the good life. …American officials regularly act as salespeople for the arms firms. And the Pentagon is their enabler… In its first six years, team Obama entered into agreements to sell more weaponry than any administration since World War II.”
Carrying a cross along Michigan Avenue yesterday, I thought of the terrible slaughter in World War I that killed 38 million people. Elites, weapon makers, and war profiteers drove millions of men into the trenches to fight and die in the war that was to end all wars. In 1914, mired in mud, war-weary and miserable, troops on both sides took matters into their own hands. For a brief, yet magnificent time, they enabled the “Christmas truce.” One account relates how some German troops began singing one of their carols, and British and other troops then sang a carol from their side. As voices wafted across the no-man’s land, troops began calling out to one another.
“Time and again during the course of that day, the Eve of Christmas, there were wafted towards us from the trenches opposite the sounds of singing and merry-making, and occasionally the guttural tones of a German were to be heard shouting out lustily, ‘A happy Christmas to you Englishmen!’ Only too glad to show that the sentiments were reciprocated, back would go the response from a thick-set Clydesider, ‘Same to you, Fritz, but dinna o’er eat yourself wi’ they sausages!’”
“The high command on both sides took a dim view of the activities and orders were issued to stop the fraternizing with varying results. In some areas, the truce ended Christmas Day in others the following day and in others it extended into January.”
Dr. King said, “Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit, and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism.”   The soldiers in those trenches went out into their no-man’s land and showed the world one way to end wars.   They should never have had to.  It was left to them to venture into the no-man’s land, risking exposure to the others’ fire and their generals’ punishment for disobeying orders.
No matter what gang is issuing the orders to kill, whether a massive military power or a smaller group that has acquired weapons, we can all claim our right not to develop, store, sell or use weapons. We can claim our right not to kill and not to live with the memory of having killed. “Declaring eternal hostility” to the fear, greed and hate which are our real enemies seems to be our true hope. We can lay aside forever the futility of killing. We can be hopeful and determined that our resources and ingenuity are directed toward meeting human needs.

ISIS Will Lose the Battle of Mosul, But Not Much Will Remain

Patrick Cockburn

Winners and losers are beginning to emerge in the wars that have engulfed the wider Middle East since the US and UK invaded Iraq in 2003. The most striking signs of this are the sieges of east Aleppo in Syria and Mosul in Iraq, which have much in common though they were given vastly different coverage by the Western media. In both cities, Salafi-jihadi Sunni Arab insurgents were defending their last big urban strongholds against the Iraqi Army, in the case of Mosul, and the Syrian Army, in the case of east Aleppo.
The capture of east Aleppo means that President Bashar al-Assad has essentially won the war and will stay in power. The Syrian security forces advanced and the armed resistance collapsed more swiftly than had been expected. Some 8,000 to 10,000 rebel fighters, pounded by artillery and air strikes and divided among themselves, were unable to stage a last stand in the ruins of the enclave, as happened in Homs three years ago, and is happening in Mosul now.
But what gives the rebel defeat in east Aleppo its crucial significance is not so much the battle itself, but the failure of their foreign backers – Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar – to come to their aid. Ever since 2011, the advance and retreat of government and rebel forces in Syria has been decided by the quantity of arms, ammunition and money they could extract from their outside backers. President Assad always looked to Russia, Iran and Shia paramilitaries from Lebanon and Iraq.
The decisive moment in the Syrian war came in September 2015 when the Russian air force intervened on President Assad’s side. The US did not like it, but they were not prepared to oppose it militarily. Russia may not be a global superpower, but it is seen as a superpower in the Middle East. Come the assault on east Aleppo, the rebels’ old allies in Ankara, Riyadh and Doha proved incapable or unwilling to raise the stakes unless backed by the US.
If the rebels’ traditional allies did not help them when they still held east Aleppo, it is unlikely that they will do so after they have lost it. This does not mean that the US is the fading power in the Middle East as Mr Obama’s critics claim, but the White House has been very careful not to be dragged into a war in Syria to serve somebody else’s agenda. Getting the US to overthrow Assad was at the heart of the Syrian opposition’s policy since 2011, when they believed they could orchestrate regime change in Damascus along the lines of what had just happened in Tripoli with the overthrow and killing of Muammar Gaddafi.
US policy is more proactive than it is given credit for. Obama gave priority to defeating Isis and it is unlikely that Donald Trump will change this. Isis is proving a tough opponent in Iraq and Syria and in December was able to recapture Palmyra, which the Syrian Army, strongly backed by Russia, had taken amid self-congratulatory celebrations in March. An important event that did not happen in 2016 was the defeat of Isis, whose continuing ability to set the political agenda was bloodily demonstrated when a stolen lorry mowed down people at a Christmas fair in Berlin on 18 December.
A more substantive sign of Isis’s strength is the ferocity and skill with which it has fought for Mosul. The Iraqi army and Kurdish offensive started on 17 October, and Mosul city was reached on 3 November. Since then progress has been slow and at the cost of heavy casualties. The Iraqi security forces, including the Shia paramilitaries, lost 2,000 dead in November according to the UN. Isis is using hundreds of suicide bombers, snipers and mortar teams to slow their enemy’s advance, which has so far only taken 40 per cent of east Mosul. Some of the battalions in the elite 10,000-strong “Golden Division” are reported to have suffered 50 per cent losses.
In the longer term, the Iraqi government will probably take Mosul, though by then it may not look much different from east Aleppo. One of the few items in Trump’s foreign policy that was made clear in the campaign was that there will be total priority given to eliminating Isis. This will have important consequences for the region: the great Sunni Arab revolt in Syria and Iraq aiming at regime change, which seemed to come close to success several times between 2011 and 2014, is faltering and is likely to go down to defeat. Assad and the Shia-dominated government in Baghdad are going to survive.
Russia was a big gainer in 2016 as other powers began to view it, perhaps to an exaggerated extent, as a superpower reborn. President Putin is demonised by Western governments and media, but this is a backhanded recognition of his global influence. At the same time, the US had suffered no great defeat and is repairing relations with Iran. Obama’s goals may have been modest, but, unlike those of George W Bush, they were attainable.
Syria has become the battlefield in which confrontations and rivalries that had little to do with Syria are fought out. This is why the war became so intractable. Iran has come out ahead because the Shia alliance it leads is winning in Iraq and Syria. It may look more powerful than it really is because the US destroyed the Taliban in 2001 and Saddam in 2003, the two Sunni powers that had previously hedged Iran in to the east and west. It will soon see if its more positive relationship with the US will be reversed by a Trump administration.
The Arab Spring of 2011 saw revolution, but also counter-revolution: Saudi Arabia and Qatar, followed by the oil-rich Sunni monarchies of the Gulf, sought to take over the leadership of the Arab world that had once been dominated by Egypt, Iraq and Syria. The Gulf states have proved incapable of fulfilling their new role and their various initiatives have produced or exacerbated calamitous wars in Syria, Iraq, Libya and Yemen.
Saudi Arabia’s more proactive and aggressive policies since King Salman succeeded to the throne in January 2015 have generally ended in frustration. Saudi intervention in Yemen has not ended a stalemated war and air strikes have brought the country to the verge of famine.
The biggest loser of all in 2016, aside from the Syrian and Iraqi people, has been Turkey. It helped stoke the war in Syria only to find that the main beneficiaries were the Syrian Kurds, whose political and military leadership was drawn from the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) that has been fighting a guerrilla war in Turkey since 1984. The country’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is devoting his greatest efforts to thwarting the creation of a de facto Kurdish state in northern Syria, and the displacement of Assad has become a side issue.
Erdogan is creating a more authoritarian state as he tightens his grip on state institutions and media in the wake of the failed military coup of 15 July. He justifies his actions as reactions to crises, such as the Turkish Kurd insurgency, that are in large part his own creation. Isis, whose volunteers were once allowed to cross the Turkish-Syrian border with little trouble, are now creeping back to carry out suicide bombings in Turkey.
Donald Trump may try to change existing US policy in the Middle East, but not if he wants to carry out his domestic agenda. On the other hand, the Middle East is the region of perpetual crises which sucks in outside powers whether they like it or not. What the last five years have shown is that violence bred in the Middle East cannot be contained, and it impacts on the rest of the world in the shape of desperate migrants seeking new homes or savage terrorist attacks.

NATO’s Playbook Of Proxy Wars In The Middle East

Nauman Sadiq

Since the times of the Soviet-Afghan jihad, during the eighties, it has been the fail-safe game plan of the master strategists at NATO to raise money from the oil-rich emirates of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE and Kuwait; then buy billions of dollars’ worth of weapons from the arms’ markets of the Eastern Europe; and then provide those weapons and guerilla warfare training to the disaffected population of the victim country by using the intelligence agencies of the latter’s regional adversaries. Whether it’s Afghanistan, Chechnya, Bosnia, Libya or Syria, the same playbook has been executed to the letter.
More to the point, raising funds for proxy wars from the Gulf Arab States allows the Western executives the freedom to evade congressional scrutiny; the benefit of buying weapons from the unregulated arms’ markets of the Eastern Europe is that such weapons cannot be traced back to the Western capitals; and using jihadist proxies to achieve strategic objectives has the advantage of taking the plea of plausible deniability if the strategy backfires, which it often does. Remember that al-Qaeda and Taliban were the by-products of the Soviet-Afghan jihad, and the Islamic State and its global network of terrorists is the blowback of the proxy war in Syria.
Notwithstanding, the Western interest in the Syrian civil war has mainly been to ensure Israel’s regional security. The Shi’a resistance axis in the Middle East, which is comprised of Iran, the Syrian regime and their Lebanon-based proxy Hezbollah, posed an existential threat to Israel; a fact which the Israel’s defense community realized for the first time during the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war during the course of which Hezbollah fired hundreds of rockets into northern Israel.
Those were only unguided rockets but it was a wakeup call for Israel’s military strategists that what will happen if Iran passed the guided missile technology to Hezbollah whose area of operations lies very close to the northern borders of Israel?
Therefore, when the protests broke out against the Assad regime in Syria, in early 2011 in the wake of the Arab Spring uprisings, under pressure from the Zionist lobbies, the Western powers took advantage of the opportunity and militarized those protests with the help of their regional allies: Turkey, Jordan and the Gulf Arab States. All of the aforementioned states belong to the Sunni denomination, which have been vying for influence in the Middle East against the Shi’a Iranian axis.
Moreover, since the beginning of the Syrian civil war in August 2011 to June 2014, when the Islamic State overran Mosul in Iraq, an informal pact existed between the Western powers, their regional allies and the Sunni Arab jihadists of the Middle East against the Shi’a resistance axis. In accordance with the pact, the Sunni militants were trained and armed in the training camps located in the border regions of Turkey and Jordan.
This arrangement of an informal pact between the Western powers and the Sunni Arab jihadists of the Middle East against the Shi’a Iranian axis worked well up to August 2014, when Obama Administration made a volte-face on its previous regime change policy in Syria and started conducting air strikes against one group of Sunni militants battling against the Syrian regime, i.e. the Islamic State, after the latter transgressed its mandate in Syria and overran Mosul and Anbar in Iraq and threatened the capital of another steadfast American ally: Masoud Barzani’s Erbil in the oil-rich Iraqi Kurdistan.
After the reversal of policy in Syria by the Western powers and the subsequent Russian military intervention on the side of the Syrian regime, the momentum of Sunni Arab jihadists’ expansion in Syria has stalled and they now feel that their Western patrons have committed a treachery against the Sunni jihadists’ cause; that’s why, they are infuriated and once again up in arms to exact revenge for this betrayal.
If we look at the chain of events, the timing of the Paris and Brussels attacks has been critical: the Islamic State overran Mosul in June 2014, the Obama Administration began conducting air strikes against the Islamic State’s targets in Iraq and Syria in August 2014, and after a lull of almost a decade since the Madrid and London bombings in 2004 and 2005, respectively, the first such incident of terrorism took place on the Western soil at the offices of the Charlie Hebdo in January 2015, and then the Islamic State carried out the November 2015 Paris attacks and the March 2016 Brussels bombings.
Notwithstanding, it is an irrefutable fact that the United States sponsors the militants, but only for a limited period of time in order to achieve certain policy objectives. For instance: the United States nurtured the Afghan jihadists during the Cold War against the erstwhile Soviet Union from 1979 to 1988, but after the signing of the Geneva Accords and the consequent withdrawal of the Soviet troops from Afghanistan, the United States withdrew its support from the Afghan jihadists.
Similarly, the United States lent its support to the militants during the Libyan and Syrian civil wars, but after achieving the policy objectives of toppling the Qaddafi regime in Libya and weakening the anti-Israel Assad regime in Syria, the United States relinquished its blanket support from the militants and eventually declared a war against a faction of Syrian militants, the Islamic State, when the latter transgressed its mandate in Syria and dared to occupy Mosul and Anbar in Iraq in early 2014.
The United States’ regional allies in the Middle East, however, are not as subtle and experienced in the Machiavellian geopolitics. Under the misconception that the alliances in international politics are permanent, the Middle Eastern autocrats keep pursuing the same untenable policy indefinitely, which was laid down by the hawks in Washington for a brief period of time in order to achieve certain strategic objectives.
For instance: the security establishment of Pakistan kept pursuing the policy of training and arming the Afghan and Kashmiri jihadists throughout the ’80 and ‘90s and right up to September 2001, even after the United States withdrew its support from the jihadists’ cause in Afghanistan in 1988 after the signing of the Geneva Accords.
Similarly, the Muslim Brotherhood-led government of Turkey has made the same mistake of lending indiscriminate support to the Syrian militants even after the United States’ partial reversal of policy in Syria and the declaration of war against the Islamic State in August 2014 in order to placate the international public opinion when the graphic images and videos of the Islamic State’s brutality surfaced on the internet.
Keeping up appearances in order to maintain the façade of justice and morality is indispensable in international politics and the Western powers strictly abide by this code of conduct. Their medieval client states in the Middle East, however, are not as experienced and they often keep pursuing the same unsustainable policies of training and arming the militants against their regional rivals, which are untenable in the long run in a world where pacifism is generally accepted as one of the fundamental axioms of the modern worldview.
Notwithstanding, the conflict in Syria and Iraq is actually a three-way conflict between the Sunni Arabs, the Shi’a Arabs and the Sunni Kurds. Although after the declaration of war against a faction of Sunni Arab militants, the Islamic State, the Obama Administration has also lent its support to the Shi’a-led government in Iraq, but the Shi’a Arabs of Iraq are not the trustworthy allies of the United States because they are under the influence of Iran.
Therefore, the Obama Administration was left with no other choice but to make the Kurds the centerpiece of its policy in Syria and Iraq after a group of Sunni Arab jihadists transgressed its mandate in Syria and overran Mosul and Anbar in Iraq from where the United States had withdrawn its troops only in December 2011. The so-called Syrian Democratic Forces are nothing more than Kurdish militias with a tinkering of mercenary Arab tribesmen in order to make them appear more representative and inclusive in outlook.
As far as the regional parties to the Syrian civil war are concerned, however, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and the Gulf Arab States might not have serious reservations against the close cooperation between the United States and the Kurds in Syria and Iraq, because the Gulf Arab States tend to look at the regional conflicts from the lens of the Iranian Shi’a threat. Turkey, on the other hand, has been wary of the separatist Kurdish tendencies in its southeast more than the Iranian Shi’a threat.
The sudden thaw in Turkey’s relations with Russia and latent hostility towards the West is partly due to the fact that Erdogan holds the US-based preacher, Fethullah Gulen, responsible for the July coup plot and suspects that the latter has received tacit support from certain quarters in the United States’ intelligence community; but more importantly, Turkey also feels betrayed by the duplicitous Western policy in Syria and Iraq, and that’s why it is now seeking close cooperation with Russia in the region.

The Ominous Calm is both Good and Bad for J&K

Syed Ata Hasnain



After the 2013 hanging of Afzal Guru, many had expected that the Valley would boil. Nothing much happened, leading people to inquire from Kashmiris as to why this was so. Friends from Kashmir often say that people from the Valley do not respond to events immediately, and that they nurse a grudge or a grouse and add layers of it to their psyche before allowing it to vent into action.

That is why unnatural silence is never good. The silence in the Valley at present can at best be called ominous. It is giving people a break from all the terrible negativity. There is a sizeable population that believes what has happened is wrong but its voice is drowned out by a noisy and clamorous set who wish to dictate the course.

The ominous silence is palpable. Terrorists attempted to break that with the recent ambush at Pampore. That is a tactical event for the Army to sort out by strengthening road security along the highway. 

What should the State leadership and the Centre be doing at this time? Aside of congratulating themselves on the demonetisation exercise and its supposed effect of stopping stone throwing there is much that can be done in the winter that will have a positive impact in the summer. There is no need to allow the separatists the initiative to decide what they wish to do.

Firstly, Jammu can begin becoming the hub of the 'way forward' discussions. Not among Jammuites alone but between various stakeholders, such as a few Kashmiri students, traders, teachers, retired bureaucrats and policemen. Let the media in Kashmir begin reporting this even though it would tend to initially ignore it.

Secondly, if the Separatists do begin street turbulence again, the police forces had better have answers in the form of non-lethal weapons. The pellet gun that took away much credibility from our otherwise fairly controlled response in 2016 has been branded as the symbol of all oppression. In such internal asymmetric conflicts, symbolism becomes significant. An injury by a pellet gun again will magnify the negative message manifold. Hence, if alternatives cannot be thought of, then the tactics must be thought through, albeit there is no reason why universal methods of crowd control cannot be adapted by India's police forces. Institutions such as the National Police Academy or even the Central Reserve Police Force Academy, whose job it is to act as intellectual planks for doctrinal guidance for the police forces, must be deeply involved in the research on control of mob violence and employment of non lethal weapons.

The administration should be looking at ensuring societal stability. There are reports of enhanced vigilantism of the kind societies in the throes of radicals suffer. Within India's social tolerance, such a phenomenon cannot hold people and society to ransom. No administration can absolve itself of the responsibilities of stopping this. Where are Kashmir's elected representatives? Are they with their people or spending time in Jammu? The political class has to get back to the grind of politics, and that begins from the grassroots and not from the Assembly House. Specific areas that have witnessed voids of such activity for long must have their representatives visiting them along with the 'intezamiya' (local civil administration). The Army should only be too happy to create the environment and confidence for this. Its role is not independent from the overall efforts needed to restore normalcy and prevent resurgence of a 2016 like situation again.

What Should the Army be Doing? 
As one of the key stakeholders and stabilisers, the Army should be in overdrive in what it is really good at, i.e. in playing potential scenarios of the future. It should also involve other stake holders and even Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti herself who is seen to be far more involved with Unified Command than most of her predecessors. It does this wonderfully. The new Army Chief, an experienced hand, will assume office soon. The Army and Corps Commanders are new and most of the division commanders are due for change. Winter is usually the time for conventional war games in Northern Command. These can always be converted to comprehensive exercises to think the situations through and evolve ideas. The involvement of other institutions such as the Army War College and the Doctrine Branch of Army Training Command must be increased. The degree of thinking the Army does on its current threats in the hybrid sphere is perhaps insufficient. The Northern Command needs as much intellectual support because its command and staff functionaries are always short of time. For measure, the quality of protection of the soft targets in the rear needs to improve manifold. One cannot be strong everywhere but there is nothing that intelligent deployment, back to basics and good response cannot overcome.

The Unified Command must think well ahead. If there is peace and quiet in the Valley once the Durbar returns in May 2017 all the traditional issues will get thrown up again. Among them the West Pakistan Refugees, the return of the Kashmiri Pandits, the restoration of the Kashmiri Pandit culture, and most importantly, the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA). After the spate of violence in 2016, it was presumed that demands for abrogation of AFSPA were no longer valid as the need for empowerment of the Army was a given. However, even six months down the line if there is peace, demands against AFSPA will rise. Everyone will get back to trying to understand what it is all about. By that time the Army's hierarchies would have changed and institutional memory being what it is, much reinvention of the wheel would again be taking place. To avoid that, the hard work should be done now by teams of experienced officers. 

One simple exercise on social media urging parents to get their children to school had phenomenal effect on turnout for examinations. If just a few themes are selected jointly by the Unified Command to work through social media campaigns, it will boost our capability to fight in different dimensions. The Northern Command is gaining experience in this and the State Government must join hands with it to run more such campaigns.

Both Pakistan and India will shortly have new military leaderships. Let us hope that better sense prevails and J&K can look forward to an elongated period of peace and quiet, without there being anything ominous about it.