Is this one of those rare occasions where policy-makers self-critically correct a gigantic blunder? Or is it a cold turnabout guided by pure self-interest?

On August 15, the foreign ministers of the European Union gathered in Brussels and decided that each would henceforth be free to supply arms to Kurdish rebels fighting Sunni extremists of the Islamic State in the north of Iraq. Even Germany which in the past had been unwilling to furnish military supplies to warring parties  in ‘conflict zones’, is now ready to provide armoured vehicles and other hardware to the Kurds opposing the Islamic State’s advance.

The decision of Europe’s foreign ministers may surprise some because, barely a year and four months ago, in April 2013, the European Union had lifted a previously instituted ban on all imports of Syrian oil.

Peter Custers

Moreover, the lifting of this boycott was quite explicitly intended to facilitate the flow of oil from areas in the north-east of Syria, where Sunni extremist rebel organisations had established a strong foothold, if not overall predominance over the region’s oil fields.

The Islamic State was not the only Sunni extremist organisation disputing control over Syrian oil fields. Yet there is little doubt that the fateful decision that the European Union took last year helped the Islamic State consolidate its hold over Syrian oil resources and prepare for a sweeping advance into areas with oil wells in the north of Iraq.

The outcome of the recent Brussels’ meeting thus appears to overturn a disastrous previous decision. To underline the point it is useful to briefly describe the extent to which Sunni extremist rebels have meanwhile established control over oil extraction and production in both Syria and Iraq.“Is this one of those rare occasions where policy-makers self-critically correct a gigantic blunder? Or is it a cold turnabout guided by pure self-interest?”

The Syrian oil fields are basically concentrated in Deir-ez-Zor, a province bordering on Iraq. Whereas oil extraction in Syria has always been very limited in size if measured as a percentage of world supplies, control over the Syrian oil wells plus its refinery has become crucial for the financing of the Islamic State’s war efforts.

In neighbouring Iraq, oil reserves are not concentrated in one single geographic region as they are in Syria. The bulk of the oil wells are to be found in the country’s south, at great distance from the Islamic State’s war theatre in the north. Only one-seventh of Iraq’s oil resources are said to be located in areas controlled by the Islamic State on the one hand, and Kurdish fighters on the other. Nevertheless, recent reports indicate that the Islamic State controls at least seven major oil wells in Iraq alone.

Using expertise gathered after it established control over wells in Syria, the Sunni extremist organisation is able to draw huge profits from the smuggling and sale of oil. It is the Islamic State’s oil-backed armed strength amassed in two adjacent civil wars that has now sent shivers throughout the Western world.

If the European Union’s April 2013 decision appears to have helped trigger the Islamic State’s current success, the situation created is historically novel. To my knowledge, never before has a rebel force fighting a civil war in the global South been able to base its war aspirations on control over oil.

True, in most of the civil wars that have rocked Africa over the last thirty years, access to raw materials has been fundamental. Witness the cases of Angola, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Congo (DRC) and Sudan. It is also true that oil exports have been a specific mode of war financing, for instance in Angola and the Sudan.

Yet, in those cases, the state remained in command of the oil wealth. In Angola, the right-wing rebel movement UNITA relied heavily on smuggling rough diamonds towards financing its war, while the country’s oil fields were located at great distance UNITA’s war theatre.

In Sudan, oil fields are concentrated in the country’s south, that is, close to and in the region which was disputed by the rebel movement. But the regime of Omar Al-Bashir pursued an inhuman policy of depopulation through aerial bombardments, massacring hapless villagers and forcing survivors to flee. In the self-same process the rebels were deprived of access to people and oil.

Hence, strictly speaking there is no precedent for the oil-fuelled civil wars waged by Sunni rebels in Syria and Iraq.

Now – in turning from de facto supporters to opponents of the Islamic State – Europe’s foreign ministers have followed the U.S. lead, because the United States had just started bombardments of Islamic State positions in Iraq’s north.

Though loudly defended on the grounds of the Islamic State’s relentless persecution of minorities, the renewed U.S. military intervention is not devoid of self-interest. Uppermost in the minds of Pentagon officials is the nexus between oil and arms.

Shortly after President Barack Obama announced the withdrawal of U.S. occupation forces from Iraq in October 2011, the United States clinched a huge deal for the sale of F-16 fighter planes and other armaments to Iraq’s military, valued at 12 billion dollars. At least four in five of the top U.S. military corporations are beneficiaries of Iraqi purchases.

Coincidentally, around the time when the U.S.-Iraq agreement on arms’ sales was sealed, the extraction of Iraqi crude was back to old levels, crossing the threshold of three million barrels per day in 2012. As the Iraqi government’s income from oil extraction and exports rose exponentially, U.S. and competing Russian arms’ manufacturers both lined up to bag the orders.

And there is robust confidence that the oil-and-arms nexus can be sustained – according to euphoric projections of the International Energy Agency (IAE), the body of Western oil consumer nations, Iraq holds the key to future increases in world production of crude!

Western policy-makers are feverishly espousing the cause of Muslim Shias, Christians and Yezidis, who are persecuted in areas of Iraq controlled by the Islamic State and, yes, there is no doubt that the Sunni extremist force is guided by a Salafi ideology that severely discriminates against religious minorities, whether Muslim or non-Muslim.

But at what point in the past have Western states consistently defended religious minority rights in the Middle East? The idea seems to have emerged as an afterthought of the illegal U.S. invasion of Iraq.

And are Muslim and Christian Arabs in Israel, Muslim Shias in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain – to name just some of the groups mistreated by the West’s close allies – likely to be charmed by the West’s resolve to save the Yezidis of Iraq?

In any case, it is high time that the policy reversals in Brussels be questioned.

To recap: a turnabout in relation to the twin civil wars in Syria/Iraq was staged twice. First, in September 2011, a general prohibition on investments in and exports of oil from Syria was imposed, affecting both Assad’s government and Syria’s opposition. Then, in 2013, the European Union shifted de facto towards a position favourable to Syria’s Sunni extremist rebels.

Although the European Union’s foreign ministers now appear to have realised their sin, the damage can no longer be repaired without a complete overhaul of E.U. policy-making towards the Middle East.

(Edited by Phil Harris)

*  Peter Custers, an academic researcher on Islam and religious tolerance with field work in South Asia, is also a theoretician on the arms’ trade and extraction of raw materials in the context of conflicts in the global South. He is the author of ‘Questioning Globalized Militarism’. 

Which story line sounds the more credible – that linking the rebel movement ISIS (the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria) to policies pursued by Iran or that linking the Sunni extremist force to Iran’s adversary Saudi Arabia?

In June this year, fighters belonging to ISIS – a rebel movement that had previously established its foothold in the oil-rich areas of north-eastern Syria – succeeded in capturing Mosul, a city surrounded by oil fields in northern Iraq. Ever since, commentators in the world’s media have been speculating on the origins of the dreaded organisation’s military success.

It is admitted that the occupation of Mosul and vast tracts of the Sunni-dominated portion of Iraq would not have been possible except for the fact that ISIS forged a broad grassroots’ alliance expressing deep discontent by Iraq’s minority Sunnis with the policies of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki’s government. Nor would Mosul have fallen but for the dramatic desertion by top-officers of Iraq’s state army.

Peter Custers

Yet various observers have meanwhile focused on the political economy behind the advance of ISIS. Some experts from U.S. think tanks have discussed the likely sources of ISIS’ finance, pinpointing private donors in Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states. Other writers instead have connected ISIS’ reliance on black market sales of oil in Kurdish territory with Iranian exports of crude, described as “illegal”.

I propose putting the spotlight on the methods of war financing used by ISIS, but first it is necessary to highlight the movement’s complete sectarianism.

Soon after the occupation of Mosul, rebels blew up and bulldozed shrines and mosques in the city belonging to Shia Muslims. Pictures on the demolition of these buildings were circulated widely by the world’s mainstream media. Unfortunately, few Western journalists cared to draw attention to the role which destruction of shrines has played in the history of Islam.

Contrary to Catholicism, the veneration of saints at Sufi and Shia tombs and shrines basically reflects heterodox tendencies within the Islamic faith. On the other hand, Sunni orthodoxy and especially its Saudi variety, Wahhabism, either condemns intercession or, at the least, considers the worshipping of saints at tombs to be unacceptable. Islam’s minority of Shias, and its mystical current of Sufism, freely engage in such worship – and this throughout the Muslim world.“ISIS is … a ‘religiously inspired’ Sunni extremist organisation with an utterly secular objective: to control the bulk of oil resources in two Middle Eastern states in order to re-establish acaliphat, an all-Islamic state-entity guided by a central religious authority”

ISIS’ work of demolition in Iraq can in no way be equated with practices of Iran’s Shia rulers. Instead, they express the extremist movement’s affinity with policies long championed by Saudi Arabia. Ever since the founding of the Saudi state, numerous Shia and Sufi shrines have been rased to the ground at the behest of this country’s Wahhabi dynasty.

What does the political economy behind ISIS’ military advance in Syria and Iraq tell us about the organisation’s affinities? First, in one sense, the ISIS strategy might be interpreted as rather novel.

Whereas the extraction of raw materials is a war strategy pursued by numerous rebel movements in the global South – see, for example, UNITA’s extraction of diamonds in the context of Angola’s civil war, and the trade in coltan by rebels in the Democratic Republic of Congo – rarely has a Southern rebel movement succeeded in turning crude oil into its chief source of revenue.

Indeed, whereas ISIS originally relied on private funders in Saudi Arabia to build up a force of trained fighters, the organisation has consciously targeted regions in Syria and Iraq harbouring major oil fields and (in the case of Iraq) oil refineries. By laying siege to the oil refinery at Baiji, responsible for processing one-third of oil consumed in Iraq, ISIS hoped to undermine the state’s control of oil resources.

Further, some 450 million dollars was stolen by ISIS fighters from a subsidiary of Iraq’s central bank after the occupation of Mosul. This reportedly was all income from oil extraction. Some observers put the cash income which ISIS derives from smuggled oil at one million dollars a day!

ISIS is thus a ‘religiously inspired’ Sunni extremist organisation with an utterly secular objective: to control the bulk of oil resources in two Middle Eastern states in order to re-establish acaliphat, an all-Islamic state-entity guided by a central religious authority.

Yet though ISIS’ methodology of reliance on oil for financing of its war campaigns is novel for a rebel movement, such use of oil is not unique in the context of the Middle East. Ever since the 1970s, most oil-rich countries of the region have squandered a major part of their income from the exports of crude by (indirectly) exchanging their main natural resource against means of destruction – weapon systems bought on the international market.

And while Iran under the Shah was equally enticed into opting for this form of trade in the 1970s, – it is the Wahhabi kingdom of Saudi Arabia which all the way through from the oil crisis of 1973 onwards and up to today has functioned as the central axe of such a trade mechanism.

Witness, for instance, the 1980s oil-for-arms (!) ‘barter deal’ between the Saudi kingdom and the United Kingdom, the so-called ‘Al Yamamah’ deal, and the 60 billion dollar, largest-ever international arms’ agreement between Saudi Arabia and the United States clinched in 2010.

Forward to 2014, and an Iraq desperately struggling to survive. A section of the world’s media has already announced its impending demise, predicting a split of the country into three portions – Sunni, Kurdish and Shia. On the other hand, some commentators have advised that the United States should now change gear and line up with Iran, in order to help the Iraqi government overcome its domestic political crisis.

Yet the United States and its European allies for long, too long, have bent over to service the Wahhabi state. Even as Western politicians loudly proclaimed their allegiance to democracy and secularism, they failed to oppose or counter Saudi Arabia’s oppression of, and utter discrimination against, Shia citizens.

For over 40 years they opted to close their eyes and supply Saudi Arabia with massive quantities of fighter planes, missiles and other weaponry, in exchange for the country’s crude. Playing the role of a wise elderly senior brother, the United States has recently advised Iraq’s prime minister al-Maliki, known for his sectarian approach, that he should be more ‘inclusive’, meaning sensitive towards Iraq’s minority Sunni population.

But has the United States’ prime Middle Eastern ally Saudi Arabia ever been chastised over its systematic discrimination of Shias? Has it ever been put to task for its cruel oppression of heterodox Muslims? And has the United States ever pondered the implications of the trading mechanism of disparate exchange it sponsored – for the future of democracy, food sovereignty and people’s welfare in the Middle East?

*  Peter Custers, an academic researcher on Islam and religious tolerance  with field work in South Asia, is also a theoretician on the arms’ trade and extraction of raw materials in the context of conflicts in the global South. He is the author of ‘Questioning Globalized Militarism’. 

An Indian voter reads a political pamphlet distributed during a rally of the Indian National Congress in Mumbai. Credit: Al Jazeera English/CC-BY-SA-2.0

By Peter Custers
SECUNDERABAD, India, May 27 2014 (IPS)

Held in nine rounds over a period of several weeks, India’s national elections have been described as the most massive exercise in vote-casting worldwide.

The spectacle of witnessing some 814 million voters fan out among 935,000 polling stations that offered a choice between 1,600 political parties was undeniably exciting, but the results – when they were announced on May 16^th – came as an unpleasant shock for those who’ve long admired India’s secular political traditions.

Riding on the aspirations of India’s thriving urban middle classes, and lavishly supported by a booming corporate sector, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) – which champions a Hindu-nationalist agenda – gained an absolute majority of parliamentary seats, making its controversial leader, Narendra Modi, India’s 15^th prime minister.

Even more troubling, some say, was that the the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) – the electoral coalition headed by the BJP – succeeded in bagging over three-fifths of all seats in the new Lok Sabha, the lower house of parliament.

"While the [BJP] walked off with 282 out of 543 seats, its voter share was a mere 31 percent of the population, representing a discrepancy of more than 20 percent."
The once-invincible Congress Party, which ruled India for the last two consecutive terms, was virtually decimated, its share of parliamentary seats whittled down to just 44, a fifth of its former size.

A veritable media storm followed the announcement of the results, with conservative pundits extolling the BJP’s win as a “landslide”, and others bemoaning India’s descent into consolidated right-wing rule.

But a closer look at the voting patterns tells a story of persistent communalism in 21^st-century India, and suggests that elections in a country that has 1.2 billion people, over 120 linguistic groups, a sizeable proportion of adivasi (indigenous) people and a complex hierarchy of castes and sub-castes reflect, at best, a distorted democracy.

Dizzying diversity

While the Muslim minority constitutes some 17 percent of the country’s total population, they are poorly represented in the new parliament, having secured only 20 out of 543 seats.

Fearing the BJP’s track record of aggravating religious tensions, most Muslims refrained from casting in their favour, maintaining a safe distance from the NDA as well.

This was particularly true of Muslims in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, which holds 80 seats in the Lok Sabha.

Here, the BJP’s electoral strategy had banked on both communalism and caste politics. In the state’s northern Bahraich region, for instance, the party sought to reach out to Dalits and other low-caste Hindus by reviving the memory of an 11^th century Hindu king, in the process direspecting the revered Muslim saint Ghazi Saiyyad Salar Masud whom the king had defeated in combat.

This, coupled with memories of gruesome communal riots that rocked the westen region of Muzaffarnagar last August and September – leaving nearly 100 dead and 40,000 displaced – resulted in Muslims giving the BJP and NDA candidates a wide berth.

Similar ghosts haunted other states as well, with memories of the 2002 anti-Muslim pogrom in the western state of Gujarat, which Modi ran as chief minister from 2001 to 2014, no doubt leading many people to refrain from voting for the BJP.

The BJP also received a cold shoulder in India’s populous southern states. In Tamil Nadu, for instance, the All India Anna Dravidian Progress Federation (AIADMK) led by Jayalalithaa won a landslide victory, seizing 37 of the state’s 39 seats while the BJP gained just one.

The Hindu nationalists were also trounced in the south-western state of Kerala and the two states of bifurcated Andhra Pradesh, the fifth-most populous region in India that boats a Hindu majority.

Karnataka is the one state in the south where the BJP has made significant inroads. Here, the concept of Hindutva – an ideology centered on Hindu supremacy – gained a foothold in the 1990s partly thanks to a communal campaign aimed at undermining the syncretic Hindu-Muslim worship at the 1,000-year-old old cave-shrine of the Sufi saint Dada Hayat.

In the past, Hindu nationalists mobilised to install images of a low-caste Hindu god in the shrine, and worked to undermine the position of the hereditary spiritual head of the shrine. Though loudly criticised, the campaign paid off. In the recent Lok Sabha elections, the BJP won 17 out of the state’s 28 seats.

Votes versus seats: an electoral discrepancy

While much of the post-election commentary has focused on Modi’s sweeping win, few have unpacked the discrepancies between the number of seats secured by the BJP and the share of votes actually cast in their favour.

In what is referred to as India’s ‘first past the post’ system, electoral seats ultimately count more than votes, resulting in a huge gap between the BJP’s victory and its popularity among the majority of Indian voters.

While the party walked off with 282 out of 543 seats, its voter share was a mere 31 percent of the population, representing a discrepancy of more than 20 percent.

Similar figures from individual states are even more startling: various local newspaper reports point to some six states where the Hindutva party won a number of seats that, in percentage terms, was double or nearly double the share of votes it obtained.

In Uttar Pradesh, for instance, the BJP’s vote-share was only 42.3 percent, yet it secured 71 out of 80 seats. In Rajasthan, only 54.9 percent of voters chose the party, yet it bagged every single seat in the state. In New Delhi, its voter share was 46.4 percent, and here again it walked off with all Lok Sabha seats.

Similar discrepancies were registered for the central Indian states of Madhya Pradesh and Chattisgarh, as well as the eastern state of Jharkhand.

Another distorting factor was the extent of corporate funding towards the BJP’s electoral campaign, to the point that they alone could muster huge advertisements in the country’s newspapers, undertake prolonged online advertising (including the use of social media) and gain almost limitless access to television stations.

This sustained media campaign was not, however, accompanied by a countrywide groundswell of popular support for Modi; in fact, a safe majority of the electorate cast their ballots for parties that stood opposed to the BJP’s Hindutva politics.

These facts should act as encouragement for the AIADMK and other regional parties likely to form a joint opposition bloc in India’s new parliament.

Peter Custers is the author of ‘Capital Accumulation and Women’s Labour in Asian Economies’ (Monthly Review Press, New York, 2012)

(END)

Is Bangladesh just trying to process its dark legacy, the trauma of the genocide that took place during the country´s liberation war in 1971? Or is something more afoot?

On Feb. 5, activists belonging to a network called ‘Blogger and Online Activist Network’ occupied a key intersection in the centre of the capital Dhaka known as Shahbagh, and started protesting the verdict pronounced by the International Crimes Tribunal in the case against Abdul Quader Mollah, the assistant general secretary of the country’s main fundamentalist party, Jamaat-e-Islami.

According to the Tribunal, Quader Mollah amongst others actively participated in the massacre of large numbers of civilians committed in a locality near Dhaka at the very start of the liberation war. At the time he was a member of the Jamaat-e-Islami’s student wing. The victims perished when their houses were set on fire.

The verdict was the second one pronounced by the court’s judges, and it was considered too lenient by the activists. Hence they demanded capital punishment, nothing less.

The public’s reaction to the Shahbagh occupation has been so overwhelming, and the movement’s advance so sweeping, that it might surprise foreign observers not acquainted with the dynamics of Bangladeshi politics. Within no time, the demand for capital punishment reverberated throughout the length and breadth of the country, forcing the country’s Awami League-led government to change gear and strengthen its commitment to bringing justice for the victims of 1971.

Moreover, within no time the focus of the protests has shifted towards the demand that the Jamaat-e-Islami, seen as the party that embodies the legacy of war crimes, be banned.

Let’s further highlight the actors and momentum of the upsurge. The Shahbagh protests were initiated by none of the country’s established political parties. Nor were they started by any of the forces which in the past have been instrumental in building public opinion around the demand for adjudication of war crimes. The principal role is being played by independent activists, and by the country’s population of students and youngsters.

Whereas people from all walks of life have participated in the mass rallies and demonstrations held in Dhaka and elsewhere, it is students of universities and high schools who have been coming out in largest numbers.

Some of the key steps of the movement so far: the grand rally held at Shahbagh on Friday Feb. 8, three days after the beginning of the rising, which was attended by tens of thousands of people; the three minutes of silence observed countrywide by people forming human chains on Feb. 12; and the candle light protests staged on the evening of Feb. 14.

Particularly impressive also was the hoisting of national flags at thousands of educational institutions throughout the country on Sunday Feb. 17. The principal force carrying the mass movement forward indeed is Bangladesh’s generation of youngsters. They are showing a keen interest in events they did not experience themselves – those leading to the country’s independence 42 years back.

We also need to take a closer look at the political polarisation around the protests. First, the nature of the target the youngsters are up against. People are not just protesting the court’s leniency in the case against one single war criminal; they do not just insist that all those leading politicians who helped the Pakistani army implement its policy of mass murder be given capital punishment.

The six-point charter of demands which a delegation of the bloggers and online activists brought to the speaker of the parliament on Feb. 10 notably included the demands that the Jamaat-e-Islami be banned and that its financial wealth be confiscated.

There is indeed ample evidence proving that this party’s leaders in 1971 offered their services to the Pakistani military. They set up paramilitary forces and death squads which murdered innumerable numbers of intellectuals, members of the Hindu minority and other civilians.

Moreover, not only did Jamaati leaders never apologise for the role they played in 1971, since the start of the trials against a selected number of war criminals the party has tried its utmost to obstruct the court’s proceedings. Over the last months party militants have repeatedly confronted the police in street battles, protesting the very holding of the war crimes trials.

The Jamaat also is widely presumed to be behind the murder of online activist Rajib, whose body was found near his house on Feb. 15.

What of the attitude of Bangladesh’s government, which is led by the daughter of the country’s founder, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman? Characteristically, several leading politicians belonging to the ruling Awami League, including the party’s joint general secretary, were refused permission to speak at Shahbagh.

Indeed, whereas the chief demand of the activists tailors with official government policy, the mass movement is largely an expression of public frustration with the way the government has handled the war crimes trials.

And yet one can’t say that Bangladesh’s government has not responded to the restlessness of its young generations. Thus, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has publicly hailed the Shahbagh protestors, and several ministers have humbly visited the intercrossing to express their solidarity.

Equally significant is the fact that whereas the government in the past seemed very lukewarm – to say the least – about de-legalising the Jamaat-e-Islami, on Feb. 17 the Parliament dominated by the Awami League passed a bill enabling the International Crimes Tribunal to put the party on trial – in line with what the post-World War II Nuremberg trials did with Germany’s Nazi party.

It is possible to consider the dynamic interconnection between Bangladesh’s people’s upsurge and the Arab Spring. Given the fact that the country’s population is overwhelmingly Muslim, it is only natural that the Bangladeshi citizen closely follows the changes taking place in Egypt and the Middle East.

Again, from the way the Shahbagh protests were launched it is evident that Bangladeshi activists have drawn lessons from their Egyptian counterparts who started their encampment at Tahrir square with a call via facebook. Bangladesh’s youth has been late in reacting. Yet the agenda of the Shahbagh protests goes beyond the agenda of the democratic movements in most parts of the Middle East.

After all, here is a movement which does not just have an uneasy relation with Islamist parties. No, Bangladesh’s mass upsurge from its inception has borne the seal of secularism and tolerance, and is opposed to fundamentalist politics.

Indeed, the South Asian country is not just re-living its own historical legacy, i.e. the secular spirit that pervaded the struggle for the country’s independence. Perhaps it is on its way to setting a fresh example for the Muslim world and for the West.

By Peter Custers
Jan 28 2013 (IPS)

Few critical questions have been raised so far by Bangladesh’s intellectual community over the deal towards construction of two nuclear power plants in Rooppur, 180km from capital Dhaka.

Yet, questions do need to be posed. On Nov. 2 last year, Russia and Bangladesh signed the long awaited nuclear power agreement on the supply of two 1000 Megawatt reactors. Significantly, the deal was closely followed up by a major defence deal worth a billion dollars for delivery of armoured vehicles, transport helicopters and other weaponry.

This last deal was sealed during Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s recent Moscow visit. The given pattern – of a deal facilitating the purchase and transfer of nuclear technology paving the way for enlarged armament transfers – is broadly similar to the pattern set by the U.S. and India when they signed their framework agreement on nuclear cooperation in 2008.

Here, an expansion in U.S. exports of armaments to India was the hidden, reverse side of the nuclear deal. And while ostensibly there is no direct link between the two types of trade, both the U.S. and Russia evidently are equally eager to enlarge both their sales of nuclear technology and of weaponry towards countries of the South. But whether the Rooppur deal and the sequential defence deal – both involving huge sums of public money – are really in the interests of Bangladesh needs to be scrutinised.

Bangladesh’s nuclear lobby undoubtedly will have celebrated the Rooppur deal as a grand success. After all the dream to provide Bangladesh with nuclear energy is longstanding, dating from the time Bangladesh was a part of Pakistan before 1971.

Few details on the content of the nuclear agreement have been revealed to Bangladesh’s public. From the ‘self-evaluation report’ submitted by Bangladesh to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in the middle of 2012, however, it appears that the two nuclear reactors to be supplied by Russia to Bangladesh will be of VVER-1000 design.

This is a water-cooled and water-moderated reactor reportedly devised in the late 1970s. Towards the cooling of the nuclear fuel rods, water is pumped into the primary circuit of the reactor and kept under constant pressure to prevent it from reaching boiling point.

After its use in the reactor complex, the (polluted) water needs to be released, i.e. dumped back onto the environment. This immediately raises the question as to the consequences of Rooppur for the fisherfolk in Ishwardi, the sub-district of Pabna where Rooppur is located. Will biodiversity in the reactor’s surrounding water bodies be affected?

Further pertinent questions arise once we try to envision how Rooppur’s nuclear fuel rods will be supplied and disposed of. To some extent the arrangements chosen imply that Bangladesh’s own population will not be burdened with the damaging consequences of the nuclear waste that is generated in the nuclear production chain.

Neither, it is implied, will massive amounts of low-level waste be dumped in the country in consequence of uranium mining. Nor would the country’s landscape or subsoil be disfigured due to the presence of storage tanks containing long-lasting, high-level fluid waste from nuclear reprocessing.

Will this suffice to allay the public’s fears? Under the agreement signed between Russia and Bangladesh, Bangladesh will not itself enrich uranium. Russia will both supply the fuel elements for the reactors, and will take back the highly radioactive rods once they have completed their ‘life-cycle’.

However, this does not mean that the people of Ishwardi and Pabna can rest reassured. Central issues to be looked into here are the temporary storage of the radioactive fuel rods after the end of their usage and the transportation of the fuel rods to and from the Rooppur nuclear complex. In Europe the transportation by road of used fuel elements has for many years aroused fierce resistance from anti-nuclear activists.

Thirdly, there is the question of reactor safety from a nuclear catastrophe. Russian officials will surely argue that the VVER-1000 design has proven to be more secure than the design of the granite-moderated reactor in Chernobyl, Ukraine, where the world’s most catastrophic nuclear accident ever took place in 1986.

Surely, it is the last-mentioned RBMK design which has burdened the Russian state and people with nightmarish problems – of hundreds of thousands of cancer deaths and of a vast contaminated region where agricultural production had to be suspended. Yet the so-called ‘stress tests’ undertaken in Russia in 2011 subsequent to the Fukushima disaster in Japan have laid bare numerous basic defects that Russian reactors share with those in Japan.

A joint report brought out by Rosatom and other Russian state institutions in the middle of 2011, for instance, questioned the capability of the country’s reactors to remain safe if cooling systems collapse, and there reportedly is no guarantee that power backup systems will be effective in case of a cooling system failure.

The official report also described how spent fuel is simply allowed to accrue in onsite storage sites because of lack of space. One wonders whether scientists belonging to Bangladesh’s nuclear establishment have reviewed this report by Russia’s state agencies. And whether their own worries have been dispelled.

The country would do well to take notice of the huge international controversy surrounding nuclear energy today. In neighbouring India, for instance, there has emerged an informed debate, which is of immediate relevance for Bangladesh. Coincidentally the strongest opposition against nuclear construction has been built in the area surrounding Koodankulam in Tamil Nadu precisely in opposition to a VVER-reactor supplied by the Russian Federation.

Being densely populated and subject to annual river flooding, Bangladesh can ill afford to take risks. Hence, any construction works in Rooppur should be preceded by an informed public debate in which both the country’s progressive intellectuals, the new generation of urban activists, and Pabna’s peasants and fisher folk take part.

Excerpt:

By Peter Custers and - -
LEIDEN, the Netherlands, Nov 24 2011 (IPS)

The issue seems rather similar to that of unconventional oil and has already sparked a major controversy in the West. But its implications for the debate on climate change are hardly known in countries of the Global South.

On Nov. 6, thousands of protesters staged a colourful encirclement of the White House in Washington D.C., protesting against the Keystone XL pipeline-project and against expansion in extraction of tar sands oil. Within just four days after this bold direct action was staged, Obama ordered a thorough review of the pipeline plan and suspended decision-making on its construction.

The U.S. President thus seemed to be bowing to the massive pressure which the environmental movement had brought to bear against the scheme. Yet critical observers were quick to point out that the victory may be just temporary, and that there is an urgent need to keep up political pressure – not just against use of tar sands oil, but also to oppose tapping of shale gas, that is, unconventional natural gas.

Drilling for shale gas has a history in the U.S. But over the last decade, extraction of the gas has skyrocketed, and a huge number of drilling projects are on the drawing board – with Obama’s blessing. Hence the dire need to scrutinise what implications such extraction, called ‘fracking’, has for human health and nature, in particular for debates on climate change.

At first there seems little reason for alarm. It is common knowledge that carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from the burning of natural gas are substantially lower than those from the other main fossil fuels, coal and oil. Perhaps as much as a third less. Yet in 2011 a major public controversy has erupted in the U.S. over shale gas, paralleling that over tar sands oil.

Critics point out that drilling companies consistently underplay the risks from fracking. What are the facts? Fracking or hydraulic fracturing is somewhat comparable to the in-situ mining of tar sands oil which relies on high-pressure injection of steam into the subsoil to separate oil from tar sands. Here again, to obtain shale gas, high pressure is applied so as to pump vast quantities of chemical sludge into layers of shale rock located deep in the earth.

This results in the fracturing of the shale and the release of natural gas trapped in the rocks. Truly massive quantities of water are required to undertake these operations. Also required are a range of chemicals, including lead and other toxics.

Further, whereas a portion of the sludge is brought back to the surface and stored in waste ponds, a major part of the sludge is dissipated and slowly seeps back to the surface. According to some reports that is 50 percent of the total.

Companies involved in fracking are not even obliged to disclose what chemicals they use, the lame argument being that these are ‘trade secrets’. Hence a full picture of the environmental implications is hard to draw. Yet concerned scientists have repeatedly pointed at the risks to drinking water sources in areas close to the shale gas drilling wells.

A second risk that has made the headlines in the U.S. is that regarding releases of methane. Methane, as is well known by now, is the second most important greenhouse gas next to CO2. It stays in the atmosphere for a far shorter period of time, but within that time-span absorbs far more of the sun’s heat than does CO2 through its century-long stay in the atmosphere.

Some calculations put the potency of methane over a period of 20 years at 70 to 100 times that of CO2. Further, a study published by the NASA Goddard Institute in 2009 suggested that methane is not only very potent. Its effects also get amplified through interaction with aerosols in the atmosphere.

In yet another study, brought out in April by a research team of Cornell University, the ‘fugitive’ methane releases from fracking were specifically highlighted. The study concluded that substantial quantities of methane are leaked into the atmosphere as the drilling wells are struck, and as the shale gas is brought to the surface and marketed.

Though published in a peer review magazine, the study surely was questioned by skeptics. But then it should be seen as additional to what the U.S. government’s own qualified researchers had already pointed out. A late 2010 report of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the government’s watchdog, contained concrete figures comparing methane releases from conventional and unconventional gas wells. Here again, the evidence went straight against extraction of shale gas.

Now, the problems of assessment are compounded by the fact that shale gas drilling is largely unregulated, nay has been deregulated even as the industry’s reach grew, that is, in the period when the need for regulation was largest. Since they are exempted from disclosing elementary data, the drilling companies are not only free to use toxic chemicals with impunity; they do not even need to reveal the results of their measurements of methane leaks.

Further, in a move that has gained notoriety, companies drilling for shale gas in 2005 were exempted from complying with the U.S.’s Safe Drinking Water Act. Under the Bush administration also, responsibility for overseeing the sector’s activities was taken away from the environmental watchdog EPA. As to guarding for the safety of drinking water, some U.S. Congressmen belonging to the Democratic Party have attempted three times since 2009 to bring shale gas drilling back under the concerned Act, so far without success.

Hence, the example of the fracking of shale gas retells the story of deregulation which has been so characteristic for the U.S.’s and the world’s financial sector in the era of neo-liberalism. In both cases, the profit interests of corporation and of a narrow section of company executives have been put wide above the welfare of the world’s population.

Right at a time when the world is preparing for its next Climate Summit to be held at the end of November, extraction of unconventional oil and natural gas has come to the fore as a burning issue. Time is running out. Aside from the U.S., Canada, another world producer of natural gas, too is planning to vastly increase reliance on shale gas extraction. Yet here too public debate has picked up.

In September the Pembina Institute, a critical research centre on energy, brought out a special report on shale gas and climate change. Along with the methane releases, the report underlines the large energy needs associated with fracking. A vast amount of energy is required to pump the chemical sludge under high pressure into the layers of shale rocks. Hence, if extraction of shale gas is expanded, as foreseen, Canada very likely will fail to reach its emission reduction targets, and its emission levels might even go up.

The question for proponents of the fossil fuel industry once again is this: with the maintenance of a two degree ceiling on climate change already beyond reach, how much more do you want humanity and other species to be put at risk? Clearly, broadly formulated international objectives to limit damage no longer suffice.

If we are to avoid runaway climate change, we need a combination of stringent prohibitions on the most destructive forms of extraction, and global policies to limit energy use. Why not buttress the demand for a ban on all drilling for tar sands oil and shale gas? Why not add the demand for a global and equitable regime of energy rationing?

Excerpt:

By Peter Custers and - -
LEIDEN, the Netherlands, Oct 5 2011 (IPS)

The anti-nuclear struggle in India did not gain the same national prominence as the hunger strike waged by Anna Hazare against rampant corruption among India’s top politicians. Yet a landmark it surely was in the history of India’s nuclear programme.

On Aug. 17, a group of activists started a hunger strike near Koodankulam at the southern tip of Tamil Nadu state. The action was directed against Indian government plans to commission a 1000 MW Russian- built nuclear plant.

From the very start it was apparent that this was not a struggle waged by a small disgruntled minority. The hunger strike was preceded and accompanied by mass demonstrations where thousands of fisher folk from surrounding villages took part.

The Gandhian style protests were temporarily suspended in late August, but they were resumed after the Department of Energy (DAE) indicated it would ignore the protestors’ demands.

Then, in the second phase starting Sep. 11, the movement peaked once more. This time, more than 100 people, including priests and nuns, went on indefinite hunger strike in the village Idinthakarai.

Every day 10,000 people or more would gather from the surrounding area to demonstrate their support. And every day support kept expanding, as students boycotted schools, merchants closed their shops, and gruel kitchens were set up in adjacent villages where fisher folk refused to go out to catch fish.

This time Tamil Nadu’s politicians just had to respond. On Sep. 19, Jayalalitha, Tamil Nadu’s Chief Minister, wrote an open letter to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, insisting the protestors be heard.

Jayalalitha’s move capped an initial success for the protests, which arguably are the most widespread and sustained local protest ever to have occurred against nuclear energy in India. They closely follow the open discontent registered earlier this year against nuclear construction plans in Jaitapur along the Maharashtra coast.

Both Jaitapur and Koodankulam are crucial links in India’s plans to expand its reliance on nuclear energy. But whereas the technology for the new nuclear plants in Jaitapur is to be supplied by the French company Areva, the reactors being installed at the plants in Koodankulam are Russian in origin.

They are known as the VVER-1000/392 design. Though based on light-water reactors in use for long, the design is a new variant. Indian scientists have long questioned whether Russia’s VVER-1000 technology is safe. Doubts have further been fuelled by last March’s Fukushima disaster in Japan, and by the new assessments on nuclear safety made since then.

In a report leaked to environmental organisations in June, an amalgam of Russian state agencies admitted that Russia’s nuclear industry is extremely vulnerable to natural and man-made disasters. Some 31 security flaws were listed.

The document among others questions the capacity of Russian reactors to continue to function safely if cooling systems fail. It also pinpoints the risks of hydrogen explosions. Sergei Kiriyenko, the chief of Russia’s nuclear coordinating body Rosatom, has said the deficiencies can be overcome if only enough money would be forthcoming.

This is hardly reassuring to Indian critics. Fishers in Tamil Nadu are also concerned that dependence of the light-water reactors on sea water for cooling, and the flushing of effluents into the sea will seriously disrupt the ecology along their coast.

Furthermore, Koodankulam protesters have pointed their finger at experiences gathered at Kalpakkam, the nuclear complex located close to Tamil Nadu’s capital Chennai along the eastern coast.

Here the wider significance of their movement becomes quickly evident. The Kalpakkam complex does not just harbour a nuclear power plant, but also a reprocessing facility- a plant where nuclear fuel rods, after they have outlived their use in reactors, are chemically treated so as to extract raw materials for re-use as energy source.

The method of reprocessing nuclear fuel rods has always been defended as an appropriate method to dispose of dangerous nuclear waste, as a method of ‘recycling’. Yet nuclear reprocessing results in new waste, and that is the most damaging industrial waste in the entire nuclear production chain. It has to be stored and put aside in nuclear waste tanks for an indefinite period of time.

Storage of such high-level waste in tanks has resulted in catastrophic accidents, notably in Cheliabinsk (former Soviet Union). The nuclear fuel rods from the reactors at Koodankulam, once depreciated, will most likely be reprocessed at Kalpakkam.

Yet Kalpakkam has already proven to be a dangerous hotspot. Here, in January 2003, a valve connecting a high-level radioactive liquid waste tank and a low level waste tank leaked, leading to radiation exposure for at least six employees, an unknown number of deaths, and temporary closure of Kalpakkam’s main plant. The Kalpakkam nuclear complex also holds the dubious distinction of having been flooded when the devastating tsunami of 2004 struck.

Kalpakkam hence is an additional reason for worries. Not least because the nuclear complex harbours a test reactor constructed towards enabling India build a plutonium economy. Indian peace activists have expressed suspicions that the plutonium separated at Indian civilian reprocessing facilities will be diverted and used to increase the country’s stock of atomic weapons.

These suspicions have not been allayed by recent developments. Since the beginning of this year, India boasts three reprocessing plants. Further, the U.S. government has in principle granted the Indian government permission to domestically reprocess fuel elements from reactors to be supplied under the 2008 U.S.-India deal. Hence, diversion of plutonium towards India’s weapons’ programme is well possible.

Again, the use of plutonium separated at Kalpakkam for civilian purposes is no less questionable. Plutonium is the most toxic substance humanity has ever created. Even microgram quantities of plutonium, if inhaled or ingested by humans, are known to result in fatal cancers.

In Europe, fast breeder reactors – so termed since they create additional plutonium even as they burn plutonium – have long been considered unfeasible. The fast-breeder reactor at Kalkar in Germany, built in the 1970s and 1980s against fierce international opposition, could not be put into operation.

France’s fast breeder, the Superphoenix, had to be closed in the late 1990s after a poor record of 12 years of operation. Yet these negative experiences are apparently being ignored by India. Technological preparations towards the building of a full-scale fast breeder reactor at Kalpakkam are reportedly in an advanced stage.

In short, the significance of the struggle waged by villagers in the south of Tamil Nadu stretches well beyond the Koodankulam nuclear project itself. Resistance was called off after the union government in Delhi sent minister of state V. Narayanasamy to Tamil Nadu to talk to the Koodankulam protestors.

Still, it would be wrong to believe that the demand of the protestors – that no nuclear production in Koodankulam be started – will easily be accepted. The stakes are very large, since India’s nuclear lobby has set its mind on turning India into a plutonium power. Yet because the Koodankulam project is closely intertwined with plans for expansion of the Kalpakkam complex, the struggle is bound to reverberate throughout the state of Tamil Nadu and beyond.

*Dr. Peter Custers is author of ‘Questioning Globalized Militarism’ (Tulika/Merlin, 2007)

Excerpt:

By Peter Custers
BERLIN, Jul 27 2011 (IPS)

The decision was expected, yet it shook the world’s nuclear establishment. On May 29, some two and a half months after disaster struck at Japan’s Fukushima- Daiichi nuclear complex, Germany’s right-wing government of Angela Merkel announced that Germany is exiting from the nuclear era.

Whereas up until now the country has relied on nuclear production for an estimated 27 percent of its electricity needs, in 11 years all reliance on nuclear production will be ended.

Out of 17 existing reactors, operations at eight including the seven oldest ones were suspended immediately after Japan’s catastrophe. Then, Chancellor Merkel – against opposition from German energy corporations – announced that all other nuclear plants will be closed too, by 2022 at the latest.

This heralds a major turn-about in German policymaking, since Merkel’s government had previously planned extending the country’s reliance on nuclear energy. Critics of the German government are quick to point out that Chancellor Merkel has bowed to popular pressure.

And there indeed is no doubt that the government’s turn-about is the result of popular mobilisation against its opportunist energy policies. Regional elections held in May were accompanied by massive demonstrations in German cities against any continued reliance on nuclear energy. In these elections, the Green Party which has consistently advocated a nuclear exit emerged as principal victor.

Germany’s exit by no means stands alone. It represents a trend which, if not Europe-wide, is at least partly so. At least two other Western European governments have taken similar decisions under the pressure of public opinion. Switzerland, which earlier planned to build new nuclear power plants, now has officially abandoned these plans. And Italy, ruled by Silvio Berlusconi’s right-wing government has witnessed a dramatic resurgence of anti-nuclear sentiments too.

As recently as 2008, Berlusconi’s government had announced plans to build four new nuclear plants. It had reversed the suspension of nuclear construction programmes which had been in force since the 1986 meltdown in Chernobyl.

Yet in May last year Berlusconi’s government put all construction of new nuclear plants ‘on ice’. Now Italy’s shaky government is in no position to resume any nuclear construction. In a Jun. 15 referendum an overwhelming 94 to 96 percent expressed themselves against construction of new reactors. The referendum participation at 57 percent did not seem high, but the outcome was considered a solid blow to Berlusconi’s government.

Merkel’s decision was the outcome of a long process, dating back to the beginning of the 1990s. Twenty years ago, a section of Germany’s political and business elite had already visualised the need for a transition from nuclear production and fossil fuels, such as coal and oil, towards ‘alternative’ sources of energy, such as hydro-electric energy, windmills and solar panels.

In 1991, the German government adopted a law that wind and solar energy would have to be accepted by companies supplying energy to German consumers, and at par with fossil fuel sources of energy. The law also specified the price to be paid to alternative energy suppliers.

The system was further refined in 2000, when a second text was adopted offering suppliers of alternative energy a 20 years’ guarantee. Some critics argue that the ‘feed-in-tariff system’ contains nasty loopholes; it is not the corporate sector but German households that bear the brunt of the costs for alternative energy protection.

Nevertheless, there is no doubt that Germany’s legal framework has facilitated a significant transition. Renewable energy sources supplied no more than 3.1 percent of Germany’s electricity in 1990, by 2010 this reportedly was 17 percent. Also, of the world’s electricity from windmills, Germany is known to supply as much as 25 percent.

Nuclear proponents in Germany and beyond have launched a vigorous counter-offensive. They question the implications of Merkel’s decision for ongoing international efforts to avert a climate catastrophe.

Merkel’s government instituted an ethical commission, and the outcome of this commission’s work seems to leave room for doubt. In line with the commission’s recommendations, the German government remains committed both to a reduction of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions (40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020), and to a rapid expansion in production of wind energy.

Yet in the short run Germany is set to construct new power stations relying on gas and, of all polluting sources, coal. This seems contradictory, to say the least. But then the entire debate in Europe regarding future energy supplies is still axed on one unassailable presumption, that is, the presumption that exponential growth in energy production should continue forever.

This is exactly the point that needs to be urgently questioned. For it is only possible to avert both climate catastrophe, nuclear catastrophe and combined climate-cum-nuclear catastrophes, if strict restrictions on energy use by Western consumers can be agreed on.

Meanwhile, Germany’s decision to exit from the nuclear era is healthy from an ecological perspective. The founding of the nuclear sector during World War II, with the Manhattan Project of the U.S. government, had a doubly negative significance.

On the one hand, humanity entered the era of atomic weapons. On the other hand, the initiation of nuclear production – for military purposes first, then for civilian purposes – also heralded, or coincided with, the start of a global ecological crisis. That crisis is today is escalating almost beyond human control.

Against this background, the German government’s decision to bow to people’s demands is the beginning of a new trend.

True – Germany is not at the point of building a ‘green’ economy, we are far from that. True – Germany’s system for promotion of alternative energy is not watertight. It is no more than one ‘Keynesian’ element in policymaking that is largely neoliberal. True – controversies in Germany now are shifting, for instance to whether production by windmills and solar panels should be corporate- controlled or decentralised. Yet the decisions by Western European governments to reject the idea of a nuclear renaissance impacts beyond nuclear production itself.

A section of humanity at last has decided consciously to reject a technology which is outright destructive and severely damages life on planet earth. This shows that an ecological future for humanity is possible.

*Dr Peter Custers is a theoretician in nuclear waste.

Excerpt:

By Peter Custers
LEIDEN, The Netherlands, Jun 10 2011 (IPS)

The alarm bells this time are not being rung by climate scientists or by environmental activists. They are being rung by none other than the International Energy Agency (IEA) – the institution established in the 1970s to defend the interests of Western oil consuming nations.

On May 30, the IEA issued a press release that sent shock waves through the Western world. According to the release, global emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) have reached their highest levels ever in 2010.

Although following the financial crisis emission levels in 2009 temporarily dipped, in 2010 they are calculated to have been 30.6 gigatonnes. For the layperson, the implications of this figure may not immediately be evident, but the figure squarely indicates that exponential growth in CO2 emissions has not been stopped by the joint international initiatives taken since the 1990s.

Accumulation has continued up until today. A decade back, in 2000, the level of emissions was probably about 23 gigatonnes. This means that over the last ten years alone annual emission levels have increased by a staggering 25 percent! Hence, the IEA’s chief economist, Fatih Birol, is sounding the alarm, stating: “Our latest estimates are another wake-up call. The world has edged incredibly close to the level of emissions that should not be reached until 2020, if the two degree Celsius target is to be attained.”

Global leaders agreed a target of limiting temperature increase to two degrees Celsius at the U.N. climate change talks in Cancun in 2010.

How do we assess the implications of the IEA’s assessment of humanity’s efforts to avert a climate catastrophe? Prominent climate scientists have for years been debating what target humanity should set for itself. What maximum level of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is permissible if runaway climate change is to be averted? Many scientists have been pushing for the target to be set at 350 parts per million – meaning that the presence of greenhouse gas molecules in the world’s atmosphere should not exceed 350 molecules per million molecules of atmospheric air.

Significantly, when the Copenhagen Summit was held in December of 2009, it witnessed a growing consensus among a majority of nations that the precautionary advice of climate scientists should be taken to heart, and that the target of a 1.5 degree Celsius cap should be maintained. Hence, critics reading the IEA press release will react or retort that the agency is not sounding alarm bells as loudly as it should – for it is still working on the presumption that a two degree Celsius target is defendable.

James Hansen, one of the world’s foremost climate archaeologists, has become internationally renowned, amongst others because in his scientific papers and publicity work he takes account of the evolution which the earth’s climate has undergone during the many hundreds of millions of years before human civilisation arose. Hansen puts forth data on the situation that prevailed three million years ago. At that time the earth was two or three degrees warmer than it is today – and it was a different planet, with sea levels not just higher than they are now, but a staggering 25 metres higher!

The lower sea levels since civilisation arose have led to the building of human settlements in coastal areas previously flooded or covered by ice. The sea level difference is, of course, basically explained by the existence today of huge ice sheets – notably the Antarctic and the Greenland ice sheets.

Hansen argues that – unlike previously believed – the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets won’t take thousands of years to melt. They will disintegrate rapidly once danger points are reached. Hence, the American scientist maintains that “a two degree Celsius global warming, or even a 1.7 degree warming, is a disaster scenario”.

Clearly, given the IEA’s data on 2010 CO2 emissions at hand, Hansen would ring shrieking, not soft alarm bells.

What policy-consequences should be drawn from the IEA’s revelations? So far the two key paths the world’s policymakers have followed to stem the exponential growth in emissions have been ineffectual. These are the paths of ‘technological’ and of ‘market-based’ fixes.

Here it is striking that the IEA’s chief economist continues to express a holy belief in technological fixes.

When releasing the IEA’s data on CO2 missions, Birol advocated – of all technological fixes – continued reliance on nuclear energy. This is surprising because any expansion in capital-intensive nuclear production requires many years to accomplish – doing very little to prevent exponential growth of CO2 emissions in the short-term.

What’s worse is that both nuclear production and reliance on fossil fuels result in forms of waste that are inescapable – meaning that they represent a dead-end for humanity. This is not to deny there are great differences between the two types of waste. Greenhouse gases such as CO2 exist in nature – they have only become damaging due to their extremely high levels produced under the industrial system that is based on fossil fuels, i.e. on coal, oil and gas. On the other hand, many of the radioactive elements in nuclear waste do not exist in nature, but emerge as by-products when nuclear energy is generated.

Both fossil fuels and the nuclear production chain threaten to saddle humanity with consequences that can’t be undone. In case of nuclear waste: the half-life of radiation in thorium-230, in plutonium-242 and in jodium-129 respectively lasts 76 thousand, 380 thousand and over 15 million years!

If a technological fix via the expansion of nuclear production is questionable – what about a ‘market- based’ fix to solve the problem of climate change? Here it might be too early to close the debate. Yet the IEA’s announcement regarding CO2 emissions in 2010 raises big questions regarding market-based approaches to avert run-away climate change.

Under the Kyoto climate change treaty of 1997 policymakers set concrete targets towards reducing global emissions of CO2. To stem their exponential growth, obligatory reductions were agreed on. The main practical measures proposed to achieve reduction targets were market-based. They entailed making CO2 wastes tradable – which in effect transferred responsibility for storage of CO2 to countries of the Global South.

Perhaps the historical lesson to be drawn from the IEA’s announcement is that the time for market- based experiments is over. Humanity can no longer afford to continue with failed experiments.

From common sense, to avert a climate catastrophe, we need to rapidly embark on a different, a more ‘radical’ path.

Compelled by Hansen’s scientific analysis and the IEA’s historic, if defective, announcement, I venture to suggest that the Global South needs to insist on a new approach to avert a climate catastrophe.

Why not propose that the Western world agrees to help enforce global rationing of energy access? Why not demand from the West that it help institute a worldwide system of energy rationing that is both equitable to the world’s poor and to vulnerable nations? Why not and put a permanent and strict cap on overall emissions?

*(Dr. Peter Custers is author of a theoretical study on nuclear production, Questioning Globalized Militarism, Tulika/Merlin Press, 2011.)

Excerpt:

By Peter Custers
LEIDEN, The Netherlands , Jun 1 2011 (IPS)

The pattern of deception to gain legitimacy for war in the eyes of the public by now is familiar. In the middle of March, Western powers led by the U.S., Britain and France initiated actions of war against Muammar Gaddafi’s government of Libya. The start of war was preceded by a publicity offensive in which the Libyan leader was depicted as a madman.

The war was defended on the grounds that the Libyan people needed to be protected against their dictator via a ‘no-fly’ zone, and the public was made to believe the West exclusively aimed at defending the humanitarian interest of Libya’s population. Now, concerns among the Western public over Libyan events have thinned. The need to camouflage war aims has concomitantly decreased.

Time to highlight some of the long-term implications of the Western intervention. A sound, but difficult test case is the West’s use of depleted uranium weapons. Though U.S. and British officials have so far denied their employment over Libya, from the very start of the intervention to overthrow Gaddafi speculation has been rife that ammunitions used by the U.S. and NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation) contain ‘depleted’ uranium. What to make of these stories?

First, the record on previous uses of so-called depleted uranium weapons is unequivocal. While the very word ‘depleted’ or impoverished appears to indicate that arms containing this type of uranium are not very dangerous, depleted uranium well exemplifies the intractable nature of nuclear production. For the radioactivity spread by these weapons is not just long lasting, it is perennial in a literal sense: it is said to last into the future for nearly as long as planet earth exists: some 4,5 billion years.

Yet for two reasons the U.S. and European states have historically opted to build weapons with everlasting radiating effects. Depleted uranium, largely consisting in uranium-238, is a very hardy metal. Hence it can be employed to strengthen military vehicles and arms. Also, arms containing ‘depleted’ uranium can easily pierce the armament systems of any, less powerfully equipped enemy.

Thus, the Iraqi army during the second Gulf war staged against Iraq’s occupation of oil-rich Kuwait in 1991 was taken by surprise. Suddenly, U.S. tanks fired shells, later identified as depleted uranium shells, having a 1,000 meters longer carrying capacity than theirs, and hitting their tanks with extraordinary speed. Again, there is ample evidence confirming that the U.S. war plane known as Thunderbolt (the A-10) in the Gulf war and in the war against former Yugoslavia staged in the late 1990s fired similar armour-piercing shells from its cannon. A whole range of Western tanks and military planes have meanwhile been equipped with shells and bombs containing depleted uranium.

But how damaging is the use of depleted uranium in war really? It emerged as a by-product of the process of nuclear enrichment – massive quantities of depleted uranium originally needed to be put aside as waste. Their new destination therefore might appear an appropriate answer to the generation of waste. Yet the deleterious impact of materials containing a relatively ‘low’ dose of radioactivity, as uranium-238 does, have been exposed for decades – and from well before they started being channelized towards Western weaponry.

Best documented have been the consequences for Iraq, where depleted uranium weapons figured in U.S. tanks shells and bombs fired in the 1991 Gulf war, but also in the occupation war started in 2003. Two French journalistic accounts published in 2001 have given detailed descriptions of the effects suffered by Iraq’s civilian population after the Gulf war.

The extensive field-investigation carried out by the priest Jean-Marie Benjamin brought out that there had been a 350 percent increase in the rate of malformations in Iraqi babies at birth, such as dislocations of brains outside the head and of eyes at an unusually wide distance. Again, there have been reports that the number of blood cancers, leukemia, in Iraqi children has not just increased, but has multiplied.

Academic reports, for example by the conservative American Rand Corporation, have similarly spoken of indiscriminate risks for the lungs and digestive systems, of civilians and combatants alike. Radioactive dust may be inhaled after explosions of depleted uranium shells, or people get radiated after contact with unexploded shells in war zones. The toxic effects from depleted uranium weapons, such as for human mutations, have been recorded too.

Third, not only has the danger of depleted uranium weapons’ use by Western powers been put on record by a variety of sources, the use has also been delegitimised, thanks notably to sustained campaigning by anti-war coalitions over the past decade. Western analysts studying the U.S. and NATO war strategies have long ago admitted that depleted uranium weapons when spreading their radioactivity do not differentiate between military and civilian targets.

As long as such weapons are being used, damaging impacts on non-combatants, on civilian populations, cannot be averted. Hence in recent years international pressure has mounted, so as to force the U.S. and other Western powers which have incorporated this uranium into their armoury, to renege on its use.

Significantly, the General Assembly of the United Nations has thrice adopted resolutions expressing its concerns over the given weaponry. In the third resolution adopted towards the end of 2010, no less than 148 UN member states demanded from states employing depleted uranium weapons that they frankly ‘reveal their use’ whenever asked to do so by affected countries. Perhaps not surprisingly, four UN members voted against – the U.S., Britain, France and Israel. The three countries now waging war against Libya plus Israel stood opposed to an overwhelming majority of states expressing humanity’s growing anxiety.

Since the start of the war against Gaddafi, speculation by critics on the likelihood or risk that Western powers use the discredited weaponry in Libya has primarily focused on the potential inclusion of depleted uranium in two types of weapons; as warhead or armour enhancing material in cruise missiles; and as part of the shells fired by A-10 military planes. In view of the past, inclusion in the shells fired by the A-10 Thunderbolt is more than likely.

Although Western officials routinely deny that they have used depleted uranium in the war on Libya, they have not excluded its possibility either. There are ample reasons to suspect that the denials are a war tactic, as was the initial denial stating that Western powers do not target bringing down Gaddafi’s government. The fear is justified that the Libyan civilian population will face long-lasting radiation effects from depleted uranium weapons used over their territory.

*(Dr. Peter Custers is author of a theoretical study on nuclear production, Questioning Globalized Militarism, Tulika/Merlin Press, 2011.)

Excerpt:

By Peter Custers
LEIDEN, the Netherlands, Apr 25 2011 (IPS)

The accident could have served as a wake-up call to the whole of humanity. Twenty-five years ago, on Apr. 26 1986, disaster struck at the fourth reactor of the Chernobyl nuclear complex in the Ukrainian state of the former Soviet Union.

The accident actually started taking shape in the preceding night, when workers undertook a turbine test that had incompletely been carried out before the nuclear plant became operational. When the test was being carried out, the automatic emergency system was shut down, undermining reactor safety.

Excerpt:

By Peter Custers
LEIDEN, the Netherlands, Apr 24 2011 (IPS)

The accident could have served as a wake-up call to the whole of humanity. Twenty-five years ago, on Apr. 26 1986, disaster struck at the fourth reactor of the Chernobyl nuclear complex in the Ukrainian state of the former Soviet Union.

The accident actually started taking shape in the preceding night, when workers undertook a turbine test that had incompletely been carried out before the nuclear plant became operational. When the test was being carried out, the automatic emergency system was shut down, undermining reactor safety.

During the test also, fuel elements burst, setting off a chain of events which in no time resulted in two powerful explosions. Soon the reactor’s meltdown was a fact, and a huge radioactive cloud spread its contaminating effects over a vast area of the Soviet Union and beyond.

A quarter century has lapsed since this accident occurred. Until last month’s accident at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, Chernobyl was considered to be the very worst disaster ever to have occurred at a nuclear production facility since the founding of the sector during World War II. Moreover, as recent reports confirm, even today the Chernobyl disaster is far from over.

Hence a retrospective is surely appropriate. The more so since the Japanese authorities have meanwhile rated their Fukushima accident at the same level as the 1986 Chernobyl catastrophe.

First, the radioactive fall-out from the Soviet granite-moderated reactor was unprecedentedly large. Officially, the fall-out is stated to have been 50 million of curies of radioactivity. But it probably was at least several times this figure.

Amongst the numerous known and unknown nuclear accidents that historically have occurred, Chernobyl is not the only one to have resulted in a dangerously large fall-out of radioactivity. When storage tanks for high- radioactive waste in 1957 exploded in a nuclear military reprocessing factory in Cheliabinsk, in a remote corner of the Ural mountains, tens of millions of curies of radioactivity also leaked, damaging the health of hundreds of thousands of Soviet citizens.

Both the fall-out from Chernobyl and that from Cherniabinsk by far exceeded the radioactive fall-out from the U.S.’s dropping of atom bombs on Japan’s cities of Nagasaki and Hiroshima in 1945. Besides, since the Chernobyl complex was located close to densely populated parts of the Ukraine and Europe, the radioactive fall-out from the damaged civilian reactor was bound to be very consequential.

Fifty thousand people living in Chernobyl’s immediate surroundings had to be evacuated. A vast rural region became uninhabitable. And 15 countries of Europe saw half of their territories contaminated by the radioactive cloud.

As happened in the wake of the recent Fukushima-Daiichi disaster, public authorities everywhere were forced to put restrictions on the sale and import of food, so as to reduce the risk of radiation-induced cancer deaths among their populations.

Initially, the effects of the Chernobyl catastrophe and the widespread anger it aroused put a brake on plans to expand production of nuclear energy, in particular in Europe and the U.S. Yet as ‘Chernobyl’ started receding from public memory, proponents of nuclear energy once again went on the offensive, claiming the disaster had cost very few lives.

Even a section of well-known European intellectuals worried about climate change have been swayed. The renowned British thinker James Lovelock a few years back surprisingly stated that claims regarding a huge death toll from Chernobyl are ‘a powerful lie’.

The only admission institutions representing nuclear interests, such as the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), are willing to make is that the disaster caused an increase in thyroid cancers in children. This, they say, may result in just a few thousand mortalities.

Not even the fact that tens of thousands of young and healthy men who heroically participated in clean- up activities in Chernobyl faced an early death is admitted from this side.

In a more critical report brought out in 2006, the international organisation Greenpeace revealed that the figure for victims of cancer cases due to Chernobyl could top a quarter million, and that nearly a hundred thousand fatal cancers were to be deplored.

Again, in an ambitious study brought out by the New York Academy of Sciences in 2009, Russian scientists compared data from severely contaminated, and from less contaminated parts of the former Soviet Union. They concluded that the death toll until end 2004 may be nine to ten times Greenpeace’s estimate.

Undoubtedly, vast numbers of fatalities from the 1986 fall-out remain unrecorded or hidden. Yet Chernobyl’s tragic effects can easily be seen by those who care. In some areas of the former Soviet Union, less than 20 percent of children are healthy. Numerous babies have been born with deformities or with disturbances of their nervous systems. Genetic disorders were found in every animal species studied by the Russian scientists.

However, it would be wrong to think the after-effects of Chernobyl were limited to the direct consequences of the 1986 fall-out. Towards understanding the implications of a nuclear disaster, it is also necessary to look at the outcome of the clean-up operation undertaken subsequently by the then Soviet authorities.

First, 5,000 tons of materials were dropped from helicopters to re-cover the damaged reactor, at the price of the life the pilots. Then, some 600,000 workers, baptised the ‘liquidators’, were recruited or forced to rapidly build a sarcophagus of concrete and metal.

This operation carried out over a period of six months was extremely hazardous, and probably resulted in the largest category of radiation-induced illnesses and deaths from the catastrophe. Besides, contrary to what one would expect or hope for – the new outer shell for Chernobyl’s melted reactor never functioned as an effective barrier to radiation leakages. It reportedly has been in danger of collapse for years.

Thus, since the nineties discussions have been under way over the building of a new arch. Such an arch would have to be erected in proximity of the former reactor, and will need to be glided towards its destination via rails, in order to reduce risks for humans. Also, the existing sarcophagus and the destroyed reactor will have to be dismantled, with the aid of robots.

As of 2011, a major chunk of the funds required to finance this new operation still has not been collected. Clearly, the mess from the Chernobyl nuclear disaster is long-, if not ever-lasting. And although Japan’s technological capacity today obviously exceeds that of the Soviet Union 25 years back, the clean-up work in Japan is sure to extend over very many decades to come.

What fundamental lessons can we draw from Chernobyl – for Japan and for the world at large? The experience gathered since the meltdown 25 years back appears to validate the views nuclear critics expressed at the time. The disaster fuelled immediate and worldwide resistance – not just against expansion, but against any reliance on nuclear energy. Many hundreds of thousands of people have since participated in protests in Western Europe alone.

One of the central arguments critics cite is that nuclear technology is a form of technology which is so hazardous, so destructive, that humanity would do well to renounce it entirely. Yet since the late nineties, strenuous efforts have been made by proponents of nuclear energy to stage a ‘renaissance’ and resume the trend of nuclear expansion worldwide.

It is very unfortunate that a section of writers and intellectuals who are vocal against climate change have sought fit to voice the same arguments being used by representatives of the nuclear lobby to defend a nuclear comeback. As a retrospective on the Chernobyl catastrophe easily brings out: one cannot trade one catastrophe against another; one can’t exchange a climate catastrophe for a nuclear catastrophe.

On this anniversary we need a sacred pledge in favour of reliance on technologies that are productive, that squarely sustain all forms of life on planet earth.

Dr. Peter Custers is author of a theoretical study on nuclear production, ‘Questioning Globalized Militarism’ (Tulika/Merlin Press, 2007).

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By Peter Custers
LEIDEN, the Netherlands, Jan 14 2011 (IPS)

Russia’s President Dmitry Medvedev signed a large number of contracts with India during a two-day visit to New Delhi in December. These deals were part of a series of agreements that have placed India in progressively more advantageous positions in global arms markets.

The most prominent agreements, as reported in the world press, relate to arms sales and to construction of nuclear reactors. One order focused on the supply of 300 advanced fighter planes – spread over a period of ten years; Russia is set to sell ‘fifth generation’ military aircraft to India. The order is presently valued at more than 25 billion euros.

Under another agreement, Russia will help India to construct two more nuclear reactors – on top of the two reactors it is already building in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu.

At first sight, these deals may not seem very sensational. Russia’s military and nuclear relations with India have a long history, dating back to the era of the former Soviet Union. Until the early nineties, roughly 80 percent of the military hardware used by India’s armed forces was of Soviet origin. Subsequently, in the post-Soviet period, relations temporarily ‘dipped’, as both sides quarrelled over India’s outstanding debt – which Russian sources have estimated at 16 billion dollars.

In the later part of the 1990s, military-commercial relations between the two powers were reconsolidated. Today, the majority of the armaments used by the Indian military still hail from Russia.

In light of this, the outcome of Medvedev’s Delhi visit may seem unexceptional. Yet, President Medvedev is not the only leader of a world power who recently prioritised visiting the Indian capital.

Medvedev’s visit was very closely preceded by visits of U.S. President Barack Obama, in November; of French President Nicolas Sarkozy in the beginning of December; and of the Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao.

The visits of Obama and Sarkozy are especially noteworthy, if one is to assess India’s current policy regarding foreign military and nuclear purchases. The American president succeeded in finalising two defence deals. The most important of these two covers the sale of ten military transport planes – C-17 Globemaster III airlift aircraft, manufactured by the U.S.’s Boeing Corporation. The plane reportedly can carry tanks and combat troops over 2,500 nautical miles.

The French president brought home contracts for French and European corporations that are equally lucrative. According to the French daily Le Monde, these include: a contract for Thales and Dassault to update 51 Mirage fighter planes, worth 1.5 billion euros; a contract for major European missile manufacturer MBDA, to construct ground-to-air missiles; plus a contract for France’s nuclear company Areva to build two civilian nuclear reactors near the densely populated city of Bombay.

Delhi’s season of foreign military and nuclear orders even at first glance appears quite unprecedented. Yet, it would be wrong to leave it at this, and fail to notice other peculiar coincidences.

Historically, the Indian state maintained intimate relations with Russia’s precursor, the USSR. Yet the above-described military and nuclear deals – both with Russia and with Russia’s former adversaries, the U.S. and France – are best understood against the background of changed relationships between India and the United States.

In July 2005, then U.S. President George W. Bush and India’s Prime Minister Manmohan Singh signed a framework-agreement for nuclear cooperation. The deal brought to an end the West’s previous attempts to stem India’s rise as an atomic world power.

Officially, the aim of the new deal was to help India expand its production of nuclear energy, through promotion of the country’s access to uranium and to international civilian nuclear technology.

Indian newspapers in 2008 speculated that the size of business to be generated through the deal for Indian and foreign enterprises totalled 40 billion dollars.

When the nuclear deal was being prepared, it was severely criticised by the Indian government’s leftwing allies and by leading Indian peace activists. They emphasised that the controversial deal would legitimise India’s status as a nuclear weapons’ state, and that not all of India’s ‘civilian’ reactors would be put under an international inspection regime. India, Indian critics estimated, would be able to manufacture an extra one hundred nuclear bombs at least.

While public controversies in India have rightly highlighted the dubious implications of the deal for India’s status as military-nuclear world power, Indian media in the wake of the signing of the deal also pinpointed other, equally dramatic implications of the agreement.

Coincidentally, I happened to be teaching at the Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi in September 2008. At the time, consolidation of the nuclear deal had just been cleared by the American and Indian governments. Reading leading Indian dailies, I was stunned by speculation about expansion of exports of U.S. armaments to India under the nuclear agreement.

In an article that appeared in The Times of India for instance, figures were cited for the amount of money India had spent on international arms’ orders since the 1999 Kargil conflict with Pakistan (25 billion dollars), and was ‘poised’ to spend on arms purchases over the next five to six years (another 30 billion).

Arms exports, it was argued, were the U.S.’s objective in the deal. One deal for the sale of weaponry that had already been clinched – described as India’s biggest ever with the U.S. – was one whereby U.S. giant Boeing would supply the Indian air force with eight reconnaissance aircraft.

When Obama visited Delhi in November, further defence contracts were mentioned as having meanwhile been concluded with three U.S. corporations – Boeing, Lockheed Martin and GE Aviation.

According to American sources cited in the Delhi press, U.S. companies had ‘bagged’ 40 percent of military-commercial contracts signed by India.

The deals that have been clinched with the American, French and Russian presidents who were in Delhi in November and December – read conjointly – confirm that the US-India nuclear deal had another goal. It did not just target expansion of India’s production of nuclear energy.

The deal has both legitimised India’s status as a nuclear weapons’ state on the subcontinent, and has also legitimised a new approach of the Delhi government towards handling its international military-commercial relationships.

In the Cold War era, the Indian government needed to walk a tightrope whenever it bought foreign arms. It had to weigh and balance its privileged military relationship with the Soviet Union against its desire to buy weaponry from Western arms’ suppliers.

Now, India is re-strategising its military relations with world powers. India now has a free hand in buying from or co-constructing advanced weaponry with the U.S. and thanks to the U.S.-India nuclear deal – and, one may add, Obama’s follow-up to Bush’s policymaking – India has become a full-fledged participant in the militarisation of the world economy.

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