Sara López (C) and other members of the Regional Indigenous and Popular Council of Xpujil are seen here in a photo from 2020, while campaigning against the environmental problems posed by the Mayan Train, which will run through part of southern and southeastern Mexico. The Secretariat (ministry) of National Defense has been put in charge since September of the construction and administration of the Mexican government's flagship project. CREDIT: Cripx

By Emilio Godoy
MEXICO CITY, Sep 14 2023 (IPS)

Courage, sadness and impotence are expressed by Mayan indigenous activist Sara López when she talks about the Mayan Train (TM), the Mexican government’s biggest infrastructure project, which will cross the town where she lives and many others in the Yucatan Peninsula.

“These are things that cause damage. In the communities, both the National Guard (a civilian security force, but made up mostly of military personnel) and the army are present. People tell us they have lost the peace they used to have. There are communities that have been invaded, there has been a very strong impact,” the member of the non-governmental Regional Indigenous and Popular Council of Xpujil told IPS.

“The entire Yucatan peninsula is militarized,” she said from Candelaria, in the southeastern state of Campeche. Agriculture and livestock are the main activities in the municipality of some 47,000 inhabitants, which will be the site of a TM station."The military are not trained for many functions. The government is concerned about economic growth and development, and to preserve that model it has put the military in charge. They think it will be achieved through infrastructure and extractive projects." -- Aleida Azamar

The megaproject consists of seven sections along some 1,500 kilometers and will also cross the states of Quintana Roo and Yucatan, which share the peninsula with Campeche together with the states of Chiapas and Tabasco.

The railway will run through 41 municipalities and 181 towns, with 20 stations and 14 stops.

President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who begins his sixth and final year in office on Dec. 1, has transferred the administration of ports, airports and rail transport to the Secretariat (ministry) of National Defense (Sedena).

This is despite the fact that there are no records of their performance in the management of these key areas in the recent history of the country, in which their experience has been limited to the production and sale of supplies.

Aleida Azamar, a researcher at the public Autonomous Metropolitan University, argued that uniformed personnel are not prepared for these tasks.

“The military are not trained for many functions. The government is concerned about economic growth and development, and to preserve that model it has put the military in charge. They think it will be achieved through infrastructure and extractive projects,” Azamar, who is coordinating a new book on the military and natural resources in Mexico, told IPS.

“In their view, the fastest way to finish them is with the army, because it is more difficult for the public to put up opposition when they see someone with a gun. It is not the most adequate solution.”

López Obrador announced on Sept. 4 the transfer of control of the Mayan Train from the state-owned National Tourism Development Fund (Fonatur) to Sedena, in an intensification of the trend of ceding more civilian responsibilities to the military, by handing over his flagship megaproject.

The president’s argument for this strategy is that he aims to reduce corruption in public works. But actually it may be due to other reasons, such as the culture of discipline in following orders so that the works advance as quickly as possible and thus meet the deadlines set.

Sedena will be responsible for the completion of sections five, six and seven of the railroad, whose works were started by Fonatur in July 2020 and which López Obrador promised would begin to operate by Dec. 1. Other sections are being built by private companies.

The resistance to deploying the military into the TM and other civilian areas is also due to its actions since 2006, when then President Felipe Calderón launched the so-called “war against drugs” using the military, which led to extrajudicial executions, disappearances, human rights violations and impunity, according to local and international organizations.

In fact, so far this century the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, the highest regional court attached to the Organization of American States, has condemned Mexico on at least five occasions for military crimes such as forced disappearance, sexual violence and arbitrary detention.

The government promotes the TM as a major new engine of socioeconomic development in the southeast of the country and its trains will transport thousands of tourists, and cargo such as transgenic soybeans, palm oil and pork, the main products in the area.

The administration claims that it will create jobs, boost tourism beyond traditional attractions, and invigorate the regional economy, which has sparked highly polarized controversies between its supporters and critics.

The Mayan Train will run 1,500 kilometers, through 41 municipalities and 181 towns in the south and southeast of Mexico, with a cost overrun that already exceeds 28 billion dollars. CREDIT: Fonatur

From the barracks to business

Historically, the armed forces had been limited to producing supplies and building government facilities, such as hospitals and other infrastructure.

Sedena’s General Directorate of Military Industry operates at least 16 ammunition and armament factories.

However, thanks to the policies of the current government, Sedena has created the corporations Tren Maya, Aerolínea del Estado Mexicano, Grupo Aeroportuario, Ferroviario, de Servicios Auxiliares y Conexos Olmeca-Maya-Mexica (Gomm) and the Felipe Ángeles International Airport, located in the state of Mexico, adjacent to the Mexican capital.

Gomm is also involved in the operation of 12 airports, and will receive more in the future.

In addition, it will operate the revived Compañía Mexicana de Aviación, the country’s oldest airline and one of the first in the region, privatized in 2005 and closed since 2010. Under the new name Aerolínea del Estado Mexicano, the government resuscitated it in January, buying the brand. The armed forces will also manage hotels along the TM route.

At the same time, the Secretariat of the Navy (Semar) manages five shipyards in various areas of the country.

To run seven airports, including Mexico City’s, out of the 19 facilities under state control, Semar created the company Casiopea.

Mexico has 118 ports and terminals, of which 71 have been given in concession in 25 administrations of the National Port System. Since 2017, Semar has been administering the ports.

This scheme requires a lot of money, provided by the public budget. The clearest case is the TM, whose cost rose threefold, from the initial projected investment of 7.2 billion dollars to the current estimate of over 28 billion dollars.

For 2024, Sedena has already requested 6.7 billion dollars for the railroad, the second highest figure for the TM since 2020, when allocated funds totaled 349 million dollars.

Military requirements for all civilian sectors under their administration have grown, as Sedena requested 14.55 billion dollars, compared to 6.27 billion in 2023, and Semar asked for 4.02 billion, compared to 2.34 billion this year – in both cases more than double.

Behind this is the fact that state-owned companies under military management are not yet profitable, so they require subsidies. The non-governmental organization México ¿Cómo Vamos? calculates that it will take 17 years to recoup the investment in the TM and 22 years in the case of the Tulum International Airport, under construction in the state of Quintana Roo.

The Navy manages the Mexico City International Airport and six other airports, although it lacks experience in running this type of air transport infrastructure. CREDIT: Emilio Godoy / IPS

Potential threats

As in the case of military involvement in security and public safety, military business management poses risks of information concealment, corruption and economic losses.

The armed forces are the institutions that most violate human rights, including cases of murder, torture and sexual violence. Between 2007 and 2020, some 70,000 people suffered physical aggression after being apprehended by the army, according to the Citizen Security Program (PSC) of the private Ibero-American University.

The number of military personnel involved in public security already exceeds the total number of municipal and state police, in a proportion of 261,644 to 251,760, according to data reported by the PSC.

López the activist and Azamar the academic warned of the risks of military management.

“Only the government knows how much they have spent, how much is going to be spent,” said López. “There is no real report on what they are doing. Since the megaproject began, there has been no real information. They have never talked to us about environmental, cultural or economic impacts. It has caused us problems, it has been chaos for us. And once it is operating, the situation is going to get worse because of tourism.”

Azamar warned of increasing reliance on the military, the potential erosion of civil rights, a distorted perception of the approach to security and public safety and the undermining of trust in civilian institutions.

“There is a problem of lack of transparency and accountability: what is spent and how. It is risky, because there is no real, disaggregated data. This creates an environment of impunity that allows secrecy to continue and does not make it possible for other information to be made public. If there are no effective oversight mechanisms, abuses could be committed. We are in a gray area, because we do not know who controls them,” she argued.

In November 2021, López Obrador classified the TM as a “priority project” by means of a presidential decree, a strategy that facilitates the fast-tracking of environmental permits and thus hides information under the broad umbrella of national security.

This despite the fact that a month later, the Supreme Court reversed the national security agreements to annul the reservation of information, due to an appeal by the autonomous governmental National Institute of Transparency, Access to Information and Protection of Personal Data.

Mexico’s problems will not end in the short term, as pro-military policies will condition the next administration that will take office in December 2024, regardless of where it stands on the political spectrum, although the polls point to presidential hopeful Claudia Sheinbaum of the National Regeneration Movement (Morena), López Obrador’s party, as the favorite.

By Bede Sheppard
NEW YORK, Oct 28 2015 (IPS)

Surprise turned to confusion, then to horror, when the children at Kiata primary school realized that the soldiers they had spotted at the bottom of the hill were heading for their school and its occupants.

As the soldiers reached the hilltop school in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, students scattered in all directions, scared of the armed men and what they might do.

Those who failed to escape the courtyard before the soldiers entered were caught, beaten and forced to help as the armed men converted the school into their temporary base. The soldiers made the children fetch water, steal food from nearby farms and chop up their school desks for fire wood. When one of the captured boys refused to obey, a soldier sliced his arm with a knife. If the older girls resisted the soldiers’ advances the men would rip their clothes, one student told my colleague.

The capture of Kiata primary school in late 2012 features in a new report by Human Rights Watch, which documents the far-too-frequent misuse of schools by the Congolese army and various armed groups in areas of the country that are still affected by conflict. In fact, our investigation shows, the presence of armed men inside schools is a far-too-familiar sight for many children in Congo who are yearning to learn.

When fighters take over a school, they sometimes only make use of a few classrooms or the playground; at other times, however, they convert the entire school into a military base, barracks or training grounds. As the students held captive at Kiata school attested, troops occupying schools means students and teachers risk being unlawfully recruited into armed groups, forced to work without pay, beaten and sexually abused.

Munitions removed from the latrines at the Institut Bweremana in Minova, South Kivu province, in June 2013. Altogether, nine 107mm rockets, two boxes of AK-47 ammunition, and two recoilless rockets were found. The Congolese army had previously occupied this school and at least 41 others in the area in late 2012. (c) 2013 Lane Hartill / Human Rights Watch

Even once vacated, a school may still be a dangerous environment for children if troops leave behind weapons and unused munitions. I visited one school in Congo that had been used as a temporary base, where the occupiers had dumped some of their unused munitions in the school latrines before leaving. The rockets left immersed in the waste required demining experts to remove­a process that was only completed more than seven months later.

Sadly, the practice of armies using schools for military purposes is not unique to Congo. It happens in the majority of countries with armed conflict. All across Africa, from Central African Republic, Chad, Cote d’Ivoire, Libya, Mali, Nigeria, Somalia, South Sudan to Sudan, the occupation of schools by armed forces has deprived children of a safe learning environment and the right to education.

Even troops deployed as peacekeepers by the African Union have been found to be using education institutions as bases in the Central African Republic and Somalia– a particularly troubling development.

But there is hope. Earlier this year, a group of countries from around the world committed to do more to protect students, teachers and schools during times of armed conflict. The Safe Schools Declaration, as the commitment is known, includes an agreement to ensure that military trainings, practice and doctrine emphasize the need to protect schools from military use.

To date, 49 countries have joined this Safe Schools Declaration. Better yet, 13 African countries, including many with recent experiences of the military use of schools in their own territory, were among the first to endorse.

To ensure that its children can learn for life­rather than having to run in fear for it­the Congolese government ought to refrain from using schools for military purposes and join the Safe Schools Declaration. In fact, if all nations across the continent were to rally around this goal, the continent could become the first to have universally endorsed the Declaration.

And if the African Union were to re-examine its rules and procedures for its peacekeeping forces and, as the United Nations Department of Peacekeeping Operations did in 2012, ban all infantry battalions from using schools during their operations, African kids would be that much safer and no longer scarred for life like the boy our report names Amani.

A 10-year-old primary school student, Amani was held in Kiata school for six days. When we met him, he showed off the scar on the bridge of his nose. The soldiers who had occupied his school, had forced him to chop up the school desks. A piece of wood had split off and hurled in his face as he chopped. When Amani was finally allowed to return home, his parents asked if the soldiers had beaten him. When he told them what had happened, they responded: “Understand, child, life is like that.”

But if Congo and other countries across the continent would agree to restrain their armies from using schools, then life needn’t be like that for children in Africa and elsewhere.

(End)

Excerpt:

By Farhang Jahanpour
OXFORD, Sep 5 2015 (IPS)

Article Six of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) makes it obligatory for nuclear states to get rid of their nuclear weapons as part of a bargain that requires the non-nuclear states not to acquire nuclear weapons. Apart from the NPT provisions, there have been a number of other rulings that have reinforced those requirements.

However, while nuclear states have vigorously pursued a campaign of non-proliferation, they have violated many NPT and other international regulations.

Farhang Jahanpour

An advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice in 1996 stated: “There exists an obligation to pursue in good faith and bring to a conclusion negotiations leading to nuclear disarmament in all its aspects under strict and effective international control.” Nuclear powers have ignored that opinion.

The nuclear states, especially the United States and Russia, have further violated the Treaty by their efforts to upgrade and diversity their nuclear weapons. The United States has developed the “Reliable Replacement Warhead”, a new type of nuclear warhead to extend the viability of its nuclear arsenal.

The United States and possibly Russia are also developing tactical nuclear warheads with lower yields, which can be used on the battlefield without producing a great deal of radiation. Despite U.S. President Barack Obama’s pledge to reduce and ultimately abolish nuclear weapons, it has emerged that the United States is in the process of developing new categories of nuclear weapons, including B61-12 at a projected cost of 348 billion dollars over the next decade

India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea cannot be regarded as nuclear states. Since Article 9 of the NPT defines Nuclear Weapon States (NWS) as those that had manufactured and tested a nuclear device prior to 1 January 1967, it is not possible for India, Pakistan, Israel or North Korea to be regarded as nuclear weapon states.“All nuclear powers have continued to strengthen and modernise their nuclear arsenals. While they have been vigorous in punishing, on a selective basis, the countries that were suspected of developing nuclear weapons, they have not lived up to their side of the bargain to get rid of their nuclear weapons”

All those countries are in violation of the NPT, and providing them with nuclear assistance, such as the U.S. agreement with India to supply it with nuclear reactors and advanced nuclear technology, constitutes violations of the Treaty. The same applies to U.S. military cooperation with Israel and Pakistan.

Nuclear states are guilty of proliferation 

Paragraph 14 of the binding U.N. Security Council Resolution 687 that called for the disarmament of Iraq also specified the establishment of a zone free of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs) in the Middle East.

It was clearly understood by all the countries that joined the U.S.-led coalition to oust Saddam Hussein from Kuwait that after the elimination of Iraqi WMDs, Israel would be required to get rid of its nuclear arsenal. Israel – and by extension the countries that have not implemented that paragraph – have violated that binding resolution. Indeed, both the United States and Israel are believed to maintain nuclear weapons in the region.

During the apartheid era, Israel and South Africa collaborated in manufacturing nuclear weapons, with Israel leading the way. In 2010 it was reported that “the ‘top secret’ minutes of meetings between senior officials from the two countries in 1975 show that South Africa’s Defence Minister P.W. Botha asked for nuclear warheads and the then Israeli Defence Minister Shimon Peres responded by offering them ‘in three sizes’.”

The documents were uncovered by an American academic, Sasha Polakow-Suransky, in research for a book on the close relationship between the two countries. Israeli officials tried hard to prevent the publication of those documents. In 1977, South Africa signed a pact with Israel that included the manufacturing of at least six nuclear bombs.

The 1995 Non-Proliferation Treaty Review and Extension Conference also called for “the early establishment by regional parties of a Middle East zone free of nuclear and all other WMDs and their delivery systems”. The international community has ignored these resolutions by not pressing Israel to give up its nuclear weapons. Indeed, any call for a nuclear free zone in the Middle East has been opposed by Israel and the United States.

The 2000 NPT Review Conference called on “India, Israel and Pakistan to accede to the Treaty as Non-Nuclear Weapons States (NNWS) promptly and without condition”. States Parties also agreed to “make determined efforts” to achieve universality. Since 2000, little effort has been made to encourage India, Pakistan or Israel to accede as NNWS.

The declaration agreed by the Iranian government and visiting European Union foreign ministers (from Britain, France and Germany) that reached an agreement on Iran’s accession to the Additional Protocol and suspension of its enrichment for more than two years also called for the elimination of weapons of mass destruction throughout the Middle East.

The three foreign ministers made the following commitment: “They will cooperate with Iran to promote security and stability in the region including the establishment of a zone free from weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East in accordance with the objectives of the United Nations.” Twelve years after signing that declaration, the three European countries and the international community have failed to bring about a Middle East free of weapons of mass destruction.

While, during the Cold War, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) refused to rule out first use of nuclear weapons due to the proximity of Soviet forces to European capitals, this policy has not been revised since the end of the Cold War. There have been repeated credible reports that the Pentagon has been considering the use of nuclear bunker-buster weapons to destroy Iran’s nuclear sites.

For the past 2,000 years and more, mankind has tried to define the requirements of a just war. During the past few decades, some of these principles have been enshrined in legally-binding international agreements and conventions. They include the Covenant of the League of Nations after the First World War, the 1928 Pact of Paris, and the Charter of the United Nations.

A few ideas are common to all these definitions, namely that any military action should be based on self-defence, be in compliance with international law, be proportionate, be a matter of last resort, and not target civilians and non-combatants.

Other ideas flow from these: the emphasis on arbitration and the renunciation of first resort to force in the settlement of disputes, and the principle of collective self- defence. It is difficult to see how the use of nuclear weapons could be compatible with any of these requirements. Yet, despite many international calls for nuclear disarmament, nuclear states have refused to abide by the NPT regulations and get rid of their nuclear weapons.

In his first major foreign policy speech in Prague on 5 April 2009, President Barack Obama spoke about his vision of getting rid of nuclear weapons. He said: “The existence of thousands of nuclear weapons is the most dangerous legacy of the Cold War… Today, the Cold War has disappeared but thousands of those weapons have not. In a strange turn of history, the threat of global nuclear war has gone down, but the risk of a nuclear attack has gone up.”

He went on to say: “So today, I state clearly and with conviction America’s commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons…”

Sadly, those noble sentiments have not been put into action. On the contrary, all nuclear powers have continued to strengthen and modernise their nuclear arsenals. While they have been vigorous in punishing, on a selective basis, the countries that were suspected of developing nuclear weapons, they have not lived up to their side of the bargain to get rid of their nuclear weapons. (END/COLUMNIST SERVICE)

Edited by Phil Harris   

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, IPS – Inter Press Service. 

Excerpt:

By Emma Bonino
ROME, Jul 24 2015 (IPS)

“A serious political and social crisis will sweep through the euro countries if they do not decide to strengthen the integration of their economies. The euro zone crisis did not begin with the Greek crisis, but was manifested much earlier, when a monetary union was created without economic and fiscal union in the context of a financial sector drugged on debt and speculation.”

Emma Bonino

These words, which are completely relevant today, were written by a group of federalists, including Romano Prodi, Giuliano Amato, Jacques Attali, Daniel Cohn-Bendit and this author, in May 2012.

Those with a federalist vision are not surprised that the crisis in Greece has dragged on for so many years, because they know that a really integrated Europe with a truly central bank would have been able to solve it in a relatively short time and at much lower cost.

In this region of 500 million people, another example of the inability to solve European problems was the recent great challenge of distributing 60,000 refugees among the 28 member countries of the European Union. Leaders spent all night exchanging insults without reaching a solution.

Unless the federalist programme – namely, the gradual conversion of the present European Union into the United States of Europe – is adopted, the region will not really be able to solve crises like those of Greece and migration.

It can be stated that European federalism – which would complete Europe’s unity and integration – is now more necessary than ever because it is the appropriate vehicle for overcoming regional crises and starting a new phase of growth, without which Europe will be left behind and subordinated not only to the United States but also to the major emerging powers.“Unless the federalist programme – namely, the gradual conversion of the present European Union into the United States of Europe – is adopted, the region will not really be able to solve crises like those of Greece and migration”

Furthermore, its serious and growing social problems – such as poverty, inequality and high unemployment especially among young people – will not be solved.

Within the federalist framework there is, at present, only the euro, while all the other institutions or sectoral policies (like defence, foreign policy, and so on) are lacking.

Excluding such large items of public spending as health care and social security, there are however other government functions which, according to the theory of fiscal federalism (the principle of subsidiarity and common sense), should be allocated to a higher level, that of the European central government.

Among them are, in particular: defence and security, diplomacy and foreign policy (including development and humanitarian aid), border control, large research and development projects, and social and regional redistribution.

Defence and foreign policy are perhaps considered the ultimate bastions of state sovereignty and so are still taboo. However, the progressive loss of influence in international affairs among even the most important European countries is increasingly evident.

To take, for instance, the defence sector: as Nick Witney, former chief executive of the European Defence Agency, has noted: “most European armies are still geared towards all-out warfare on the inner-German border rather than keeping the peace in Chad or supporting security and development in Afghanistan.

“This failure to modernise means that much of the 200 billion euros that Europe spends on defence each year is simply wasted,” and “the EU’s individual Member States, even France and Britain, have lost and will never regain the ability to finance all the necessary new capabilities by themselves.”

It should be noted that precisely because the mission of European military forces has changed so radically, it is nowadays much easier, in principle, to create new armed forces from scratch (personnel, armaments, doctrines and all) instead of persisting in the futile attempt to reconvert existing forces to new missions, while at the same time seeking to improve cooperation between them.

Why should it be possible to create a new currency and a new central bank from scratch, and not a new army?

Common defence spending by the 28 European Union countries amounts to 1.55 percent of European GDP. Hence, a hypothetical E.U. defence budget of one percent of GDP appears relatively modest.

However, it translates into nearly 130 billion euros, which would automatically make the E.U. armed forces an effective military organisation, surpassed only by that of the United States, and with resources three to five times greater than those available to powers like Russia, China or Japan.

It would also mean saving an estimated 60 to 70 billion euros, or more than half a percentage point of European GDP, compared with the present situation.

Transferring certain government functions from national to European level should not give rise to a net increase in public spending in the whole of the European Union, and could well lead to a net decrease because of economies of scale.

Taking the example of defence, for the same outlay a single organisation is certainly more efficient than 28 separate ones. Moreover, as demonstrated by experiences with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) during the Cold War, efforts to coordinate independent military forces always produced disappointing results and parasitic reliance on the wealthier providers of this common good. (END/COLUMNIST SERVICE)

Translated by Valerie Dee/Edited by Phil Harris    

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, IPS – Inter Press Service. 

Excerpt:

“Just as the world is moving towards multi-polarity, so is Asia … The economic fragmentation of the region and the competitive pursuit of security interests may well consign the Asian Century into a brief interlude rather than a millennial transformation”. Photo credit: Public domain via Wikimedia Commons

By Shyam Saran
NEW DELHI, Jun 1 2015 (IPS)

It has been apparent for some time that we are in the midst of a historic shift of the centre of gravity of the global economy from the trans-Atlantic to what is now becoming known as the Indo-Pacific.  

This is an emerging centre of economic dynamism and comprises what was earlier confined to the Asia-Pacific but now includes the South Asian region as well.

This is a region which now accounts for nearly 40 percent of world gross domestic product (GDP), which is likely to rise to 50 percent or more by 2050.  Its share of world trade is now 30 percent and growing.

Shyam Saran

This year, the region has become the largest source of foreign direct investment (FDI), surpassing the European Union (EU) and the United States. China has been the main driver of this historic shift, but other Asian economies have also made significant contributions.

As the Chinese economy begins to slow, India shows promise of regaining an accelerated growth trajectory under a new and decisive political leadership. This will help extend the scale and direction of this shift. Its geopolitical consequences will be profound.

It must be recognised that the economic transformation of Asia, in particular the spectacular growth of China, has been enabled by an unusually extended and liberal global economic environment, underpinned by the faith in globalisation and open markets.

It has also been enabled by a U.S.-led security architecture in the region which kept in check, though did not resolve, the long-standing political fault lines and regional conflicts over competing territorial claims and unresolved disputes.

This relatively benign and supportive economic and security environment is in danger of unravelling precisely at a time when the situation in the region is becoming more complex and challenging.  Paradoxically, this is partly a consequence of the very success of the region in achieving relative economic prosperity.“The danger is that instead of an inclusive and regionally integrated Asia, we may end up with exclusive and competing clusters, moving at different speeds, with different norms and standards. This may well undermine the very basis of Asia’s economic dynamism”

We are witnessing new trends in the region which, unless managed with prudence and foresight, may well sour the prospects of an Asian Century.

The relatively open and liberal trade and investment regime, in particular access to the large consuming markets of the United States, European Union and Japan, is now under serious threat.

Protectionist trends are already visible in these advanced economies as they struggle with prolonged economic stagnation which is the fall-out of the global financial and economic crisis of 2007-2008.

Instead of the consolidation and expansion of the open and inclusive economic architecture that had hitherto been the hallmark of the regional and global economy, we are witnessing its steady fragmentation.

In the Indo-Pacific region, there are competing regional trade arrangements and investment regimes, with no clarity on the contours of a new and emerging economic architecture.

The United States is spearheading its Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) which will include some Asian economies, but not India and China.

China has countered by proposing a free trade area encompassing the current Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) membership.  This will include China and the United States but not India and some of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) economies.

The Regional Cooperation Economic Partnership (RCEP) would include all ASEAN countries plus China, Japan, Republic of Korea, India, Australia and New Zealand, but not the United States.

And finally, there is the East Asia Summit process (EAS) which includes all the above-mentioned countries but also the United States and Russia.

The danger is that instead of an inclusive and regionally integrated Asia, we may end up with exclusive and competing clusters, moving at different speeds, with different norms and standards.  This may well undermine the very basis of Asia’s economic dynamism.

In the security field, too, we are witnessing a growing salience of inter-state tensions and competitive military build-up.

The U.S.-led security architecture remains in place formally but its erstwhile predominance is diminished.

The gap between the military capabilities of China and the United State is closing steadily. As China’s security footprint expands beyond its shores, it will inevitably intersect with the existing deployment of the forces of the United States and its allies and partners.

Faced with an increasingly uncertain security environment and threatened by a more insistent assertion of territorial claims by China, the countries of the region, including Japan, Republic of Korea, members of ASEAN, Australia and India are building up their own defences, in particular maritime capabilities, and this itself is escalating tensions.

There is as yet no emerging regional security architecture which could help manage inter-state tensions in the region. This includes the growing possibilities of confrontation between the United States and China.

In the absence of such a regional security architecture, based on a broad political consensus and a mutually acceptable Code of Conduct, the region may well witness a heightening of tension and even conflict.  These developments would inevitably and adversely impact on the dense network of trade and investment relations that bind the countries of the region together and erode the very basis of their prosperity.

In this context, mention may be made of the Chinese One Belt One Road (OBOR) initiative which seeks to deploy China’s surplus capital to build a vast network of transport and infrastructural links not only across the Indo-Pacific but also straddling the Eurasian landmass.

The newly established Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) initiated and led by China would become a key financing instrument for the OBOR.  China has also recently come out with a new Defence White Paper, which puts forward a new strategy of Open Seas, shifting the emphasis from coastal and near sea defence to an expanding naval presence which matches China’s growing global profile and world-wide location of Chinese-controlled economic assets.

While China’s investment in regional infrastructure in Asia may be welcome, it will inevitably be accompanied by a security dimension which may heighten anxieties among countries in the Asian region and beyond.

It is apparent from the above analysis that it is no longer possible for any major power in the Indo-Pacific to unilaterally seek a position of overweening economic dominance or military pre-eminence of the kind that the United States enjoyed over much of the post-Second World War period.

Just as the world is moving towards multi-polarity, so is Asia.  It is now home to a cluster of major powers with significant economic and security capabilities and interests. The only practical means of avoiding a unilateral and potentially destructive pursuit of economic and security interests would be to put in place an inclusive economic architecture underpinned  by a similarly inclusive security architecture which provides mutual reassurance and shared opportunities for promoting prosperity.

The economic fragmentation of the region and the competitive pursuit of security interests may well consign the Asian Century into a brief interlude rather than a millennial transformation. (END/COLUMNIST SERVICE)

Edited by Phil Harris   

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, IPS – Inter Press Service. 

Excerpt:

Palestinian children, no matter how young, are often victims of mistreatment in Israeli police and military detention facilities. Photo credit: UNICEF/El Baba

By Mel Frykberg
RAMALLAH, West Bank, May 5 2015 (IPS)

Palestine’s ambassador to the United Nations, Riyad Mansour, has sent a letter to the U.N. Security Council demanding that action be taken against Israel over the abuse of Palestinian children after they have been arrested by Israeli security forces.

“Every single day and in countless ways, Palestinian children are victims of Israeli human rights violations, with no child considered too young to be spared the oppression being meted out by the Israeli occupying forces and extremist settlers,”  wrote Mansour. “These crimes committed against our children are intolerable and unacceptable.”

"Every single day and in countless ways, Palestinian children are victims of Israeli human rights violations, with no child considered too young to be spared the oppression being meted out by the Israeli occupying forces and extremist settlers” – Riyad Mansour, Palestine’s ambassador to the United Nations
The letter, sent on May 1, followed the detention of a nine-year-old boy, Ahmad Zaatari from Wadi Joz in East Jerusalem, who had been detained on the night of Apr. 28 for approximately eight hours by Israel police after they alleged that he and his brother, 12-year-old Muhammad Zaatari, had thrown stones at an Israeli bus.

Allegations of the mistreatment of Palestinian children while in Israeli police and military detention facilities in East Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank are not new.

“The ill-treatment of children who come in contact with the military detention system appears to be widespread, systematic and institutionalised throughout the process,” said the U.N. Children’s Fund (UNICEF) in a 2013 report titled Children in Israeli Military Detention, which recommended that 38 changes be made after consulting with Israeli authorities.

However, in February 2015, UNICEF released an update reviewing progress made in implementing the report’s 38 recommendations during the intervening period, which found that “reports of alleged ill-treatment of children during arrest, transfer, interrogation and detention have not significantly decreased in 2013 and 2014.”

In an April 2015 report on ‘Children in Israeli Military Detention’, rights group Military Court Watch (MCW), which monitors the treatment of Palestinian children in Israeli military detention, said that “at least 87 percent of UNICEF’s recommendations lack effective implementation and the ill treatment of children who come in contact with this system still remains ‘widespread, systematic and institutionalised’.”

Defence for Children International Palestine (DCIP), a Palestinian human rights organisation specifically focused on child rights has been reported as saying that “Palestinian children are treated as mercilessly as adults. Most troubling are brutal beatings, other forms of torture and prolonged isolation in solitary confinement.”

According to DCIP, unlike Jews, Palestinian parents cannot accompany their children when interrogated, and there are cases of children even younger than 12 arriving at interrogation centres shackled, blindfolded and sleep-deprived.

Most experience physical abuse amounting to torture before, during and after interrogation, and “almost all children confess regardless of guilt to stop further abuse,” said DCIP, adding that the children are often forced to sign confessions in Hebrew which they cannot read or understand.

“Similarities in the situation in East Jerusalem and the West Bank exist because of the inevitable tensions that arise due to the prolonged military occupation,” Gerard Horton from MCW told IPS.

“You can tinker with the system as much as you like but unless the underlying causes are addressed the situation will remain the same.

“Most Palestinian children are arrested near Israeli settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank. If you insert 500,000 settlers into occupied territory and the security forces’ job is to protect them, this inevitably results in the local population being terrorised,” added Horton.

Meanwhile, Israel was harshly criticised in a report of the board of inquiry regarding incidents during last year’s Gaza war released by U.N. Secretary General Bank Ki-moon on Apr. 27.

The board of inquiry concluded that Israel was responsible for the death of 44 Palestinians, and the injuring of 227 others, when they carried out seven attacks on six U.N. sites in Gaza where Palestinian civilians were sheltering.

Ban condemned the shelling attacks with “the utmost gravity” and said that “those who looked to them [U.N. shelters] for protection and who sought and were granted shelter there had their hopes and trust denied.”

According to Chris Gunness, spokesman for the U.N. Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), the United Nations provided the Israelis with the exact locations of the U.N. facilities where the civilians were sheltering.

“The U.N. inquiry found that despite numerous notifications to the Israeli army of the precise GPS coordinates of the schools and numerous notifications about the presence of displaced people, in all seven cases investigated by the Board of Inquiry when our schools were hit directly or in the immediate vicinity, the hit was attributable to the IDF [Israel Defence Forces],” said Gunness.

However, the U.N. Secretary General also criticised Palestinian groups for putting some of the U.N. schools at risk by hiding weapons in some of them.

“I am dismayed that Palestinian militant groups would put United Nations schools at risk by using them to hide their arms. However, the three schools at which weaponry was found were empty at the time and were not being used as shelters,” said Ban.

Israeli diplomats put pressure on the United Nations not to release its findings into the war until the Israeli authorities had conducted their own investigation into alleged human rights violations. In September last year, Israel opened investigations into five criminal cases, including looting.

More than 2,100 Palestinians, most of them civilians, were killed during the Gaza conflict. Sixty-seven Israeli soldiers and six civilians in Israel were killed by rockets and attacks by Hamas and other militant groups.

Edited by Phil Harris    

In a prepared speech after the murder of dozens of Kenyans last year, President Uhuru Kenyatta declared a national war on terror. “This is a war against Kenya and Kenyans,” he said. “It is a war that every one of us must fight.”

It was a speech he gave in December after the killing of 36 miners working in a quarry not far from the border with Somalia. They were reportedly slain by members of the terrorist group Al-Shabaab.

Once again, a few days ago, Kenyans reeled in shock, but this time at news of the massacre of at least 147 students – nearly all young Christian males – by a small rebel band filtered through the media.Despite its peaceful appearance, the [Garissa] university college was a known target for the fury of the Somali-based Al-Shabaab group which has been at war with Kenya for many years. The fact that only a small handful of security guards were on duty when the attack began shocked many.

The slaughter began in the dark pre-dawn hours of Apr. 2 while everyone slept until they were awakened by the popping sounds of gunfire. The militants urged students to cooperate. “If you want to survive, come out. If you want to die, stay inside,” they warned the still-groggy students.

“I knew those guys were lying,” said a 23-year-old student Elosy Karimi who described to a reporter how she hid in the ceiling above her bunk bed for over 24 hours.

President Barack Obama, still planning a trip to Kenya, commiserated: “Words cannot adequately condemn the terrorist atrocities that took place at Garissa University College, where innocent men and women were brazenly and brutally massacred. We join the world in mourning them, many of whom were students pursuing an education in the pursuit of a better life for themselves and their loved ones. “

“They represented a brighter future for a region that has seen too much violence for far too long.”

Garissa University College lies northeast of Nairobi, near to the border with Somalia. A small school with a staff of 75, it was recently upgraded to give technical and vocational degrees as part of Moi University. Computer science and information technology were introduced last year. But the bucolic nature of the college, highlighted by a flock of sheep, green leaves and natural springs, was apparent on the school’s website.

Despite its peaceful appearance, the university college was a known target for the fury of the Somali-based Al-Shabaab group which has been at war with Kenya for many years. The fact that only a small handful of security guards were on duty when the attack began shocked many.

It was particularly inexplicable as there had been recent warnings of an Al-Shabaab attack at Garissa and other universities. A travel advisory issued by the British government just days earlier had warned against travel to Garissa.

While some foreign media outlets describe Kenya as “powerless in the face of a ruthless terrorist organisation,” Kenya is a major military power in the region, having one of the highest defence budgets in Africa, thanks to two decades of a steady increase in military spending.

According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), an independent research organisation, the country purchased 19.8 billion Kenyan shillings (216 million dollars) worth of advanced weapons in five years between 2010 and 2014, up from 919.4 million Kenyan shillings (10 million dollars) between 2005 and 2009 — marking a huge jump in the period — which is the highest in the East Africa.

Yet four gunmen managed to hold off elite counter-terror police and military units called to the scene while they systematically massacred “hostages.” This is hardly unprecedented,” Patrick Gathara, a security analyst wrote in Al Jazeera news service.

“Much the same happened at Westgate (Mall) where four gunmen supposedly kept hundreds of cops and soldiers at bay for four days, apparently taking time off to pray and relax while the security agents looted the mall.”

“The government responded with a crackdown that targeted the ethnic Somali population within Nairobi – little more than an exercise in scapegoating and extortion,” he recalled. “Similarly, Garissa itself, which is populated mainly by ethnic Somalis, has been the site for ‘security operations’ – another term for collective punishment – for well over half a century.”

Government’s failure to stem the rise in insecurity has not gone unnoticed in the Kenyan community, especially since Kenya’s incursion into Somalia in Operation Linda Nchi in 2011. A reduction of troops was expected in 2014 after complaints by the Somali government.

A Twitter feed titled #GarissaAttack quickly filled up with comments and complaints. Ory Okolloh Mwangi, well-known ‘Kenyan pundit’, wrote: “When you look at the resources poured into winning one single seat in Kajiado Central, and then how we are responding to Garissa. Ai?”

Senator James Orengo pleaded:  “We know very well the consequences of a war of occupation. We must withdraw our troops from Somalia to end this. We must rethink our strategy and have a targeted and principled way of engaging Somalia rather than put our people at risk.”

Questions are forming, wrote Gathara, about whether this disaster is just the latest in a series of preventable terrorist atrocities that have now claimed more than 350 lives in the last two years.

An earlier security operation, a week into the Kenyatta presidency, saw the indiscriminate arrest of over 600 Garissa residents, including newly-elected local leaders, by a security team the government itself had described as “rotten”, wrote Gathara.

“Now, after the latest Garissa atrocity, President Kenyatta has issued another directive of dubious legality,” continued Gathara, namely calling up 10,000 new officers despite a court order freezing police recruitment following a corruption-riddled exercise last year.

“What is Kenya’s plan as far as Somalia is concerned?” asked Abdullahi Boru Halakhe, East Africa researcher with Amnesty International, regarding the Kenya’s troops stationed in Somalia. “What does the exit plan look like? Is it two years? Is it three years”?

Edited by Phil Harris    

The Qassem family from Beit Hanoun in Gaza, civilians whose home was targeted by Israeli air strikes during the 2007/2008 Israel-Gaza war, leaving them homeless. Credit: Mel Frykberg/IPS

By Mel Frykberg
GAZA, Mar 30 2015 (IPS)

The U.N. investigation into Israel’s devastating military campaign against Gaza, from July to August 2014, has been delayed until June and in the interim Israel and the Palestinians are waging a media war to win the moral narrative as to why so many Palestinian civilians were killed during the bloody conflict.

The postponement of the investigation was announced at the Mar. 23 U.N. Human Rights Council (UNHRC) meeting in Geneva.

Israel says it went out of its way to avoid civilian casualties but its critics, including Israeli human rights organisations, have questioned this claim.

“The ferocity of destruction and high proportion of civilian lives lost in Gaza cast serious doubts over Israel’s adherence to international humanitarian law principles of proportionality, distinction and precautions in attack,” Makarim Wibisono, U.N. Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in the Palestinian Territories Occupied since 1967, told the UNHCR meeting.“The ferocity of destruction and high proportion of civilian lives lost in Gaza cast serious doubts over Israel's adherence to international humanitarian law principles of proportionality, distinction and precautions in attack" – Makarim Wibisono, U.N. Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in the Palestinian Territories Occupied since 1967

During the war over 2,300 Palestinians were killed, the majority of them civilians including more than 500 children, and over 10,000 injured. On the Israeli side, six civilians and 67 soldiers were killed.

Many of the Palestinian civilians killed died after Israel targeted residential buildings in the Gaza Strip, killing hundreds of Palestinians inside as the buildings collapsed on them.

Israeli rights group B’Tselem released a report in January titled Black Flag: The Legal and Moral Implications of the Policy of Attacking Residential Buildings in the Gaza Strip, Summer 2014.

The report focuses on the policy that the Israeli military implemented of strikes on homes, attempting to explain if and how “policymakers’ claims about Israel’s commitment to International Humanitarian Law (IHL) provisions comport with the policy of attacking residential buildings.”

Damage to residential buildings was enormous, with 18,000 homes either destroyed or badly damaged. More than 100,000 Palestinians were left homeless and with little to no reconstruction taking place, most of these Gazans remain displaced.

B’Tselem investigated 70 incidents involving attacks on civilian homes which killed 606 Palestinians, half of whom were women, 93 babies and children under the age of 5, 129 children aged 5 to 14, 42 teenagers and 37 elderly Palestinians.

B’Tselem said that a number of the cases it examined indicated that the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) actions contravened IHL.

“A military objective, the only legitimate target for attack by parties to hostilities, is defined as one that makes an effective contribution to military action whose total or partial destruction, capture or neutralisation, in the circumstances ruling at the time, offers a definite military advantage to the attacking side,” said the rights group.

“Over the course of the fighting that took place in the summer, both government officials and top military commanders refrained from spelling out the specific objective of most of the attacks.

“Instead, the IDF spokesperson provided only general figures on the number of strikes carried out each day against what the spokesperson defined as ‘terror sites’.”

The rights group added that the IDF also appeared to change its definition as the war progressed, with many of the residential homes targeted allegedly belonging to Hamas operatives.

Kamal Qassem, 43, his wife Iman, and their five children aged 6 to 12, from Beit Hanoun in northern Gaza were forced to flee to an emergency U.N. shelter after their house was destroyed by Israeli bombs, which targeted their homes over two nights during the war.

“My wife Iman was injured during the bombing and spent two nights in hospital. She also requires regular hospital treatment for kidney problems,” Qassem told IPS

“My daughter Shadha, 9, was severely traumatised during the aerial assault and now suffers from epilepsy and soils her sheets at night. None of us were fighters.”

However, Israel’s newly appointed military chief of staff Gadi Eisenkot’s contribution to the Dahiya Doctrine, established during the second Israel-Lebanon war in 2006, could provide some answers to the immense destruction wrought on Gaza’s civilian infrastructure.

The Dahiya Doctrine is a military strategy that envisages the destruction of the civilian infrastructure of hostile regimes, and endorses the employment of disproportionate force to secure that end.

The doctrine is named after a southern suburb in Beirut with large apartment buildings which were flattened by the IDF during the 2006 war.

“What happened in the Dahiva quarter of Beurut in 2006 would happen in every village from which shots were fired in the direction of Israel,” stated Eizenkot.

“We will wield disproportionate power and cause immense damage and destruction.”

Former Rapporteur to the Palestinian territories, Richard Falk, wrote that under the doctrine, “the civilian infrastructure of adversaries such as Hamas or Hezbollah are treated as permissible military targets, which is not only an overt violation of the most elementary norms of the law of war and of universal morality, but an avowal of a doctrine of violence that needs to be called by its proper name: state terrorism.”

Members of the U.N. fact-finding mission into the 2007/2008 Israel-Gaza war suggested that the Dahiya Doctrine had been employed while other analysts added it was also behind Israel’s 2014 military campaign.

Meanwhile, Hamas’ indiscriminate rocket fire on Israeli civilian towns, preceding last year’s war and one of the main reasons for Israel launching its assault on Gaza, could resume again should the siege on Gaza continue with no political breakthrough on the horizon – an ominous sign for Gaza’s civilians.

Edited by Phil Harris    

By Johan Galtung
KUALA LUMPUR, Jan 20 2015 (IPS)

What happened in Paris on Jan. 7 – known all over the world – is totally unacceptable and inexcusable.

As inexcusable as 9/11, the coming Western attack and the Islamist retaliation, wherever. As inexcusable as the Western coups and mega-violence on Muslim lands since Iran 1953, massacring people as endowed with personality and identity as the French cartoonists.

But to the West they are not even statistics, they are “military secrets”.

However, the unacceptable is not unexplainable.

Johan Galtung

In this tragic saga of West-Islam violence, the way out is to identify the conflict and search for solutions. I wonder how many now pontificating on Paris – a city so deep in our hearts – have taken the trouble to sit down with someone identified with Al Qaeda, and simply ask: “What does the world look like where you would like to live?”

I always get the same answer: “A world where Islam is not trampled upon but respected.”

“Trampled upon” sounds physically violent – but there are two types of direct violence intended to harm, to hurt: physical violence with arm-arms-armies; and verbal violence with words, with symbols, with, for example, cartoons.

The naiveté in blaming the secret police for not having uncovered the brothers on time is crying to the heavens. What happened to Charlie Hebdo was as predictable as the reaction to the 2005 cartoon in Jyllands-Posten, whose cultural editor thought he should save Danish media from the self-censorship he had found in Soviet journalists.

But one thing is political criticism of and in the former USSR, quite another is existential stabbing right in the heart of the basis of existence.“There are two types of direct violence intended to harm, to hurt: physical violence with arm-arms-armies; and verbal violence with words, with symbols, with, for example, cartoons”

Undermine the spiritual existence of others – as Charlie Hebdo did all over the spiritual world – but there may be reactions to that verbal violence. Some of the others deeply hurt by Charlie Hebdo and its cultural autism, sitting in some office and sending poisoned arrows anywhere, may celebrate the atrocity – but inside themselves, not publicly.

The West has one presumably killing argument in favour of verbal violence for spiritual killing: freedom of expression – a wonderful freedom, deeply appreciated by those who have something to express.

And very easily undermined, not by censorship by self or some Other, but by freedom of non-impression, the freedom not to be impressed: let expression happen, let them talk and write, but do not listen and read, make them non-persons. Nevertheless, a major achievement of, by and for the West more than elsewhere.

How simple life would be if that freedom were the only norm governing expression! Say or write anything about others as if they were stones, inanimate objects, unimpressed by oral and written expression. But human beings are not.

Of course, the targets of verbal violence can opt for the freedom of non-impression, shutting themselves off from the perpetrators, neither reading nor listening. Do we really want that, a
society now polarised by cartoons – into those who laugh and enjoy, and those who are hurt, suffering deeply?

We do not, and that is why there are others value, other norms, in the land of expression: consideration, decency, respect for life. We have libel laws asking not only “is it true?” but “is it relevant?” to cut out nastiness in, for example, political “debate”.

We rule out hate speech, propaganda for torture, genocide, war, child pornography. Some people unable to argue about issues insult persons instead; that is why they are often – perhaps not often enough – called to order: stick to the issue!

Many, unable to understand or argue with converts to Islam in France, overstep norms of decency instead.

Islam retaliated, and in Paris overstepped its own rule about doing so mercifully. No Muslim can retaliate with spiritual killing of Judaism-Christianity because both are believed to be the “incomplete message”. Bodies were killed in return for spiritual killing instead.

Incidentally, there is somebody else doing the same: the United States, very attentive to critical words as indicative not only of somebody being anti-American, but even a threat to America, to be eliminated. Could “freedom of expression” also be a tool to lure, smoke them out into the open, make them available for killing by snipers?

How should the Islamic side have handled the issue? The way they tried, and to some extent managed, in Denmark: through dialogue. They should have invited the Charlies to private and public dialogue, explaining their side of the cartoon issue, appealing to a common core of humanity in us all.

There is no argument against humour and satire as such, but there is against verbal violence hitting, hurting, harming others.

The Islamic side should also control better its own recourse to self-defence by violence: only legitimate if declared by appropriate Muslim authority. That the West fails to do so – just look at the enormities of violence unleashed upon Islam since 1953 – is no excuse for Islam to sink down to Western governmental levels, using democracy as a blanket cheque for war.

The two sides have millions, maybe billions, of common people who can easily agree that the key problem is violence by extremist governments and others. The task is to let such voices come forward with concrete ideas. Like the next Charlie online, hiring a Muslim consultant to draw a border between freedom and inconsideration?

This could have saved many lives, in Paris and where the West retaliates. (END/IPS COLUMNIST SERVICE)

Edited by Phil Harris   

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, IPS – Inter Press Service. 

Excerpt:

By Helge Luras
OSLO, Sep 18 2014 (IPS)

New military measures to deter what NATO perceives to be a direct threat from Russia were adopted at the alliance’s Heads of State meeting in Wales (Sep. 4-5). A few days earlier, President Barack Obama made promises in Estonia that the three tiny Baltic NATO member states would “never stand alone”. 

Since early 2014, Russia has done practically all that Western leaders have warned President Vladimir Putin in advance not to do. Crimea was occupied and annexed. Pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine were encouraged and given practical support. Later, Russian personnel and equipment came more and more openly into conflict with Ukrainian forces.

Helge Luras

But the West’s warnings to Russia did not stop there. Already several months ago, establishment figures and the media began to associate events in Ukraine directly with the situation in the Baltics and in Poland. NATO has responded to the Russian offensive against Ukraine, a non-NATO country, by shifting military resources towards the areas of NATO that it claims, but only by conjecture, are threatened by Russia.

But did anyone at the NATO summit warn that the alliance might create a self-fulfilling prophecy? Did anyone have the foresight to consider how tensions between Russian speakers and Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians might increase as a result of the hyperbole of the Russian threat? One should not assume hostile intentions in today’s ethnically-charged world without good reason.

That some Western minds consider themselves, and by extension NATO, to be an idealistic force for peace, human rights and democracy, is beyond dispute. But the reality is that NATO countries – that is, the West – represent the world’s most powerful military force, both conventional and nuclear.

Up to now, NATO has not challenged another nuclear armed entity and therefore has survived its own political-military escalation tendency. But in the case of Russia, the erroneous Western perception of self could cause a catastrophic and total war.

Since the Cold War, the West has swallowed up a large area formerly under the influence, if not outright control, of Soviet Russia. The hegemonic mind saw this as just natural and of no business to an anachronism like Russia.“The problem is that Russian and NATO leaders are not drunken poets pathetically fighting with untrained fists at a literary reception. They may act so, but are in fact front men of substantive and institutional systems that can wipe out all human civilisation in a short time”

The future of humanity when expansion started in the 1990s was a Western future: liberal, democratic and free-market. Spheres of influence were the hallmark of others, exemplified by “reactionary” and authoritarian forces like Russia under Putin. Western influence is in another category – it is natural if not God-given.

In Russia, there is a clear and evolving bias in news reporting which the West characterises as “propaganda”. In the West, there is less need to instruct the media directly, there is a reverse bias due to cultural indoctrination. Evidently the West is a keeper of the right values. There is no cause and effect. Evil just pops up. All things Russian are bad, deceitful, not to be trusted. But in Russia this feeds an undeniable paranoia in the psyche.

The West has retained one “acceptable” bogeyman in the atmosphere of religious tolerance that creates such cognitive dissonance as it struggles to come to grips with core tenets of original (radical) Islam. The Western “liberal mind” has at least one cultural object left to legitimately hate: Russian political culture and the strong man it produces.

The problem is that Russian and NATO leaders are not drunken poets pathetically fighting with untrained fists at a literary reception. They may act so, but are in fact front men of substantive and institutional systems that can wipe out all human civilisation in a short time.

Western leaders undoubtedly perceive that their power is waning. No more state-building in faraway countries for us. The end of omnipotence, indeed of paradigm, is obviously traumatic and difficult to consider with a cool mind. But the diminution of Western political power occurs with no corresponding weakness in pure military muscle.

This leaves the temptation of a “Mad Man Doctrine”. If you can convince your opponent that you are willing to react disproportionately to what is at stake for you, he will fear you beyond the otherwise sensible. Everyone treats a mad man with caution.

In Ukraine, there is more at stake for Russia than for the West. Therefore Russia, as it has also shown, will not give up or allow itself or its allies to lose. In the Baltic countries, there is also more at stake for Russia than for the United States and for most other NATO countries as well.

For, in the post-Cold War, Russia has no ideology beyond nationalism. Its most ambitious claims, even if unopposed, would come to a halt at the geographical outer limits of the ethnic Russian nation.

This is not to say that Russian nationalism could not become a factor of instability beyond Ukraine. Trouble is latent. The partly Russian-populated Baltic countries are now in NATO, and NATO is an institutionalised form of the Mad Man Doctrine. The danger of miscalculating the reaction for NATO as well as for Russia is therefore significant.

Little suggests that the West understand how risky the games in progress really are. NATO and Russia are nuclear powers. Sensible leaders on both sides understood as much during the Cold War. Nuclear powers must not go to war with each other. If at all, the conflicts must remain by proxy. Such insights must be rediscovered today.

NATO should concentrate on finding a way to downplay the conflict with Russia, compromise on Ukraine, and not follow what the United States seem intent on doing; escalating, increasing defence spending across the bloc, sending more troops to the Baltic countries. Appeasement, if the starting point is dumb-headed NATO-expansionism, can be a virtue as well as a vice.

Military means are already at play in the conflict between NATO and Russia. Some call for even more. Before pushing Russia further in the direction they claim not to want – ethnic expansionism – politicians in the West must remember that nuclear arms are the last weapons in the arsenal of both.

Luckily, Putin seems quite sane, with superior rationality to many of his Western counterparts. The irresponsible comparison between Putin and Hitler is therefore wrong in many respects, but not least because Hitler never had the bomb. (END/IPS COLUMNIST SERVICE)

(Edited by Phil Harris)

Excerpt:

By Mairead Maguire
BELFAST, Sep 12 2014 (IPS)

While the United States, United Kingdom and NATO are pushing for war with Russia, it behoves people and their governments around the world to take a clear stand for peace and against violence and war, no matter where it comes from.We are at a dangerous point in our history of the human family and it would be the greatest of tragedies for ourselves and our children if we simply allowed the war profiteers to take us into a third world war, resulting in the death of untold millions of people.

Mairead Maguire

NATO’s decision at its summit in Wales (September 4-5) to create a new 4,000 strong rapid reaction force for initial deployment in the Baltics is a dangerous path for us all to be forced down, and could well lead to a third world war if not stopped. What is needed now are cool heads and people of wisdom and not more guns, more weapons, more war.

NATO is the leadership which has been causing the ongoing wars from the present conflict in the Ukraine, to Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and others.

NATO’s latest move commits its 28 member states to spend two percent of their gross domestic product on the military, and to establish a series of three to five bases in Eastern Europe where equipment and supplies will be pre-positioned to help speed deployments, among other measures. “We are at a dangerous point in our history of the human family and it would be the greatest of tragedies for ourselves and our children if we simply allowed the war profiteers to take us into a third world war, resulting in the death of untold millions of people”

This decision by the United States/NATO to create a high readiness force with the alleged purpose of countering an alleged Russian threat reminds me of the war propaganda of lies, half-truths, insinuations and rumours to which we were all subjected in order to try to soften us all up for the Iraq war and subsequent horrific wars of terror which were carried out by NATO allied forces.

According to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OCSE) observation team, NATO’s reports, including its satellite photos which show Russian combat forces engaged in military operations inside sovereign territory of Ukraine, were based on false evidence.

While NATO is busy announcing a counter-invasion to the non-existent Russian invasion of Ukraine, people in Ukraine are calling out for peace and negotiations, for political leadership which will bring them peace, not weapons and war.

This spearhead military force will be provided by allies in rotation and will involve also air, sea and special forces. We are also informed by a NATO spokesperson that this force will be trained to deal with unconventional actions, from the funding of separatist groups to the use of social media, intimidation and black propaganda.

No doubt the current Western media’s demonisation of President Vladimir Putin and the Russian people, by trying to inculcate fear and hatred of them, is part of the black propaganda campaign.

NATO’s latest proposals of 4,000 soldiers, and a separate force of 10,000 strong British-led joint expeditionary force also proposed, is a highly aggressive and totally irresponsible move by the United States, United Kingdom and NATO. It is breaches the 1997 agreement with Moscow under which NATO pledged not to base substantial numbers of soldiers in Eastern Europe on a permanent basis.

NATO should have been disbanded when the Warsaw Pact disintegrated but it was not and is now controlled by the United States for its own agenda. When speaking of NATO, one of President Bill Clinton’s officials said “America is NATO”. Today NATO, instead of being abolished, is re-inventing itself in re-arming and militarising European states and justifying its new role by creating enemy images – be they Russians, IS (the Islamic State), and so on.

In an interdependent, interconnected world, struggling to build fraternity, economic cooperation and human security, there is no place for the Cold War policies of killing and threats to kill and policies of exceptionalism and superiority. The world has changed. People do not want to be divided and they want to see an end to violence, militarism and war.

The old consciousness is dysfunctional and a new consciousness based on an ethic of non-killing and respect and cooperation is spreading. It is time for NATO to recognise that its violent policies are counterproductive. The Ukraine crisis, groups such as the Islamic State, etc., will not be solved with guns, but with justice and through dialogue.

Above all, the world needs hope. It needs inspirational political leadership and this could be given if President Barack Obama and President Putin sat down together to solve the Ukraine conflict through dialogue and negotiation and in a non-violent way.

We live in dangerous times, but all things are possible, all things are changing … and peace is possible. (END/IPS COLUMNIST SERVICE)

(Edited by Phil Harris)

Excerpt:

“U.S. military action cannot be the only – or even primary – component of our leadership in every instance,” President Obama told graduates at West Point on Wednesday May 28. Credit: West Point – The Military Academy/CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

By Robert E. Hunter
WASHINGTON , May 28 2014 (IPS)

A supertanker sails a long way, they say, between the time the helmsman sets a new course and the moment when the vessel fully responds.

This was the task President Barack Obama took on this week, as he sought to set a new course for the U.S. ship of state in international waters.

What he said today in his commencement address at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in New York was nothing less than turning the wheel hard over for U.S. foreign policy.

Even though, as commander-in-chief, he is the nation’s chief helmsman, it will be some time before the U.S. supertanker responds, and even then not necessarily on the new course Obama is trying to set. The balance of his presidency will show how well he can succeed.

To extend the metaphor, Obama must also navigate between the Scylla of critics who want the United States to continue to use military power as its principal tool of destiny, and the Charybdis of those who would like to see war abolished in favour of other, non-lethal instruments.

He has no lack of critics. Even before the last third of his speech, one leading U.S. news channel cut to an attack by one of Obama’s conservative Congressional adversaries. Another was ready to take Obama on while he still shaking the hands of newly commissioned army second lieutenants.

What is the president’s sin in the eyes of these naysayers?

Obama understands that the world has changed since the end of the Cold War, which saw the collapse of Soviet internal and external empires and European communism; the diffusion of power; the rise of new economic competitors and globalisation in general; and a shift from state monopoly of violence to what are euphemistically called “non-state actors.”

In fact, speaking in politically defensive-mode, Obama went to great lengths – perhaps too great – to argue that the U.S. “remains the one indispensable nation” and, tempting the lessons of history, that this “will likely be true for the century to come.”

He also paid the politically necessary homage to U.S. exceptionalism – “I believe in [it] with every fibre of my being” – but then usefully redefined it in terms of support for the rule of law and recognition that “more lasting peace…can only come through opportunity and freedom for people everywhere.”

In trying to defang critics who argue that Obama does not care for the use of military force, it was no accident that he spoke at West Point.

Furthermore, it was no accident that he visited with U.S. troops in Afghanistan this week; and no accident that he will travel to Omaha Beach in Normandy next week for the 70th anniversary of D-Day, when allied forces invaded northern France.

To be fair to critics who argue that Obama is less enamoured of the use of force than many of his predecessors, they have a point, at least in analysing his proclivities.

Indeed, if his approach to the outside world can be reduced to a single phrase – as is so often true of presidents – it would be “no useless wars.”

That injunction has surely coloured his successful withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq and the end of a U.S. combat role in Afghanistan at the end of this year (though he intends to leave some 9,800 troops behind, assuming that the new Afghan president agrees, as the likely winner has said he will do).

In fact, given that the 2003 invasion of Iraq remains one of the worst foreign policy blunders in U.S. history, and that no good U.S. national security interest has been served by our staying in Afghanistan as long as we have, Obama deserves credit for quieting most of his domestic critics as he has slowly extricated the U.S. from both military ventures.

Obama also used his speech to justify that the U.S. has not allowed itself to be sucked into the military conflict in Syria (where his stance has the support of most Americans, if not most of the Washington commentariat.)

He has also emphasised the U.S. choice of diplomacy over military power in dealing with the Iranian nuclear programme – though, in another mantra, he has stated: “we reserve all options to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.”

While he characterised Russian policy “toward former Soviet states” as “aggression,” and implied the same about Chinese behaviour in the South China Sea, Obama did project an ambiguous position, preferring to define the range of debate while leaving his own choices unclear.

Instead, the president laid out standards for judging.

On the one hand, “the United States will use military force, unilaterally if necessary, when our core interests demand it – when our people are threatened; when our livelihood is at stake; or when the security of our allies is in danger.”

Even so, we have to ask “tough questions about whether our actions are proportional and effective and just,” he added.

In other circumstances, the “threshold for military action must be higher,” and we should seek allies and partners, he said.

Then, in his one sally into alternatives – otherwise a notable lacuna in the speech – he said “We must broaden our tools to include diplomacy and development.”

Obama also tried to put the best face he could on what has so far been Russian president Vladimir Putin’s tactical victory in Ukraine (though, in all likelihood, a long-term Russian strategic defeat), by stressing all the things that the U.S. and others did to soften the blow.

The best parts of Obama’s speech – at least, let us hope, the most lasting – dealt with longer-running problems facing humankind: the importance of democracy and human rights; the empowering of civil society; the fight against extremism, the promotion of useful international institutions; the need to ratify the Law of the Sea Convention; and, as a unifying theme, the role of U.S. leadership in all these areas and more.

Yet he made only a passing reference to climate change, supposedly a hallmark of his agenda.

What was lacking, unfortunately, was “connective tissue” in terms of process, especially the need to relate regional apples and oranges to one another – a strategic approach and the setting of priorities.

While renewing the U.S. priority on countering terrorism, Obama failed to identify its sources in the Middle East or to discuss the risks of regional conflict “…as the Syrian civil war spills across borders.”

He did not propose means for resolving the new Russian challenge to George H.W. Bush’s goal of a “Europe whole and free” and at peace, or indicate that the U.S. would stop ignoring the continent.

Nor did he even mention recent Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts championed by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, or introduce what is supposedly a keystone of his foreign policy, the “pivot” or “rebalancing” towards Asia.

In the final analysis, the test of Obama’s foreign policy for the balance of his term will be whether he will finally begin integrating different elements of his approach, relate different instruments of power and influence to one another, upgrade strategic thinking in his administration, and place resources where the new world he conjures requires.

Obama’s only money item today was to ask Congress to spend five billion dollars more on counter-terrorism: instead these funds should just be taken from a Pentagon budget still out of balance with his goals.

The president should instead be directing money to non-military areas, beginning with diplomacy and development, which can enable him to meet the goals he usefully set forth at West Point.

But the U.S. “Supertanker-of-State” cannot be set firmly on a new course “on the cheap” or without a coherent set of strategies.

Robert E. Hunter, a former U.S. ambassador to NATO, was director of Middle East Affairs on the National Security Council Staff in the Carter administration and in 2011-12 was director of Transatlantic Security Studies at the National Defense University. Read his work on IPS’s foreign policy blog, LobeLog.

U.S. President Barack Obama Wednesday stressed multilateralism over militarism in what was billed as a major foreign policy address and a rebuttal to an ever-louder chorus of criticism, mostly by Republicans and neo-conservatives, that his tenure has been marked by weakness and retreat.

Speaking at the graduation ceremonies of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York – the same forum at which his predecessor, George W. Bush, set forth his doctrine of military pre-emption nine months before invading Iraq – Obama insisted that the United States remains the world’s “indispensable nation” but emphasised that military force should be used only under very limited circumstances.

“Here’s my bottom line,” he told the cadets, some of whom may soon be deployed to Afghanistan from which Obama announced Tuesday he intends to withdraw all U.S. combat troops by the end of 2016. “America must always lead on the world stage. If we don’t, no one else will. The military that you have joined is, and always will be, the backbone of that leadership.

“But U.S. military action cannot be the only – or even primary – component of our leadership in every instance. Just because we have the best hammer does not mean that every problem is a nail,” he declared.

“…I would betray my duty to you, and to the country we love, if I sent you into harm’s way simply because I saw a problem somewhere in the world that needed fixing, or because I was worried about critics who think military intervention is the only way for America to avoid looking weak,” he said.

Citing terrorism as the “the most direct threat to America at home and abroad …for the foreseeable future,” he argued that “a strategy that involves invading every country that harbours terrorist networks is naïve and unsustainable.”

In that context, he stressed the importance of building the capacity of local security forces and announced he will ask Congress to provide five billion dollars to a proposed Counter-Terrorism Partnership Fund (CTPF).

And he devoted much of his speech to the importance of bolstering and relying on international institutions in dealing with geo-political crises and global challenges, including global warming.

“Sceptics often downplay the effectiveness of multilateral action. For them, working through international institutions, or respecting international law, is a sign of weakness. I think they’re wrong,” he said, citing what he depicted as Washington’s successes in isolating Russia after Moscow’s annexation of Crimea and in building a great-power coalition that is negotiating curbs on Iran’s nuclear programme.

“This is American leadership. This is American strength,” he declared, adding that Washington must also strengthen institutions, notably NATO and the U.N., that can anticipate and prevent crises.

He also stressed that Washington’s influence in the world “is always stronger when we lead by example.”

While he insisted that he believed in “American exceptionalism with every fibre of my being,” he said “[w]e cannot exempt ourselves from the rules that apply to everyone else…[W]hat makes us exceptional is not our ability to flout international norms and the rule of law; it’s our willingness to affirm them through our actions,” he said, adding that he will continue his efforts to close the Guantanamo detention facility.

Wednesday’s speech came amidst what has appeared to be a growing number of international crises – ranging from Russia’s intervention in Ukraine and growing tensions between China and its U.S.-backed neighbours in the South and East China seas to the ongoing civil war in Syria and the proliferation of local Al Qaeda affiliates, including Nigeria’s Boko Haram, across the Middle East and North Africa.

Obama’s domestic critics and some foreign allies, such as Saudi Arabia, Israel, and France, have argued that Washington has been too passive in reacting to these events.

That criticism was repeated Wednesday after Obama’s speech by Sen. John McCain who accused the president of “attacking strawmen” by “suggesting that the only alternative to his policies is the unilateral use of military force everywhere.”

“The real choice is how to combine our tools of soft power and hard power in order to avoid conflict, secure our interests and ideals, and meet our challenges through effective deterrence and diplomacy,” Obama’s 2008 Republican rival said, listing the various crises of the last few months. “None of these challenges are the fault of our President, but nothing he has done has been sufficient to address them.

“There is a growing perception worldwide that America is unreliable, distracted, and unwilling to lead. Our nation’s capacity is not in question, but our resolve and judgement are. Speeches alone did not cause this dangerous development, and more speeches will not correct it,” McCain said.

Analysts who have generally been more sympathetic to Obama’s approach also expressed some disappointment with the speech.

“The speech was strongest on what our foreign policy should not be. It should not be isolationist and it should not be military driven,” said Bruce Jentleson, a former senior State Department official under both Obama and Bill Clinton (1993-2001), who teaches at Duke University.

“At a time in which the world is in flux, we really need to think in terms of core strategic constructs like how to adapt deterrence, what are the requisites of coercive diplomacy and what does it really take to build partnerships not just on our part but on the part of others,” he said. “In these and other respects it dodges the really tough questions.”

Stephen Walt, a Harvard professor and one of the deans of the realism school of international relations, said the speech’s focus on terrorism suggested that the administration remains a prisoner of Bush’s paradigm.

“More than anything else, I thought the speech unwittingly underscored the degree to which the war on terror, the continued reliance on Special Forces, drones, etc., and the preoccupation with lesser but vivid dangers as opposed to more serious long-term problems, continue to drive the administration’s approach to national security policy,” he told IPS.

“Apart from the distinct threat of nuclear terrorism, the conventional terrorism danger to Americans is trivial… Yet he felt compelled to talk about it and to pony up another five billion dollars to train militaries in places we don’t understand.”

Col. Lawrence Wilkerson (ret.), who served as former Secretary of State Colin Powell’s long-time chief of staff and now teaches at William & Mary University, largely agreed with Walt.

“This concentration on a less-then-existential threat at the expense of more concrete and possibly formidable threats is wrong-headed and, at least in part, a product of the terrorism-industrial complex we have constructed and that Obama seems unable to escape,” he told IPS in an email exchange.

“What passes for counter-terrorism help today seems a lot like what used to pass for assistance to fight communism during the Cold War,” he noted. “All manner of leaders, dictators prominent among them, used to pay lip service to anti-communist efforts while enriching themselves, staying in power, and oppressing their own people with our assistance as their main support for doing so.”

Indeed, Human Rights Watch and Human Rights First, while praising Obama’s renewed commitment to close Guantanamo and respect international law, expressed concern that the proposed CPTF could benefit abusive governments and security forces.

Obama addressed some of those concerns in reference to U.S. drone strikes against alleged high-value Al Qaeda targets and efforts to prevent civilian casualties. “We must not create more enemies than we take off the battlefield,” he said.

Wreckage of one of the suicide car bombs used to attack the presidential palace in Mogadishu, Somalia’s capital on Friday Feb. 21, 2014. Nine militants were killed in the attack. Credit: Ahmed Osman/IPS

By Ahmed Osman
MOGADISHU, Feb 24 2014 (IPS)

As the Somali government plans to launch a new military campaign to wipe out the Islamic extremist group, Al-Shabaab, from its strongholds in this Horn of Africa nation, experts say that its Somalia’s innocent who live in areas controlled by the group who will suffer the most.

On Friday, Feb. 21, the Al-Qaeda-linked Al-Shabaab launched an unprecedented and brazen attack on the presidential palace in the capital Mogadishu in which 12 people, including nine militants from the extremist group, died. “We expect insurgent activities in the short term even if the group is defeated militarily ... But I think Al-Shabaab can be eradicated from the region." -- Mohamed Muse, military analyst

Shortly after, the government and the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) announced that plans were under way to launch a military campaign against the extremist fighters.

Senior Somali government military commander Ise Guled told IPS in Mogadishu on Monday, Feb. 24 that preparations for “the final onslaught” against the radical fighters’ strongholds in south and central Somalia were “in their final stages”.

“We will launch the offensive in conjunction with our allies against this group and get rid of [this] menace once and for all,” he said. He declined to say when it would commence.

However, Yusuf Alay, an academic in Mogadishu, told IPS that the group’s “oppression” on locals would increase as military pressure on Al-Shabaab mounts.

Al-Shabaab has been ousted from much of southern and central Somalia but the group still controls parts of the country where it imposes strict Islamic Sharia law, and recruits and trains fighters.

Alay expects the group to start imposing stricter curfews and a blanket ban on the use of smartphones in areas under its control. Already Al-Shabaab has forced the biggest telecoms company here to switch off its mobile internet service.

Alay also expects more youths to be indoctrinated into the group’s extremist ideology and forcibly recruited to join.

“The radical group enforces a stricter form of Sharia law, where people are still subjugated to the worst forms of punishments. [It also] levies huge taxes on the people who are already poor, to finance their activities following the loss of key ports in the south,” Alay said.

He added that while people would be negatively affected if the militants resisted and fought against advancing troops, in the long run those who live in “Shabaabistan” (Al-Shabaab territory) would be better off not being under Al-Shabaab rule.

Mohamed Muse, a military analyst in Mogadishu, said the campaign against the extremist group has been in the making for months now but gained new impetus after Al-Shabaab’s deadly attack on the Westgate Mall in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, last September. At least 72 people were killed when Al-Shabaab militants stormed the mall.

“We know that there has been a clear understanding of the need to finish off Al-Shabaab on the part of the Somali government and AMISOM so that the task of rebuilding the nation can proceed unhindered. So it is just a matter of when such a move [will] materialise,” Muse told IPS in Mogadishu.

Last month, following the United Nations Security Council authorisation of an increase in AMISOM peacekeepers, nearly 4,300 Ethiopian troops were added to the existing force of 17,500.

Matt Bryden, director of Sahan Research, a think tank based in Kenya, said in a new report for the Centre for Strategic and International Studies’ African Programme that Al-Shabaab would likely lose all of the territory under its control in the event of a military offensive.

“As a reinforced AMISOM prepares to resume offensive operations, Al-Shabaab is likely to suffer military reverses – including the loss of its remaining strongholds,” Bryden said in the report.

As Ethiopian troops pour into Somalia’s central and southern regions, Al-Shabaab fighters have fled key strongholds in El Bur, Hudur and Barawe.

Already two towns, Hagar, in southern Somalia and Gandershe, just south of Mogadishu, were recently recaptured in surprise attacks by Somali government forces and AMISOM troops.

Bryden said that the militant group has, for some time, been preparing for an “asymmetrical struggle”, as they anticipate defeat in the face of the offensive. He contends the strategy “would permit Al-Shabaab to survive as a potent force in Somalia and the region.”

“For the near term, Al-Shabaab is not playing to win but to survive, subvert and surprise,” he said.

Muse agreed but said the challenges would be manageable if the political wrangling among Somalis were solved before it became a problem.

“We expect insurgent activities in the short term even if the group is defeated militarily, and that is always the nature of counter-insurgency operations. But I think Al-Shabaab can be eradicated from the region,” said Muse.

Aminata Diarra holds up a picture of her brother Malamine, a Red Beret who disappeared in early May 2012. Credit: Marc-André Boisvert/IPS

By Marc-Andre Boisvert
BAMAKO, Feb 13 2014 (IPS)

Aminata Diarra last saw her brother, Malamine, a member of the Malian Red Berets, special forces loyal to ousted president Amadou Toumani Toure, alive on national television almost two years ago.

It was in May 2012, not long after after General Amadou Haya Sanogo, then a Captain, had seized control of the country’s capital Bamako. The military, which suffered several humiliating defeats against Tuareg rebels in the country’s north, initiated the mutiny against the government in their bid for more resources to fight the uprising in northern Mali."We know our relatives have been tortured and killed. We found each other in pain. We will fight for justice." -- Bintou Maiga Sagara, mother of missing Red Beret, Dokale

It was only five days after the coup that Malians learned the name of the junta leader. Sanogo gained instant popularity among a population that saw the democratically-elected government as corrupt. Small Chinese motorcycles, a very popular means of transportation in Bamako, were decorated with stickers of the new leader.

“He offered us hope. But now we know that he was there to enrich himself,” Oumar Sanogo tells IPS while drinking tea with friends at the corner of a street, in the shade of a newspaper stand.

For a few weeks, Sanogo was head of state until international pressure forced him to step down. Constitutional order and a transitional government, headed by the president of the National Assembly, Dioncounda Traore, were then established.

But this was not before hostilities between the Red Berets and Sanogo’s Green Berets resulted in the exchange of fire in April 2012 in what has been dubbed a “counter-coup”.

The Missing 21 Red Berets

Stories about who started the hostilities remain unclear, but several Red Berets were killed and arrested. Diarra’s brother was one of 21 Red Berets who disappeared after the counter-coup failed.

The last time the families of these 21 Red Berets saw them alive was on national television, soon after their arrest at Sanogo’s headquarters, the Kati military base just outside Bamako.

“I went on May 2^nd [2012] to Kati to see if my brother was alive. I went back every day. I received threats. I kept going. But we never had news,” Diarra tells IPS.

She explains that, while some succeeded in finding their missing family members after the “counter-coup”, all communication about the soldiers stopped around April that year.

While this West African nation is slowly moving on from the 2012 military coup, and the occupation of its north by Islamic extremists – the country held elections here in July 2013 – families of the military victims are stilling awaiting justice for what is considered to be the other Malian crisis.

Sanogo was arrested and charged for murder and kidnapping in November 2013. And soon after his arrest a mass grave containing 21 bodies was discovered a few kilometres from his Kati military base. Many believe that these are the bodies of the 21 missing Red Berets.

It is hoped that any day now the DNA results of the soldiers will be made public.

“We are patiently waiting for results. Then, justice will be able to act,” says Diarra, who is also a jurist.

Bintou Maiga Sagara is also watching the situation closely. Her son, Dokale, was among the ones that disappeared.

“I am relieved that they discovered the [bodies],” she tells IPS, showing a picture of her son in uniform.

Sagara has faith that justice will be done.

“Mali is not a violent country. We know our relatives have been tortured and killed. We found each other in pain. We will fight for justice,” she says.

While human rights violations and violence committed by the army have yet to be investigated in the north, the think tank International Crisis Group said in a January  report that there is a need for reform in the military as well as “guaranteeing the republican character of an army that will not engage itself into politics.”

But Moctar Mariko, president of the Malian Association of Human Rights, believes it is important to first shed light on the several episodes of violence before moving forward.

“Mali has a long tradition of impunity, especially within the army. It is time to move away from that,” Mariko tells IPS.

Justice for All

But Sanogo and his followers are not just accused of killing Red Berets. In September 2012, a mutiny was quenched when several of Sanogo’s former supporters revolted against him.

Thirty Green Berets were arrested and then released, but at least eight men have disappeared.

Three bodies were found a month later in October 2012. But the five other men are still missing and their families are still waiting for answers to see if their brothers, sons and husbands are alive.

Nantoume Fatoumata Doumbia’s brother, Lassine Keita, disappeared while drinking in a bar in Kati in September 2012. His body was found a few days later.

“I knew what happened. The day after the mutiny, Sanogo said that he will kill all the ones that rose up [against him],” she tells IPS calmly.

Fanta Keita still does not know what happened to her husband, Ibrahim Doumbia.

“We want to know the truth. We want to know if they are alive or not. It is impossible to keep living that way,” she tells IPS.

Three boys in the Moqattam area look out over Cairo, the growing population of which is rapidly depleting already scarce water resources. Credit: Shelly Kittleson/IPS.

By Shelly Kittleson
CAIRO, Feb 6 2014 (IPS)

Heavy reliance on water intensive crops, a major upstream dam project for the Nile basin, and rising groundwater levels pushing at pharaoh-era monuments will be pressing issues for the next Egyptian president – whether military or civilian.

As criticism continues over the military’s heavy-handedness to quell protests, little attention is being given to the late January announcement by Egypt’s minister of irrigation and water resources on the growing severity of the country’s water shortage: share of water per citizen stands at 640 cubic metres, compared with an international standard of 1,000.

The minister said he expected this amount to decrease to 370 cubic metres by 2050 due to a rapidly growing population.“Many people need to start measuring how much water they use, but it’s hard to break traditions here.”

A scientist working in the water resources sector expressed cautious hope to IPS that “the military is one of the few institutions that can actually get things done.” But he added: “That said, they were in power for a long time and didn’t do anything.”

Improving irrigation practices and countering the demographic explosion are some of the most commonly cited actions to be considered, as well as reducing the use of pesticides and improving sewage and waste disposal systems to prevent contaminating the limited water supplies available.

Attempting to lessen the population’s consumption of sugar would also be beneficial, experts say, not only in terms of water supplies but also public health.

Hugely popular juice pressed from water-intensive sugarcane can be found on street corners across Egypt, with inhabitants swearing by its “kidney-cleansing” properties. Ubiquitous coffee and tea gets steeped in sugar.

Diabetes levels have risen by 83 percent over the past 15 years, but little attempt is made to inform the public of the health-related risks or stem the preponderance of sugarcane production.

Egypt’s agriculture sector consumes well over 80 percent of the country’s annual water resources and sugarcane accounts for a large portion, alongside rice and cotton.

Rice production has been banned by the government in some areas for its heavy water requirements, though it commands a high price on the international market, is a staple for the population, and a certain quantity helps control soil salinity and limits saltwater intrusion in the Delta.

Egypt is instead the world’s largest importer of wheat and buys over half of its requirements from abroad, much of which goes into subsidised bread for the quarter of its 84 million people who live below the poverty line of 1.65 dollars a day.

A serious issue is that outdated irrigation practices are still in use, Hussein Jeffrey John Gawad, a hydro-geologist working as a consultant in Egypt, told IPS.

“Because there was always an abundance of water before, they just continue flooding the farms,” he said. “Many people need to start measuring how much water they use, but it’s hard to break traditions here.”

In certain areas of the country, it is instead an excess of water that is causing problems. The most traditional face of Egypt to the world – and its main magnet for tourism, a sector that accounted for more than a tenth of Egypt’s GDP prior to the 2011 uprising – may be in danger as well, Gawad noted, due to rising groundwater around the country’s ancient monuments.

As the population swells, agriculture increasingly encroaches on areas near important monuments, bringing with it artificial irrigation channels to which chemical fertilisers are added, thereby increasing salinity levels and seeping into limestone foundations, weakening them.

A rise in the water table around the Osireion – the only remaining visible tomb in Abydos, one of Egypt’s most important archaeological sites – has made it largely inaccessible due to inundation of sand and flooding.

Gawad said that at one point the government had tried to install a “dewatering” system, “but now there is literally zero government attention to this.”

At some sites, pumps and drainage pipes have been set up, with varying levels of success. An international rescue effort led by United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation in the 1960s saved the enormous blocks of the Abu Simbel temples from being submerged by relocating them onto an artificial hill during the construction of the Aswan Dam.

However, the more gradual but relentless weakening of temple foundations and steady erosion of carvings and ancient paintings has not drawn similar attention.

Meanwhile, Ethiopia’s diversion of the Blue Nile as part of its massive Renaissance Dam project looms large over any discussion of Egypt’s future water supplies.

As part of colonial-era agreements, Egypt long held rights to the vast majority of the Nile’s waters. In mid-2010, however, five upstream countries – Ethiopia, Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, and Rwanda, with Burundi joining in the following year – signed a treaty to share the dam’s resources, formally launching the project in April 2012.

“Ethiopia has the right to use the water flowing through their lands,” Gawad said, “but the policy of the Egyptian government is to not grant them that right. They stick by colonial-era mandates when it is convenient, and throw them by the wayside when it is not.”

A study by the International Fund for Agricultural Development found in 2005 that 98 percent of Egyptian agriculture was irrigated with Nile water or pumped from aquifers renewed by the Nile River flow. Under former president Mohammed Morsi, there was talk of “going to war” if the dam project were to be completed, but officials have since said this option has been ruled out.

Journalists have been arrested for questioning the merits and funding of the dam in Ethiopia, and the country shows no willingness to consider alternative options. Few reliable studies have been carried out on the potential effects of the project, but reducing the amount of water flowing into the water-strapped nation further downstream will inevitably pose risks to its economy and, as a result, its stability.

A solider trying to stop a protest by Muslim Brotherhood supporters in Cairo. Credit: Hisham Allam/IPS.

By Hisham Allam
CAIRO, Nov 7 2013 (IPS)

Demonstrations have been at the heart of historic upheavals in Egypt since January 2011. But a newly proposed law that seeks to regulate protests could imperil one of the biggest gains of the Arab Spring revolution here: freedom of expression.

The protest law, approved by the military-backed government Oct. 9 in the backdrop of violent protests, entails fines of up to 42,000 dollars plus imprisonment for offenders. It now awaits the assent of interim President Adly Mansour.

Its supporters say that passing a law to regulate demonstrations was necessary to prevent the country from sliding into daily chaos.“When the demonstrators are Sisi’s supporters, the protests are legal and when they are his opponents, they are a crime."

But human rights groups, Islamist parties and other opponents of the military-backed dispensation call it a huge setback for hard-won public freedoms.

“This law will arouse the anger of many revolutionary and worker groups that make their voices heard through peaceful demonstrations,” said Dr. Khaled Alam El Din, former advisor to Mohammad Morsi, Egypt’s first democratically elected president who was ousted in a military coup Jul. 3.

Morsi’s supporters see the draft law as an attempt by the Commander of the Armed Forces, Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi, to silence all voices in Egypt that condemn the coup.

“Sisi wants to pass this law to restrict freedom of expression and suppress his opponents,” El Din told IPS. “The Egyptian political elite and private media are completely tight-lipped. No one dare criticise these dictatorial policies.

“Such an oppressive law will eventually explode in the face of all those involved in passing it. If this situation continues, it will be the final nail in the coffin for the 2011 revolution, one of the biggest gains of which was freedom of expression.”

Some point out the irony of such a law in Egypt.

“Have they (those in the government) forgotten that they too came to power through demonstrations?” asked Amr Bakly, a rights activist.

It was mass protests that led to the overthrow of president Hosni Mubarak, who had been in power for nearly 30 years, in 2011. The coup against Morsi, a face of the Muslim Brotherhood that played a key role in the revolution, also came after widespread demonstrations.

“When the demonstrators are Sisi’s supporters, the protests are legal and when they are his opponents, they are a crime? This is a shame,” Bakly told IPS.

Calling it an “anti-protest law”, 17 national human rights NGOs, in a joint statement, said it is “a permission to kill” demonstrators and opponents of the military regime.

Comprising 21 articles, the proposed law requires Interior Ministry permission five days before any demonstration, and gives senior police officials the right to cancel, postpone or relocate demonstrations as well as to ban sit-ins.

According to it, demonstrators will be prohibited from gathering in certain areas, overshooting the permitted duration of the protest, exposing the public to danger, blocking roads, or causing any disturbance to traffic.

The draft law also makes it mandatory for demonstrators to maintain a minimum distance of 50 metres between the protest site and vital installations.

“(If this becomes law) people can be imprisoned and charged with treason if they take the matter to international courts,” Bakly said.

The draft law faces harsh criticism from some within the government, including Deputy Prime Minister Ziad Bahaa El Din.

Human rights activists see it as a revival of the law which Morsi’s government had tried to bring in unsuccessfully.

“Sisi’s law is worse than Morsi’s, and both were looking to empower themselves. The military seeks to set up a police state whereas the Brotherhood had been seeking a religious dictatorship,” Bakly told IPS.

Some politicians and writers, however, say the protest law will help regulate demonstrations and provide stability and security.

Since the Egyptian army deposed Morsi, thousands of his supporters have protested across the country. Many have been killed and injured. The latest flare-up occurred on Oct. 6 when 60 people were killed in clashes between supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood and the security forces.

“Opponents of the law want the country to be lost in chaos,” said Soliman Gouda, a well-known columnist. “The state must control outlaws and criminals who are disturbing public life through demonstrations.

“The Brotherhood’s demonstrations have resulted in Egyptians being denied the grace of democracy, especially after pro-Morsi protestors resorted to riots, violence and attacks on public and private enterprise,” Gouda, former editor in chief of Al-Wafd newspaper told IPS.

“Establishing rules for organising demonstrations does not mean restricting freedoms; this interpretation is completely misleading.”

Esraa Abdel Fatah, a popular internet activist, said: “Passing a law to regulate demonstrations is necessary because supporters of the previous government started using weapons and knifes in clashes with peaceful citizens, leaving dozens of people dead.”

Fatah, who was arrested in 2008 for two weeks, told IPS: “The law will not affect public freedoms if it is formulated in accordance with international conventions and under the supervision of a specialised committee of elected parliament members.

“But if it shackles the hands of people and stops them from expressing their opinions, no doubt it will end the process of freedoms in Egypt forever.”

As supporters of the military and followers of ousted elected president Mohamed Morsi clashed in Egypt on Oct. 6, members of the country’s 50-member committee are clashing over the drafting of a consensual constitution. Courtesy: Amro Diab

By Hisham Allam
CAIRO, Oct 7 2013 (IPS)

Bloody clashes erupted in Cairo on Sunday Oct. 6 between supporters of the military and followers of ousted elected president Mohamed Morsi as the latter protested against the July military coup that deposed their leader. But as clashes occurred on the streets, a clash of ideologies has been occurring on the country’s 50-member committee as it amends Egypt’s constitution.

Sunday’s death toll reached 50 and at least 286 people were injured, according to Dr. Ahmed Ansari, chairman of the ambulance. The Interior Ministry reported arresting 423 protesters supporting the ousted president. This is the highest death toll here since Aug. 14, when the military and police smashed two pro-Morsi sit-ins in Cairo, and hundreds were killed. “The current crisis is political, not constitutional, and the solution would have to be political as well.” -- Hossam Bahgat, director of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights

Egypt stands at a critical stage in drafting a consensual constitution that could satisfy the needs of both civil and Islamic groups along with being approved by the military forces.

Hossam Bahgat, director of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, told IPS that because of the unresolved political crisis and the deep polarisation of society, “any political and social environment is significantly unsuitable for the making of a constitution through a democratic, inclusive and representative process.”

He pointed out that ironically, “we’re seeing more similarities than differences between the Brotherhood-led constitutional drafting process and the current one.”

On Jul. 8, five days after the overthrow of Morsi, interim President Adly Mansour issued a decree to form the 50-member committee and tasked it with writing a final draft of Egypt’s amended constitution.

The constitution was first drafted by a committee under Morsi’s government, which mainly consisted of Muslim Brotherhood and Islamic movements.

But louder voices from within the 50-member committee, which excludes the Muslim Bother’s party, have started demanding the drafting of a new constitution.

The only Salafi party on the committee, Al-Nour, is likely to defend the Islamic-flavoured articles in the suspended constitution, especially clauses that protect the Islamic identity of the state.

“What the Islamist-majority constituent assembly sought to do last year was to preserve all existing privileges of the military, while giving some concessions to conservative Islamists and undermining the supreme constitutional court, which had shown hostility to Brotherhood rule,” Bahgat said.

In the current constitution, army representatives have pushed for the approval of an article where the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces will be the body responsible for appointing the Defence Minister, provided that this does not affect the powers of the president.

Bahgat said the current process was as exclusionary as last year’s one, “and even more lacking [in] democratic credentials because the current committee was appointed by a president who was in turn appointed by the defence minister.”

“We’re seeing the same dynamic this time where everyone expects the military to get everything they want, while the judiciary will get preferential treatment and most Islamist provisions [will] be undone.”

Bahgat said that the new constitution will not last longer than the 2012 one as Egypt could not have a permanent constitution through a process that excludes the 20 percent of the population who support the ousted president.

“The current crisis is political, not constitutional, and the solution would have to be political as well,” he added.

Ahmed Badie, a spokesperson for the Al-Watan Salafist Party, which was founded in 2013, told IPS “the upcoming constitution will be hostile to Islam and Muslims, because the dominating ideology of the participants is to take revenge [against] Islam.”

“They will manipulate the identity of the state, which would lead to an unlawful constitution,” he said.

Badie believes that Egyptians who voted for the 2012 constitution will reject what he called an “anti-Islam, secular constitution” and that Islamists and the military coup opponents will rally together against this. He added, “[in] the end, legitimacy will remain.”

“What is built on falsehood is false.”

He explained that less than five percent of the clauses in the 2012 constitution that required amendment “but the current committee, which was formed in the dark, wants to blow up our constitution just because it was drafted by the Islamists.”

“How can we compare such a constitution under a military coup to the former one under a democratic regime? This is shameful,” Badie said.

Leftist representative on the 50 member-committee, Hussein Abdel-Razek, told IPS that many things needed to be disposed of from the Brotherhood constitution, which allows for an authoritarian state and gives priority to the interests of the ruling party over the interests of democracy.

“The difference between the two constitutions is clear, they [the Brotherhood] were establishing a religious [constitution], meanwhile we are drafting a constitution for a civil, democratic state based on citizenship and the balance of powers,” Abdel-Razek explained.

Once the constitution has been re-written, Mansour will put the amended version to a national referendum within 30 days of receiving the final draft, which is expected in a month from now. It will be effective upon public approval.

However, this time the process is more open to the public, more transparent and seems to include more rigorous debate. While the 2012 constitution was being drafted most of the agreements were made in closed rooms where the general debate was much less genuine.

Dr Saad al-Din al-Hilali, a jurisprudence professor at al-Azhar al-Sharif, one of the oldest universities in Cairo which was founded in 970, stressed that the constitution of the Muslim Brotherhood contained many clauses that enabled them to remain continuously in power for decades, and assure the supremacy of its members over the rest of the Egyptian people.

He told IPS “the constitution, which is prepared now will find great acceptance, despite the mobilisation of Islamic movements and the Muslim Brotherhood to make citizens reject it in the public referendum.”

“The maturity of Egyptians and the huge rejection of the Brotherhood, which appeared on Jun. 30, will prevent the implementation of their plan, thus the constitution will be approved popularly and legally,” he added.

He said that the constitution committee was not going to reject the Brotherhood constitution completely because it contained some basic clauses that were included in all the previous constitutions, including health and education rights. But, he added, while the Brotherhood constitution completely ignored issues of public freedoms and the principle of citizenship, it would be addressed in the current one.

Human rights defenders and members of the opposition in Honduras see a new elite military unit created to engage in policing as a drastic setback for the demilitarisation efforts that began two decades ago.

The Military Police of Public Order will be launched in October, initially with 900 officers, to be built up to 5,000 by early 2014.

It was created to carry out law enforcement duties in shantytowns and other poor neighbourhoods where the civil police force has pulled out, overwhelmed by the greater organisation and firepower of common criminals and organised crime.

It will also have powers to call up military reservists and engage in domestic intelligence activities.

The new unit’s intelligence efforts will be in addition to the work carried out by the National Intelligence Directorate, created six months ago, the Anti-Drug Trafficking Directorate and the anti-drug prosecution service.

Ramón Custodio, the national human rights commissioner or ombudsman, said he was staunchly opposed to the new body on the grounds that it violated the constitution and virtually ensured the demise of the national civilian police, re-established 15 years ago when the military began to yield power to civilians.

To use reservists, a special law would be needed declaring a state of emergency or of war, “but this is not included in the law approved Aug. 21,” Custodio told IPS, calling the decision “an enormous setback.”

In contrast, congressman Celin Discua of the governing right-wing National Party said the foundation of the elite corps was a historic event that restored to “the military the power that had been taken from them … Now we will be safer.”
Discua said the decision was justified by the crisis in the national civilian police, which has been undergoing a reform and purge for the last two years, since its connections with crime and corruption came to light.

Twenty people a day are murdered in this impoverished Central American nation of eight million, which is considered one of the most violent countries in the world.

According to experts, the police purge is moving forward too slowly, and only an estimated 30 percent of the police force’s 12,000 officers can be trusted, Discua said.

Congressman German Leitzelar, of the social democratic Innovation and Unity Party (PINU), claimed the law in question is “unconstitutional and confuses the spheres of defence and security, which are two different things that in the long run may clash and result in human rights violations.”

As part of a strategy for strengthening ties with the armed forces, the government of right-wing President Porfirio Lobo issued a decree on Aug. 13 granting the military the right to carry out commercial forestry projects on land under military control.

The income from timber sales will go towards the military pensions institute (IPM – Instituto de Previsión Militar), which was in charge of managing business enterprises for the armed forces until two decades ago.

The IPM sold off its businesses when Honduras embarked on a demilitarisation process that stopped it from competing with the private sector for state funds.

But now the process seems to have gone into reverse. “The military are allowed into nearly every area of the country’s development, and they are creating the future conditions to return to the business sphere. Civilians may not like it, but they will not be able to get them out,” sociologist Eugenio Sosa told IPS.

Soaring levels of violence and the spread of organised crime have created a climate that favours the growing involvement and presence of the armed forces, in the midst of the campaign for the November elections.

The National Autonomous University of Honduras (UNAH) Observatory on Violence reported that the number of homicides rose from 7,104 in 2011 to 7,172 in 2012, equivalent to 85.5 per 100,000 population – one of the highest murder rates in the world.

Although most of the killings were the result of gunshot wounds, a bill to regulate firearms possession has languished in Congress for three years.

For the last nine years, the most dangerous areas of the country have been the central province of Francisco Morazán, which includes Tegucigalpa, and the northern provinces of Atlántida and Cortés, although more ecently, organised crime has spread along the entire Caribbean coast.

Among the high-profile murders blamed on the police are those of two university students in 2011, one of whom was the son of Julieta Castellanos, president of UNAH and an expert on security and governance issues, who fostered strong social pressure for the reform of state security.

A month ago four of the eight police officers implicated in the murders were convicted, but the masterminds have not been identified.

The case led to the final lifting of the veil hiding police corruption, which includes kidnapping, connections with drug trafficking mafias and other serious crimes.

Political analyst Miguel Cálix told IPS that legal reforms were necessary before powers were granted to the armed forces to carry out logging and sales of timber. He also said the revenue obtained from these activities should go into the state coffers, rather than directly to the military.

What is being given in return for all this? Cálix asked. In Honduran society, “a militaristic viewpoint prevails in spite of the 2009 crisis,” he said.

On Jun. 28, 2009, then-president Manuel Zelaya was taken from his home at gunpoint and put on a plane to Costa Rica, still in his pyjamas. The coup was backed by Congress, which appointed Roberto Micheletti as acting head of state. Lobo was elected in December 2009.

Nevertheless, according to opinion polls, out of Honduras’ fragile institutions, public confidence in the military still puts it in third place, after the churches and the media.

In the face of the insecurity, people have been in favour of the soldiers being put on the streets, originally alongside the civilian police, but now with autonomy enjoyed by their own special unit.

A street in a Damascus suburb after a regime attack on Friday. Credit: Dr. Omar Hakeem/IPS.

By Zack Baddorf
ANTAKYA, Turkey , Aug 31 2013 (IPS)

As the United States prepares to fire Tomahawk cruise missiles on military targets inside Syria, Syrians are preparing for a new phase of the conflict that has already left more than 100,000 people dead.

“There is a state of panic in Damascus,” says ‘Sham Land’, who, like many activists uses a pseudonym for security reasons. “People are lining up to get bread. The exchange rate of the dollar is very high – about 75 pounds [65 cents] increase in just the past two days. Many people are preparing to leave the city, especially people who live near the government security buildings.”

Land, who documents civilian casualties for the Syrian Network for Human Rights in Damascus, said that in the evenings fewer people are walking around on the streets or driving through the city.

“Some people are preparing food and storing it. If they have a house in the countryside, they’re leaving to go there,” Land, a 31-year-old former dentist told IPS via Skype.

Elsewhere in the capital, activist Susan Ahmad confirmed these reports."Many people are preparing to leave the city, especially people who live near the government security buildings."

Ahmad, a 30-year-old Syrian who lives in a regime-held part of Damascus, told IPS that “many basics are not available and goods are very expensive,” with people stocking up on supplies like first aid kits, bread, and gas in anticipation of Western military attacks. To substitute for bread, she said, people are eating rice and bulgur cereal food.

High demand on bread has been problematic off and on for months, she said, but the news of a possible foreign military attack has exacerbated the problem.

“People are afraid,” she said.

In particular, Ahmad said talk of foreign military intervention has prompted “pro-Assad people” to start “running away and taking their families out of Damascus.”

Another activist, Abu Yasin, reports that families of military officers loyal to President Bashar al-Assad are leaving Damascus and heading to Lebanon.

Yasin, 26, also said he’s seen “significant” movement of military vehicles around the city. More specifically, he saw armoured vehicles, which may be targeted by the U.S. military strikes, being driven out of the city.

Multiple IPS sources confirmed the Syrian military is dispersing its forces and equipment.

Ahmad noted that the regime is moving its weapon caches out of its security branches throughout the city. Syrian security branches are used to house military personnel, detain prisoners, and store heavy weapons.

Further, in advance of the impending attack, Ahmad claims the regime is now using schools and university campuses to house its soldiers and store its weapons.

Media activist Dani al-Qappani told IPS he has a source working for the regime who saw the military moving prisoners, including activists, into military locations to serve as human shields.

Ahmad also noticed that senior soldiers at checkpoints have been withdrawn and replaced with junior ones. She crosses the checkpoints every day and said there are now “new faces” – soldiers who all look about 18 years old. She said she thinks the regime is protecting the more seasoned fighters from attacks.

Nevertheless, Ahmad said the United States should still attack Syrian military targets.

“Nobody likes foreign intervention,” she said, “but if it’s going to finish Assad, let it happen. The most important thing is to stop the shelling and killing of innocent people.”

Land agrees, saying many Syrian people would welcome the attack on the regime.

“We want the United States to bomb the vital power centres of the government, including the soldiers and headquarters of the Syrian Presidential Guard,” Land said, “but we do not want any bombs to hit the country’s infrastructure, including anything that affects the power system.”

The White House said it is not considering options that are focused on “regime change.”

“We are sure that the United States and the West have never had any intentions to help the Syrian people. They could have helped us 28 months ago, when the revolution started,” Land said.

For Land and many Syrians, their main concern is weakening the regime.

“Let me tell you something,” Ahmad said. “We have been subject to shelling for more than two years now. I can’t say that we’re now accustomed to being shelled, but I can say that we can live with [the Western attacks], if it’s going to finish Assad.”

For Abu Yasin, U.S. military strikes are a necessary evil.

Without outside assistance, he said, “there is no hope for the fall of Assad…as the rebels are making very slow progress.” Still, he is “afraid that there will be more victims in the population.”

Media activist Dani al-Qappani also worries about civilian casualties.

Al-Qappani lives in the Damascus suburb of Moaddamiet al-Sham, which was attacked by chemical weapons last week. He said his eyes still hurt from the chemical attack.

Syrians in his town have been “under siege” for a year, he said.

“One year under siege. One year under heavy shilling. One year and our blood is being shed,” al-Qappani said. “We don’t fear death anymore.”

Some Syrians in Moaddamiet al-Sham want to flee to safer areas but can’t, according to al-Qappani. There is no way for them to leave the area since the regime forces surround them.

In the suburbs of Aleppo, former medical student Radwan Kinase said some Syrians have managed to seek refuge in neighbouring Turkey in advance of the U.S. military strikes.

Kinase, who volunteers at local field hospitals in Free Syrian Army-held areas, downplayed the importance of the chemical attacks.

“There is no difference between killing us by shelling, bombing, Scud rockets or killing us by chemical agents,” he said.

Kinase said he expects the United States will hit some targets and then let the fighting continue as before.

What seemed inevitable just 48 hours ago – an imminent U.S. missile attack on Syrian targets in response to an alleged chemical attack that reportedly killed hundreds of Syrian citizens – stalled Thursday as the justification for military action faced increasing questioning both here and abroad.

Growing calls by both Republican and Democratic lawmakers for consultations with, if not formal authorisation by, Congress before Obama takes any military action have raised the potential political costs on Capitol Hill if Obama proceeds on his own.

While the administration continues to express certainty that the Syrian government was responsible for the alleged Aug. 21 attack, the Associated Press, quoting U.S. intelligence officials, reported Thursday that such a case fell short of a “slam dunk” – a reference to then-CIA director George Tenet’s mistaken declaration that President Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in the run-up to the Iraq War.

Some officials cited in the story said they could not entirely rule out the possibility that rebels were responsible for the attack on a Damascus suburb – as alleged by the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad."Simply lashing out with military force under the banner of 'doing something' will not secure our interests in Syria."
-- Representative Adam Smith

According to AP, officials could not tie Assad or his inner circle to any directive ordering the use of chemical weapons or even to foreknowledge of the attack, suggesting that the decision may have made by lower-ranking military officers or a rogue commander.

The administration has scheduled a telephone conference call with members of Congress for Thursday evening, but officials said the briefing would not include classified information that could confirm the nature of the attack or who was responsible. A White House spokesman said the administration still hopes to release an unclassified intelligence assessment by the weekend.

Meanwhile, the administration faced other problems overseas, not least of which was the refusal earlier this week of the Arab League to explicitly endorse a military attack and the appeals by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and his special envoy for Syria, Lakhdar Brahimi, to await the findings of U.N. inspectors who have been in Syria this week investigating the site of the alleged attack, taking testimony and blood samples from its victims. Ban said Thursday the inspectors would not leave Syria until Saturday.

On Thursday, the British parliament voted against military intervention in Syria, leading Prime Minister David Cameron to say his country would not join the action in which he had previously pledged to participate, along with the leaders of France and Turkey.

Britain has long been Washington’s closest military ally, and most analysts consider it inconceivable that Obama would launch a strike, however limited, without allied and especially British support.

Pentagon chief Chuck Hagel, who during the administration’s deliberations late last week reportedly opposed striking, told reporters in Brunei Thursday that any action against Damascus would require “international collaboration”.

However, it appears now that whatever hopes the administration had earlier this week of carrying out “limited” military strikes for two or three days against Syrian targets as early as this weekend have dissipated.

It was widely believed that Obama had hoped to complete military operations against Syria before he left Tuesday Sept. 3 for the Group of 20 (G20) Summit in St. Petersburg, Russia, that begins Thursday Sept. 5.

Most analysts here consider it highly unlikely that he would want to carry out an attack while being hosted by Russian President Vladimir Putin, Assad’s most-important international backer and Washington’s co-chair in long-stalled negotiations between Assad and opposition forces to end the civil war in Syria.

Moscow has threatened to veto any resolution at the U.N. Security Council that would authorise military action against Damascus, and U.S.-Russian relations are already at their lowest point since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

But growing domestic opposition to even limited strikes of the kind Obama suggested during a PBS interview Wednesday he would pursue may be more decisive.

As of Thursday morning, 140 members of the House of Representatives had signed a letter calling on Obama to gain Congressional approval before taking ay military action, according to the “Hill” newspaper.

“Engaging our military in Syria when no direct threat to the United States exists and without prior congressional authorisation would violate the separation of powers that is clearly delineated in the Constitution,” said the letter, which also charged that Obama’s participation in the NATO campaign against Libya in 2011 was unconstitutional because it lacked authorisation.

Over the last two days, a number of influential Democrats from both houses have also privately expressed serious reservations to the White House about attacking Syria, noting that even limited strikes could draw the United States into another Middle Eastern civil war.

“Simply lashing out with military force under the banner of ‘doing something’ will not secure our interests in Syria,” noted Washington Representative Adam Smith, the senior Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee.

Recent public opinion polls suggest strong opposition to military action at the grassroots level. A Reuters/Ipsos poll taken Aug. 19-23 found that only a quarter of respondents said they would support U.S. military intervention if Assad used chemical weapons against the civilian population.

A Huffington Post/YouGov survey taken earlier this week found the same percent would support air strikes to aid Syrian rebels, while 41 percent were opposed. Thirty-one percent agreed with the statement that the U.S. has a responsibility to prevent Syria from using chemical weapons against rebels, while 38 percent disagreed.

Meanwhile, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), the only independent international non-governmental organisation that has provided statistics regarding casualties resulting from the alleged attack and which reported Aug. 24 that three hospitals near the affected area had received 3,600 patients displaying neurotoxic symptoms, of whom 355 died, issued a formal statement Thursday “warn[ing] that its information could not be used as evidence to certify the precise origin” of the attack or designate “the perpetrators”.

It added that its previous statement should not “be used as a substitute for the [U.N.’s] investigation or as a justification for military action.”

In another statement released Thursday, Amnesty International said “the best course of action would be for the United Nations to complete its investigation into this latest outrage and for the United Nations Security Council to refer all evidence of war crimes and crimes against humanity from this and other incidents to the International Criminal Court.”

The Council could consider other measures, it said, including “targeted economic sanctions and the deployment of international human rights monitors”.

Saeed wears a gas mask outside a mosque in Cairo in anticipation of a police gas attack. Credit: Sam Kimball/IPS.

By Sam Kimball
CAIRO, Aug 26 2013 (IPS)

With the sun inching closer to the horizon on Friday afternoon in the Mohandiseen neighbourhood of Cairo, the call to prayer from Mostafa Mahmood mosque goes out over a street empty of all but a few soldiers lingering beside their tanks.

Just last week the square and streets around Mostafa Mahmood were the sight of an impromptu sit-in by supporters of ousted president Mohamed Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood organisation. The sit-in hastily formed after their violent eviction from two major camps at the hands of the Egyptian military that same day, which left at least 600 dead and thousands wounded.

Since then several hundred Muslim Brotherhood leaders around Egypt have been arrested on charges ranging from vandalism to inciting violence. Yet a call by the Brotherhood to take to the streets on the ‘Friday of martyrs’ (Aug. 23) to protest the military’s violence brought only scattered protests of a few hundred in Cairo and a few governorates.

Last week’s killings and the round-up of the Islamist organisation’s leadership since hasn’t wiped out the Brotherhood, but has dealt it a serious blow and left its political future uncertain.

Standing beside the battered and dusty fence of the Assad Bin Al Furat mosque in Cairo, frequently used as a gathering point for Muslim Brotherhood marches over the last several weeks, middle-aged truck driver Amr Faraghani Numeri and several older men paint a bleak picture of the Muslim Brotherhood in national affairs.“Considering the 30 years of peaceful protest carried out under Mubarak, the Brotherhood will return to that - they have no other choice.”

“The future of the Ikhwan (Brotherhood) is over, done,” Numeri said. He was quick to add, “This doesn’t mean that Islam is over. The Muslim Brotherhood do not represent Muslims. They do not have a political or an organisational future because the people do not want them.”

Numeri and swaths of Egyptian society who share his views represent a new kind of challenge for the Muslim Brotherhood. According to Adel Abdel Ghafar, a scholar at the Centre for Arab & Islamic Studies at the Australian National University, “The Muslim Brotherhood is facing a grave trial. It is a period of serious adversity to be overcome.”

Never before in the Muslim Brotherhood’s 85-year history had it attained such public political influence, only to see it quickly snatched away, says Abdel Ghafar.

Isaam Shahid, a former member of the shura council in the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party (FJP), seemed unfazed at first by the hole the Brotherhood has found itself in. “Despite the unrest that has happened, I am optimistic that this situation will not continue for long,” he said self-assuredly.

The “situation”, he noted, was the violent repression of the Muslim Brotherhood by the military-backed government. He saw little difference between the mass of the Egyptian people and committed supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood, saying, “The people will always continue their peaceful protest against the military.”

Shahid said that the recent threats to ban the Muslim Brotherhood and send it right back to where it began before the 2011 revolution opened up space for them to participate above ground, were hollow: “There was talk by the legal scholars working to amend the constitution that was approved in 2012 that, based on a clause that prohibits the foundation of parties based on religious identities, the FJP would be banned. But this isn’t going to happen. The FJP is a party for all Egyptians.”

Mohamed, who declined to give his last name, is a Muslim Brotherhood member and a student union representative at Al Azhar University in Cairo. He says that he ran for his post in the student union openly as a Brotherhood member, and faced no criticisms on the basis of his affiliation. He does not, however, think the Muslim Brotherhood can compete in the open as it did until Morsi’s ouster.

“I don’t think the military regime will now allow the Muslim Brotherhood in government,” he said.  But, he added, the organisation will continue to push to participate in public life. “Considering the 30 years of peaceful protest carried out under Mubarak, the Brotherhood will return to that – they have no other choice.”

Yet when pressed regarding the political future of the Muslim Brotherhood in the face of the military-backed government’s overpowering hostility, Shahid didn’t seem so optimistic.

“The forces of the coup have overtaken democracy and created ‘tankocracy’, so I doubt that they will allow The Freedom and Justice Party to participate in the coming elections,” he said. “They [the military-backed government] will soon hold elections that are on their face democratic but on the inside are full of cheating. But who talks about elections in this kind of situation anyway?”

Mohamed Elmasry, assistant professor of journalism and mass communication at the American University in Cairo, said that “The Brotherhood is a deep organisation, with hundreds of thousands of committed members. They have been part and parcel of Egyptian society for more than 80 years. If they are banned and forced underground, they will adjust.”

Giving a nod to much of the organisation’s history from after the Second World War until Mubarak’s overthrow, he added, “They have, after all, operated underground for most of their existence, and functioned as a religious and social service organisation.”

Because of their grassroots base, Elmasry thinks the game is not up for the Muslim Brotherhood. “I think they will fight to get back into politics, and, should Egypt’s political system once again offer the chance at free and fair political competition, I would not be surprised if the Brotherhood is able to achieve significant electoral success.”

“The Muslim Brotherhood will always be part of the political process,” Abdel Ghafar said. “However, the recent disappearance of the leadership will push the rest of the membership underground. The system has just closed up. Now they are waiting for the opportunity to re-enter.”

Egypt's military rulers have set security solutions over political ones. Credit: Cam McGrath/IPS.

By Cam McGrath
CAIRO, Aug 22 2013 (IPS)

Egyptian military leader General Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi said ousting the country’s first elected president was necessary “to preserve democracy” and resolve the political deadlock that had dangerously polarised the country. But six weeks after the coup he led, the notion that toppling Islamist president Mohamed Morsi would restore stability to Egypt has proven false.

Instead, the confrontations between the army and supporters of the ousted president have led to violent chaos and given the military a free hand to restrict freedoms and rebuild the apparatus of Hosni Mubarak’s authoritarian regime. A court ordered the release of Mubarak himself on bail.

“The biggest threat facing Egypt remains the return of the police state. More specifically, the threat concerns not only the reconstitution of a police state, which never really left since Hosni Mubarak’s ouster, but also the return of the implicit, if not overt, acceptance of the repressive practices of the coercive apparatus,” said political analyst Wael Eskander writing in the independent Jadaliyya ezine.

At least 1,000 Egyptians have been killed and thousands injured since the army stormed pro-Morsi demonstrations in Cairo on Aug. 14 using live ammunition. Another 160 protesters, mostly members of the Muslim Brotherhood that forms the core of Morsi’s support, were killed in clashes with security forces in July.“A Muslim Brotherhood driven underground, a leading military figure, an assertive police force, and submissive liberal bloc is perhaps the most apt description of pre-2011 Egypt.”

The post-coup casualty figure has exceeded that of the 18-day uprising that toppled former president Mubarak in 2011. By all accounts, the military operation to clear public squares of largely peaceful and unarmed protesters calling for Morsi’s reinstatement has been far more brutal.

Rights group Amnesty International described the crackdown as “utter carnage”, blasting Egypt’s military-backed government for its excessive use of force.

The level of violence is shocking but not surprising, says rights lawyer Negad El-Borai, who recalls the heavy-handed tactics the military used to intimidate opposition activists during the 17 months it ruled Egypt between Mubarak’s fall and Morsi’s election.

“The last time the army was in power anyone who spoke out against them was beaten, humiliated or killed,” El-Borai told IPS. “That’s just how these guys operate.”

Despite the military’s poor track record in domestic politics, many liberal and leftist Egyptians supported the army’s Jul. 3 coup, seeing military intervention as preferable to rule under the Muslim Brotherhood. Their virulent anti-Brotherhood sentiment in effect provided a mandate to remove Morsi and use force against the Islamic group’s members.

It has also “distracted them” from the striking return to the days before the 2011 uprising, say analysts.

Having ousted Morsi and suspended Egypt’s flimsy constitution, the military has used the façade of a civilian interim government to rebuild the institutions that propped up Mubarak’s corrupt and repressive regime.

The old guard is slipping back into place. Egypt’s cabinet has been stripped of Islamists and stacked with Mubarak-era figures, including former ranking members of Mubarak’s now-dissolved National Democratic Party. More than half of the 18 provincial governors appointed last week are former army or police generals – some with chequered records of conduct during the 2011 revolution.

The “militarisation of the state,” as one opposition party spokesman described it, has been carried out under the cover of a pernicious propaganda campaign aimed at vilifying Morsi’s supporters. The ruling junta and its media allies have whipped up hysteria against the Brotherhood, painting the group’s members as paid dupes and terrorists using the sort of patriotic rhetoric typically reserved for arch-enemy Israel.

Eskander argues that a “war on terror” is the perfect legitimising tool for a government without democratic credentials that is seeking to violently suppress its political opponents. The terrorism threat has allowed Egypt’s security services to regain “their traditional role as an arbiter of these conflicts, as well as their licence to employ abusive, repressive tactics.”

Since Morsi’s ouster, authorities have rounded up hundreds of Brotherhood leaders and supporters on charges of inciting violence and terrorism. The government has also hinted that it would ban the 85-year-old Islamic group – a move that could drive it underground, where it spent most of the past 60 years.

Security solutions “will only reinforce the Brotherhood’s rigidity… [and] further empower the coercive apparatus,” warns Eskander. “As extremist groups are pushed into hiding, the security leaders will find excuses to employ intrusive surveillance measures, interrogate, torture, and abuse, all with zero transparency and accountability.”

There are signs this is already happening. In short order, Egyptian security officials have restored Mubarak-era emergency laws, imposed a curfew, and issued a standing order to use live ammunition.

The interior ministry has also formally reinstated a number of state security departments dismantled following the country’s 2011 uprising. Among these are the notorious police units that were responsible for the investigation, forced disappearance and torture of thousands of Islamists and political dissidents during Mubarak’s rule.

Tarek Radwan, associate research director at the Atlantic Council’s Rafik Hariri Centre, has not declared Egypt’s revolution dead, but sees alarming parallels emerging.

“If this picture sounds familiar, it is,” he wrote. “A Muslim Brotherhood driven underground, a leading military figure, an assertive police force, and submissive liberal bloc is perhaps the most apt description of pre-2011 Egypt.”

A street fight in Cairo over ousted Egyptian president Mohammed Morsi. Credit: Hisham Allam/IPS.

By Hisham Allam
CAIRO, Aug 10 2013 (IPS)

Divisions are opening up within the Egyptian military over the controversial takeover from the ousted government of Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohammed Morsi, a senior party leader says.

“It is clear that there is disagreement within the armed forces, whose members have begun to realise the mistakes of Gen. Abdelfattah el-Sisi,” Dr Hamza Zoba’a, senior spokesperson for the Alhuria wal Adala (Freedom and Justice) party formed from the Muslim Brotherhood told IPS.

“El-Sisi seems to be losing support of his military partners as a result of his misconduct.”“The spectre of civil war is not far from Egypt."

Zoba’a says the army sits across a red line and should not be dragged into politics. “We do not wish to see a split within the army but we are sure that we will regain our rights.”

Party supporters will press for their rights peacefully, he said. “If the coup leaders want to kill more of us, we will not mind at all.” But while protesting peacefully, Zoba’a said, “the crimes against unarmed protesters who rejected the military coup will not be tolerated.”

Bloody clashes have become a daily scene in Egypt. Alhuria wal Adala members see themselves as victims of political genocide. “We are suffering from persecution now more than the blacks of America in the past,” Zoba’a said.

Alhuria wal Adala have meanwhile backed two political offers made to the military.

The first was launched by former prime minister Hisham Qandil proposing release of Morsi on one side, and an end to demonstrations on the other. The second was a five-step plan presented by Islamist thinker and former presidential candidate Mohamed Selim El-Awa.

The first of these steps would be for Morsi to delegate powers to a new interim cabinet. The cabinet would hold parliamentary elections within the following 60 days, leading to a proper cabinet. The fourth step would be a presidential election and finally then a review of the constitution.

The Brotherhood claims come across a deep political divide. Other leaders deny a split within the army, and see the change as a step towards democracy that would take Egypt past what were emerging as Morsi’s increasingly autocratic ways. “The Egyptian people rescued themselves at the proper time,” Abdel Ghaffar Shukr, head of the Socialist People’s Alliance Party tells IPS.

The solution to the crisis, he says, lies in implementation of the roadmap announced by the army, with a new constitution eliminating the articles that would turn Egypt into a religious state. “The Muslim Brotherhood should recognise the fait accompli. They isolate themselves and refuse to sit at the negotiations table and reconciliation sessions, then complain to the west of persecution.”

The Muslim Brotherhood, Shukr said, was “sacrificing their supporters” in armed clashes to gain the sympathy of the West. Party members are also attacking military installations and cutting off roads, he said.

“The spectre of civil war is not far from Egypt. If the security vacuum in Sinai is not handled wisely and quickly, terrorism hotbeds and Jihadists would move to Cairo, which would lead to infighting and public division.”

Human rights activist Amr Hamzawy says the Muslim Brotherhood failed to bring the transition to democracy in its year in power. It sought to control the state and to dominate political life, he said. “The Muslim Brotherhood group must move completely away from political action.”

The Brotherhood and its allies to the religious right were condemning human rights violations against them, but refusing to apologise for violations from their side. “They must submit the instigators of such violence to trial. It is the only way to make people trust their intentions.”

On the other hand, he said, the liberal parties were now turning a blind eye to human rights abuses against supporters of the ousted president. “Liberals seem tight-lipped in front of the fascist exclusion of the Muslim Brotherhood. The double standards of these political powers are now exposed. Liberals must restore their belief in democracy and cease immediately the absolute support of the army, so long as the Muslim Brotherhood leaders can acknowledge their mistakes.”

The killing of Muslim Brotherhood members has only strengthened their resolve to fight on. Credit: Khaled Moussa al-Omrani/IPS.

By Cam McGrath
CAIRO, Aug 4 2013 (IPS)

Egypt’s military chief, General Abdel Fatah El-Sissi, who in July announced on state television that the army had ousted Egypt’s first democratically elected president, has tried to wrap a veneer of democracy around actions that most others have condemned as a coup.

In the weeks since he deposed Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi, the 58-year-old head of the armed forces has repeatedly claimed that military intervention was necessary to resolve a debilitating political impasse and “save democracy” in Egypt.

Morsi’s popularity had plummeted in the year since his election, and the Islamist leader had ignored demands for national reconciliation and mass demonstrations calling for early elections, leaving the army with no choice but to remove him by force, the military has said.“They’re clamping down on Islamists, and once they are firmly in power they will go after anyone else who speaks out.”

Since ousting the country’s elected leader on Jul. 3, Egypt’s de facto strongman has suspended the constitution and installed an interim civilian government that has waged a vengeful campaign of reprisals against the former president and his allies in the Muslim Brotherhood. Dozens of the Islamic group’s leaders have been arrested and face an array of criminal charges that include inciting violence, thuggery, and “insulting the judiciary.”

Morsi has been held virtually incommunicado by the army since he was removed from power. Prosecutors have charged the former president with murder and espionage in relation to a 2011 prison break – charges that some rights researchers say are politically motivated.

“The military is out to discredit and destroy the Muslim Brotherhood using any means necessary,” says rights lawyer Negad El-Borai.

Television channels sympathetic to the Muslim Brotherhood have been taken off the air. Several foreign media outlets were warned against spreading “misinformation”, and prevented from covering pro-Morsi rallies.

Meanwhile, state-run media, which trumpeted the praises of Hosni Mubarak during his 30-year rule, has flooded newspapers and television channels with patriotic montages and adulation of the armed forces. Many private media outlets have joined the chorus.

Having come to power by undemocratic means, El-Sissi spent much of the last month rallying public support and legitimising the military’s role as the final arbiter of democracy in Egypt.

The general’s staunchest supporters – liberal and secular Egyptians virulently opposed to Brotherhood rule – claim the military “had to destroy democracy in order to save it.”  But critics have censured the army’s foray into civilian politics.

The military’s intervention prevented “any last minute efforts that would save face and pave the way for constructive change, such as holding a referendum over the presidency or the building of a national unity government, leading to early elections,” writes political analyst Marwan Bishara.

With Morsi’s removal, the military promised to end divisive politics and restore stability. Instead, it has thrust Egypt’s largest political group outside the political stream, and dangerously polarised the country.

After three weeks of unrest, El-Sissi called last week for the public to take to the streets as a show of support for his rule, and to give him political cover for a brutal crackdown on his opponents in the Muslim Brotherhood.

“I ask… all honest and trustworthy Egyptians to come out… to give me a mandate so that I can confront violence and potential terrorism,” he said in a nationally televised speech.

Days later, at least 80 of Morsi’s supporters were dead and hundreds more injured after riot police targeted a mass demonstration in Cairo using live ammunition. It was the second bloody crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood since Morsi was toppled.

The killings have only hardened the group’s resolve. Brotherhood members insist the protests will continue until the military-backed government is dissolved and Morsi’s democratically elected one is reinstated.

But the military shows no signs of backing down. Rather it is stepping up pressure on Morsi’s supporters, widening its arrests, and positioning for an even tougher crackdown on its opponents, including peaceful protesters.

Analysts say the threat of “terrorism” is being used as a pretext to restore controversial Mubarak-era institutions and practices.

Earlier this week, Egypt’s interior ministry announced that several notorious state security departments dismantled following the country’s 2011 uprising would be reinstated. The interim government has also signalled it could bring back the Emergency Law that was used to stifle political dissent for decades.

While the army enjoys widespread support among those who called for Morsi’s overthrow, many Egyptians bitterly recall the rights abuses and violent repression under 18 months of military rule that followed the overthrow of Mubarak in 2011.

One senior Brotherhood member warned: “They’re clamping down on Islamists, and once they are firmly in power they will go after anyone else who speaks out.”

Central African Republic President François Bozizé (in suit) was ousted by a rebel coup on Mar. 24. Credit: Kayikwamba/CC by 2.0

By Arsène Séverin
BRAZZAVILLE, Mar 27 2013 (IPS)

Despite assurances by the leader of the Séléka rebel alliance, self-proclaimed president of the Central African Republic Michel Djotodia, that a “red brigade” would be established to stop the looting and violence that has ensued since Sunday’s coup, citizens do not feel security has been restored.

“We are not safe, even though the rebels have imposed a curfew in Bangui. There is shooting everywhere, which scares us and the children,” Bibi Menbgi, a mother living in the capital Bangui, where electricity and water cuts have persisted since Sunday Mar. 24, told IPS.

“There are fewer armed youths firing in the air and looting, but tensions are still high. (Former President François) Bozizé had been distributing arms to groups of young men,” John Mourassen, a Bangui-based journalist, told IPS.

Djotodia suspended the country’s constitution, government and parliament on Sunday. The African Union condemned the coup d’état and suspended CAR from the regional organisation, issuing a travel ban and an asset freeze against the seven Séléka leaders, including Djotodia. The United Nations Security Council also condemned the suspension of CAR institutions and called for the reinstatement of constitutional rule.

In his first official statement, on Mar. 25 in the CAR capital Bangui, Djotodia indicated that he would implement the Libreville Agreement, a peace accord signed in January between Séléka and Bozizé’s government.

Séléka, a coalition of rebel groups, had launched an offensive against Bozizé’s rule last December.

Djotodia undertook to retain Nicolas Tiangaye, the prime minister of the government of national unity, to set up a new cabinet. The new president also said that he would organise elections within the next three years.

Contrary to Djodotia’s assurances, the Libreville Agreement provided for parliamentary elections in 2014, and a presidential election in 2016 at the end of Bozizé’s second term. The agreement also stipulates that the current leaders of the transition — the president and the ministers — would not stand for election. There are questions as to whether the rebels will respect this clause.

According to Jean Kinga, a lawyer in Brazzaville, the self-proclaimed CAR president is likely to resort to extrajudicial action. “He has suspended all the legislative and judicial institutions, so he has the freedom to do as he likes. There might be reprisals against members of the old regime,” he told IPS.

To gain people’s confidence Djotodia needs to bring all parties together, “particularly the Bozizé camp and the political opposition,” said Mourassen.

Over the weekend, the situation in Bangui escalated after Séléka rebels decided to seize the capital as the Central African Multinational Force, known by its French acronym FOMAC, stood by.

The Central African Multinational Force, which is under the command of Congolese General Guy Pierre Garcia, did not engage in any fighting during the capture of Bangui. Indeed, FOMAC forces are said to have been shot at by the CAR army, which is loyal to Bozizé, who fled Bangui on Mar. 24 for Cameroon. It is reported that his family members took refuge in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Since May 2012, relations between Bozizé and the sitting chair of the Economic Community of Central African States, Chadian President Idriss Deby, cooled after Bozizé rejected his advice to engage in dialogue with his opponents. The 500 Chadian soldiers who made up Bozizé’s closest forces left CAR in October 2012 after he accused them of committing atrocities.

Bozizé was left high and dry by other heads of state in the Central African region in retaliation for ignoring their advice and seeking military protection from South Africa instead.

South African army forces deployed in CAR to protect Bozizé lost at least 13 men in the fighting. South African President Jacob Zuma confirmed the deaths.

Djotodia accused Bozizé of becoming increasingly authoritarian, and of reneging on the Libreville Agreements sponsored by the President of Congo-Brazzaville Denis Sassou Nguesso, the mediator in the CAR crisis.

At the time of writing, the government of Congo-Brazzaville had not made any comment on the coup d’état. However, sources close to the presidency in Brazzaville declared that Bozizé “had violated the Libreville Agreements and consequently lost the trust of President Sassou Nguesso. He no longer deserved support.”

Jonas Mokpendiali, a Central African resident in Bangui since 2003, said that he is concerned about the future of his country. “Nothing seems to change. (Jean-Bédel) Bokassa was ousted, Andre Koligba was ousted, (Ange-Félix) Patassé was ousted and now it’s the turn of Bozizé, who thought he was the master of Bangui with his brutal dictatorship,” he told IPS.

Gabriel Mialoundama, a sociologist at the University of Brazzaville, considers the events in Bangui to be the latest in a long-standing crisis. “From the time he came to power, Francois Bozizé has failed to unite the people. His approach was to exclude his opponents, particularly President Ange-Félix Patassé who died (in 2011) because of his ineptitude. He wasn’t a strong leader,” he told IPS.

“If Djotodia works hard to bring in a new constitution and put the CAR’s house in order by organising elections where he is not a candidate, he will have done the CAR a great service,” Mialoundama added with optimism.

But the academic doubts that the new leader will have a free hand.

“CAR is in the grip of Congo (Brazzaville) and Chad, who are believed to have supported rebels with the blessing of Sassou Nguesso. As they did with Bozizé, Deby and Sassou will maintain their hold on Bangui; Djotodia will be their puppet,” he said.

Days after the sudden fall of the Central African Republic to Séléka rebels, questions are being raised about the circumstances surrounding the hasty departure of President Francois Bozizé.

Explosions could be heard late on Saturday as government forces clashed with the Séléka fighters, who had taken control of a power station in the north and cut the supply during the final battle for control of the country.

Bozizé’s administration gave assurances that everything was under control, but by the following morning, the president had fled, leaving the Séléka – a northern-based rebel coalition – in control of the presidential palace, and much of the rest of the country.

Despite the formation of a national unity government and a January peace deal that briefly ended hostilities, the Séléka continued to seize towns in northern and southeast CAR until the final onslaught on Bangui this weekend.

Shortly after Bozizé’s swift exit, the Séléka issued a communique proclaiming control of CAR. Signed by Secretary-General Justin Kombo Moustapha, and emblazoned with the group’s oval-shaped blue stamp, the group claimed the departure of Bozizé was a fulfillment of the Libreville peace deal, and it urged people to remain calm.

“Prepare to welcome the revolutionary forces of the Seleka,” the communique said.

Professor Andreas Mehler, from the German Institute for Global Area Studies, told Al Jazeera the rebel takeover that ended Bozizé’s decade-long rule may mark the beginning of a more authoritarian regime.

“It could also mean that less inclusionary politics could see the light, particularly with regard to the Muslim part of the population,” Mehler said. “At least some of the rebel components are considered to have such an agenda.”

Fear of reprisals

An official in Cameroon announced Monday that Bozizé had taken sanctuary there. His son is believed to be in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Reports of human rights abuses have surfaced, including allegations of killings, rapes and looting. Residents in some quarters of Bangui have already expressed fear of reprisals for supporting Bozizé.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has condemned the rebel takeover, and the African Union suspended CAR’s membership on Monday.

“We are very concerned by the worsening humanitarian situation in CAR and credible, widespread reports of human rights abuses by both national security forces and Séléka fighters,” said Victoria Nuland, U.S. State Department spokeswoman. “Perpetrators of such abuses must be held accountable.”

Rebel leader Michel Djotodia, meanwhile, has declared himself president, but not all Séléka factions endorse that claim.

Djotodia had been the vice prime minister and defence minister in the unity government until a week ago. He has pledged to keep many ministers in the unity government, including Prime Minister Nicolas Tiangaye.

In an interview with a Central African Republic news agency, Nelson Njadder, leader of the CPSK faction of Séléka, said elections would be held in a year’s time.

But Mehler expressed scepticism over the post-coup announcements, saying the material interests of the group were a key factor in determining the rebels’ future actions. The movement is made up of many “politico-military entrepreneurs,” he said.

“Coup leaders and rebels want to win hearts and minds from the outset and usually announce grandiose things,” Mehler said. “Everything should be taken with a grain of salt. Corporate interests of the rebel combatants … will certainly play a major role (in what happens next).”

Questions are also being asked about Djotodia’s specific role in the ousting of Bozizé.

Unanswered questions

The situation in the Central African Republic deteriorated after five government ministers were detained by the rebels after a Mar. 17 meeting, which also involved representatives from the African Union and United Nations, in the town of Sibut, 185 kilometres north of Bangui.

One of those held by the Séléka was Djotodia, who said the decision to detain the ministers was made by rebels on the ground.

“I am not the one who decided this. There are units who have made this decision,” Djotodia said. “It a type of pressure. They want the head of state to respect the terms of the accord that was signed.”

The Séléka have complained that, under the unity government, their demands for military integration and prisoner releases have been ignored.

Details of what exactly happened last week still remain unclear. Professor Mehler said the circumstances were unknown, but he suggested the hostage taking of the five ministers may have been part of a wider plot to seize power and oust Bozizé.

“It now looks as if the move to ‘arrest’ a couple of ministers, including Michel Djotodia, was just a small ploy in a wider game to install him at the head of CAR,” he said.

The events of the past few days are nothing new to the country. Violence has gripped the Central African Republic since independence from France in 1960. Four major offensives were launched to take Bangui between 1996 and 2003, when acting army chief Bozizé seized power from then-President Angel Felix Patassé in a coup.

On the tenth anniversary of Bozizé’s takeover on Mar. 15, the rebels demanded their grievances be addressed and issued a three-day ultimatum to comply, or face an overthrow. Apparently those demands were not satisfactorily met.

Failure to protect Bangui

Soldiers from the Congo, France, Gabon and South Africa were deployed after the Libreville peace agreement was signed in January.

Thierry Vircoulon, from the International Crisis Group, was critical of the regional armed forces tasked with keeping the peace. Known as the Mission for the Consolidation of Peace in Central African Republic (Micopax), the European Union-funded African force had orders to protect civilians and secure territory in CAR since 2008.

Vircoulon described Micopax’s apparent absence during the recent march on Bangui as “disturbing,” noting South African soldiers appeared to be the only ones who tried to fend off the rebels – a task they paid for with 13 soldiers killed, 27 wounded, and one who remains missing.

“Micopax was not doing anything, but they were supposed to protect Bangui. It was the South African forces who were fighting,” he said in a telephone interview on Monday.

Vircoulon suggested the African coalition forces could and should have engaged the rebels militarily. “I don’t know why this happened. Micopax was there to fight the rebels but they did not, and this let the rebels take the road to Bangui. Perhaps they had instructions … not to do anything,” he said.

“It looks like a similar situation to 2003 when there was a coup by Bozizé. There was also an African force and they didn’t do anything. There is a lot of historical irony in what happened.”

The NGO Conciliation Resources said political turmoil was inevitable because the January peace deal was drafted by an Economic Community of Central African States commission – not by the warring parties.

Coupled with the extended presence of foreign troops, this made Bozizé appear to his critics as overly reliant on external help to solve internal problems, Conciliation Resources’ Kennedy Tumutegyereize and Nicolas Tillon wrote in a commentary.

“Central African Republic has a history of power sharing agreements and political dialogue … What these dialogues have in common are: power-sharing agreements, promise of demobilisation and reintegration of fighters never fully implemented; and a return to violence after a few months.”

While Bozizé and his family safely escaped, the nation of 4.5 million people is left again in disarray with an uncertain future, and an uneasy coalition of rebel factions now firmly in control.

* Published under an agreement with Al Jazeera.

Members of the Israeli company Global CST training Peruvian military in 2009-2010. Credit: IPS

By Ángel Páez
LIMA, Mar 22 2013 (IPS)

The Peruvian legislature is investigating a contract with an Israeli company, entered into by the previous government for advising and training the military, after audit bodies found irregularities in how it was signed.

A congressional oversight commission is investigating three former ministers in the government of Alan García (2006-2011) in connection with the agreement with a private Israeli security company, Global CST.

The contract, signed secretly in 2009, was for supporting the military in its fight against a remnant of the Maoist guerrilla group Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path), active in the Apurímac, Ene and Mantaro river valleys (VRAEM).

(Shining Path was in armed conflict with the state from 1980 to 2000.)

An audit by the comptroller general’s office found that civilian and military authorities had broken laws and regulations in signing the contract with the company, whose founder and director is Israel Ziv, a general in the Israeli army reserve.

The investigation concluded that the Peruvian state had lost 16 million dollars because Global CST failed to fulfil its commitment under its contract with the Armed Forces Joint Command.

Special anti-corruption prosecutors received the report from the comptroller’s office and in the next few days will open a formal criminal investigation against at least 20 former officials, both civilian and military, from García’s second presidential term (he also governed 1985-1990).

The main people coming under questioning by the legislative commission are former health and housing minister Hernán Garrido, former defense ministers Ántero Flores Aráoz and Rafael Rey, and former chief of the Joint Command, retired general Francisco Contreras.

“All those involved in the contract with Global CST must answer as many questions as are necessary to clear up this case, which involves former civil and military authorities from the previous government,” the chairman of the oversight commission, congressman Gustavo Rondón, told IPS.

“We want to know if it was necessary to bring in a foreign company to train soldiers to fight the terrorists. After taking statements, we will come to our conclusions and send a report to the attorney-general’s office, where a criminal investigation is under way,” said Rondón.

After stepping down as minister in October 2008, Garrido joined Global CST in Colombia. The Israeli company was working with the Colombian army which is fighting the Armed Revolutionary Forces of Colombia (FARC).

The Colombian contract with Global CST was signed when incumbent President Juan Manuel Santos was defence minister, between 2006 and 2009.

On Apr. 30, 2009, Garrido and Ziv met in Lima with then defence minister Flores Aráoz, to offer him Global CST’s advisory services in the war against the remnant Sendero group operating in the VRAEM.

The following day Ziv met with Contreras, the chief of the Joint Command, who from then on conducted the negotiations with the Israeli firm.

Five months later, on Oct. 20, 2009, the Joint Command and Global CST signed a secret contract that, according to the comptroller general’s office, was detrimental to the Peruvian state. The company was paid 10.6 million dollars, paid no taxes and got other benefits, raising the state’s losses to 16 million dollars.

Sources close to Garrido told IPS that the former minister merely introduced Ziv to the Peruvian authorities, but played no part in the contracting process and was not paid for facilitating the contact.

However, after the contract was signed, Garrido provided advisory services to social development projects conducted by the Israeli company in Colombia and Guinea.

Former army chief general Otto Guibovich testified before the congressional commission that it had been unnecessary to hire a private foreign company to train elite forces in the VRAEM, because the Peruvian army has plenty of experience.

Guibovich confirmed to IPS what he had said in Congress, and that he had met with Garrido and Ziv on Apr. 30, 2009. But he added that he had made no promises, because he had no plans for using advice of the kind being offered.

Secret documents obtained by IPS indicate that Global CST, in order to accredit its counterinsurgency capacities, gave the Peruvian government letters from then Colombian defence minister Santos and other senior Colombian officials.

In a letter to Ziv dated Jun. 20, 2009, Santos thanked him for “the great work done by the group of Global CST advisers, who with such dedication and skill, under your leadership, have advised the defence ministry of my country over the last three years.”

But Ziv concealed from his Peruvian counterparts that his company was training, in the same year, 2009, a personal guard for controversial captain Moussa Dadis Camara, who had led a coup in Guinea and governed the country in 2008 and 2009.

The comptroller’s office established that neither in the Peruvian Joint Command’s yearly plan of actions, nor in its budget for 2009, were there provisions for a contract such as the one it signed with the Israeli firm.

The command “had no need to hire a foreign company to train the military. It was an invention. And it was an agreement made in the image and to the measure of the proposal presented by Global CST,” sources at the comptroller’s office told IPS. “The worst thing is that they forged a document to authorise the contract with the Israeli firm.”

“Convincing evidence that there was a wilful conspiracy to contract the company recommended by a former minister is that the chief of the Joint Command, General Francisco Contreras, requested funds for the exact amount that Global CST had quoted for its services,” they said.

The accusation by the comptroller’s office against those allegedly responsible for the irregular contract with Global CST includes a former defence ministry inspector, retired vice admiral Carlos Tubino, who approved the company’s services.

Tubino is now a congressman for the Fuerza Popular party, headed by Keiko Fujimori, the daughter of former president Alberto Fujimori (1990-2000), who is serving prison sentences for corruption and human rights abuses.

Fujimoristas and supporters of APRA, the party of former president García, are critical of the comptroller’s office’s investigation, even though it has been taken up by the attorney-general’s office.

“It’s not an impartial investigation because it is politically motivated. They are trying to discredit the armed forces that are fighting terrorism. We have seen that many of the comptroller’s office’s accusations are baseless,” argued Fujimorista congressman Julio Gagó, a member of the congressional commission.

A member of the Free Syrian Army at the entrance to Sarmeen. Credit: Shelly Kittleson/IPS

By Barbara Slavin
WASHINGTON, Feb 20 2013 (IPS)

A lack of Israeli pressure for the U.S. to intervene and Israel’s ability to go after sensitive targets in Syria on its own are factors in the Barack Obama administration’s reluctance to get more deeply involved in the Syrian civil war.

Despite reports that the U.S. may be reconsidering its rejection of calls to arm selected rebels, the Obama administration has shown little willingness to enter the Syrian fray.

Since the revolt against President Bashar al-Assad began nearly two years ago, the U.S. has confined itself to providing humanitarian relief to internally displaced Syrians and Syrian refugees while prodding the Syrian opposition to organise and seeking Russian buy-in for a political transition that removes Assad. Nearly 100,000 people have been killed in the fighting, with no end in sight.

“If there was a powerful push from Israel and its amen chorus in the U.S. to get in on the ground, that would change the policy overnight,” Bruce Riedel, a Middle East expert at the Brookings Institution, told IPS.

While Israel does not want to see a jihadist regime replace Assad, Riedel said the dominant view in the Israeli military is that “while this [the Syrian civil war] is messy, it is fundamentally good for Israel” as it removes “the only conventional military threat Israel faced”.

Shai Feldman, an Israel expert at Brandeis University, said that he doubted the U.S. would intervene even if Israel pressured Washington, given war fatigue after a decade of fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. Feldman added that while Riedel’s analysis was an accurate “snapshot” of current Israeli views about Syria, those views have evolved.

Feldman described three phases of Israeli thinking on Syria: initially, a desire to keep “the devil we know;” later, the view that getting rid of Assad would strike a major blow against Iran and its ability to supply Hezbollah in Lebanon and; now, “real worries about what happens next”.

Israel can handle “extremists like Hamas in Gaza and [Hezbollah leader Hassan] Nasrallah in Lebanon,” Feldman said, but fears chaos. It worries about who will control Syria’s arsenal of weapons and who, if anyone, will check the influence of Al-Qaeda affiliates.

Israel has clearly decided to take action on its own to deal with perceived threats from Syria and to prevent sensitive weapons systems from reaching Hezbollah. Taking advantage of weakened Syrian government defences, Israel last month (Jan. 30) struck several targets, including SA-17 surface-to-air missiles stored outside a military research centre near Damascus.

Fred Hof, a former U.S. State Department official dealing with Syria, told IPS that the Israelis “hit a big parking lot where these unassembled, not yet operational air defence weapons were lined up. Because of the blast radius, some damage was also done to the [nearby] building.”

According to Time magazine, the strike also destroyed “warehouses stocked with equipment necessary for the deployment of chemical and biological weapons”. Time said the U.S. gave Israel the “green light” for the attacks.

The Wall Street Journal reported on Feb. 15 that the Israeli strike also killed a senior Iranian officer in the Quds force of the Revolutionary Guards, Gen. Hassan Shateri – also known as Husam Khoshnevis – responsible for Iranian reconstruction in Lebanon and a key liaison with Hezbollah.

Feldman said it was possible that Shateri – not the surface-to-air missiles – was the main target of the Israeli strike.

Other sources say the general and another senior Iranian officer were killed by Syrian rebels as the Iranians were driving to Damascus airport. Iranian media have blamed Shateri’s death on “Zionists” and their “allies” in Syria, which is how Iran refers to the Syrian opposition.

Israel has shown an ability to strike sensitive targets in Syria before the outbreak of civil war there. In 2008, Imad Mughniyeh – Hezbollah’s chief of operations and liaison with Iranian intelligence – died in a car bombing in Damascus widely attributed to Israel. A year earlier, Israel destroyed a nuclear reactor under construction in Syria.

The current situation affords new risks as well as opportunities for Israeli intervention. Speaking in Germany on Feb. 3, Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak, while not confirming Israeli responsibility for the recent strikes in Syria, said “that’s proof when we said something we mean it… we say that we don’t think it [Hezbollah] should be allowed to bring advanced weapons systems into Lebanon.”

U.S. officials have said that their red line for direct U.S. intervention in Syria would be if the Assad regime uses chemical weapons against its own people. The White House is wary of sending sophisticated weapons to Syrian rebels for fear that they might fall into the hands of jihadists such as the Al-Nusrah front, which has been put on a State Department list of terrorist organizations.

However, the issue has been the source of dissension within the Obama administration. Reacting to news that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton – joined by outgoing Defence Secretary Leon Panetta and by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Martin Dempsey – favoured arming Syrian rebels, White House spokesman Jay Carney mentioned Israel as one reason why the administration had not done so.

“I can tell you that, as the president and his national security team have looked at these issues, we have had to be very careful,” Carney told reporters at a Feb. 8 briefing. “We don’t want any weapons to fall into the wrong hands and potentially further endanger the Syrian people, our ally, Israel, or the United States.”

Hof, who left the Obama administration in September and is now a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, has advocated providing weapons to selected Syrian rebels as a way to shore up a U.S. relationship with whoever emerges victorious in Damascus. He said Tuesday that the U.S. could provide training and share intelligence if it is still queasy about arms transfers.

“It’s about establishing working relationships with carefully vetted elements,” he said. “If we’ve already decided men with arms will determine the outcome, not to have a relationship with these people will roll the dice.”

After a year of intense diplomatic standoff and territorial brinkmanship among disputing states in the South and East China Seas, the U.S. military ‘pivot’ to the region appears to be in full swing – a move that could further aggravate an already combustible regional dynamic.

Against the backdrop of Chinese territorial assertiveness, the year started off with the bang of big-ticket U.S. arms sales to treaty allies and strategic partners across the region, including an expanded package of sophisticated military hardware featuring state-of-the-art anti-missile systems and warplanes. On top of this, Washington has also stepped-up its joint military exercises with Asian allies perched on the forefront of ongoing territorial spats.

Building on its earlier promise of greater commitment to the freedom of navigation in the Western Pacific, an artery for global trade and energy transport, Washington aims to improve its allies’ military capabilities in a bid to rein in Beijing’s strong-willed territorial posturing.

Facing a stubborn economic downturn at home, the dramatic boost in U.S. defence sales to the region underlines Washington’s growing emphasis on a primarily military-oriented (as opposed to trade-and-investment-driven) approach to re-asserting its position as an ‘anchor of peace and stability’ in the region.

Among the biggest beneficiaries of growing U.S. military commitment to the region is the Aerospace Industries Association (AIA), a massive trade group that includes top Pentagon suppliers such as Lockheed Martin Corp, Boeing Co and Northrop Grumman Corp. It underscores the extent to which the U.S. ‘pivot’ has energised the American industrial-military complex, further dimming the prospects for a peaceful resolution of the ongoing disputes.

“(The pivot) will result in growing opportunities for our industry to help equip our friends,” says Fred Downey, vice-president for national security at the AIA.

Since the formal commencement of the U.S. pivot, after U.S. President Barack Obama’s fateful speech to the Australian Parliament in November 2011, Washington has come under tremendous pressure to reassure troubled allies such as Japan and the Philippines against Beijing’s assertiveness. In response, the U.S. has beefed up its rotational military presence across the Pacific, while expanding joint exercises – focusing on maritime defence – with and military aid to Pacific partners.

To calm China’s fears of a U.S.-led regional containment strategy, Washington has also focused on deepening economic integration within the Pacific Rim, specifically through the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trading agreement, which aims to facilitate the flow of investments and goods among partner-nations. In addition, the U.S. has also – at least in principle – underlined its support for diplomatic resolution of ongoing territorial disputes in the South and East China Seas.

However, the U.S. pronouncements have failed to appease regional partners and deter Chinese assertiveness. Beijing continues to accuse Washington of staging a concerted effort to deny China its (perceived) legitimate interests, while allies have raised doubts as to Washington’s ability – given its dire fiscal woes – to maintain regional ascendancy.

Reflecting on fragile U.S. finances, Ken Lieberthal, director of the Thornton China Center at the Brookings Institute and former president Bill Clinton’s top China adviser, has stated, “The most important single element to our (U.S.) success in Asia will be whether domestically we get our house in order, whether domestically we’re able to adopt and integrate a set of policies that will effectively address our fiscal problems over time.”

Given TPP’s failure to gain traction among major Pacific economies, and in the absence of any substantial American investments and economic aid to strategic partners, Washington seems to have instead opted for a full military pivot. The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) inability to forge ahead with an effective diplomatic mechanism to settle the disputes has only encouraged this trend.

Since 2011, the U.S. worldwide military sales have hovered above 60 billion dollars.  In 2011, India alone accounted for a 6.9 billion dollar acquisition deal, underscoring New Delhi’s growing anxieties with China’s massive naval buildup, especially in light of its substantial energy-related investments in South China Sea. Last year, overall sales to Pacific partners topped 13.7 billion dollars.

Building on its earlier arms bonanza, the U.S. defence industry has started off the year with a large package of flashy, cutting-edge arms sales to key partners in Northeast Asia: a 5 billion dollar Lockheed Martin radar-evading F-35 Joint Strike Fighter aircraft deal with Japan, a 1.85 billion dollar Lockheed Martin-led retrofitting of Taiwan’s 145 F-16A/B fighters with advanced radars and electronic warfare suits, and a 1.2 billion dollar Northrop Grumman high-flying RQ-4 “Global Hawk” spy drone deal with South Korea.

Beyond propping up allies’ military capabilities to deal with a wide array of challenges, including China, Washington has also encouraged further self-reliance and inter-operability among regional allies, creating a so-called “inversed wall of China” across the Western Pacific.

As a result, the newly-elected Japanese government, under the hawkish Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, has supported Washington’s call for a more assertive Japanese regional role. Mr. Abe has pushed for revitalised defence ties with Asian partners, enhanced inter-operability with major naval powers in the Pacific such as Australia and India, and expanded military aid to countries such as the Philippines. He has also pushed for a so-called Asian “security diamond”, bringing together likeminded Pacific powers concerned with a perceived Chinese “threat”.

With Japan locked in a brewing conflict with China over the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands in the East China Sea, Washington has conducted a series of high-profile joint naval exercises with Tokyo. In November, 47,000 Japanese and American military personnel took part in the biennial Keen Sword exercise off Okinawa islands, which was originally planned to act out the re-capture of disputed islands off the southern coast of Japan. This was followed by a five-day joint air exercise in January, just days after Japanese jets fended off Chinese aircraft surveying the disputed islands.

Overall, the U.S. seems to be gradually passing the buck to Asian partners, prodding them to bear a growing share of defense costs vis-à-vis China’s perceived expansionism. Meanwhile, there is little indication of a renewed push for a diplomatic resolution of the territorial disputes.

Following on a surprise announcement, U.S. Secretary of Defence Leon Panetta on Thursday confirmed that the U.S. military will be rolling back a nearly two-decade-old ban on women in the U.S. military serving in frontline combat positions.

The number of sex assaults in the U.S. armed forces could be as high as 19,000 a year. Credit: Minnesota National Guard

“Women have shown great courage and sacrifice on and off the battlefield,” Panetta said. “The (Defence) Department’s goal in rescinding the rule is to ensure that the mission is met with the best-qualified and most capable people, regardless of gender.”

Since the 1994 ban went into effect, but particularly since the start of the war in 2001 in Afghanistan, critics have warned that the policy has made it more difficult for women to move up in the military ranks. Simultaneously, it misses out on the fact that female troops are already serving and dying in hazardous posts throughout U.S. combat operations.

Some have also suggested that the ban is partially to blame for a spate of sexual assaults that have plagued the military. Last year, Panetta suggested that the number of sex assaults in the U.S. armed forces could be as high as 19,000 a year.

“The military has long been a culture of misogyny. As long as military women did not have equal treatment from the top – the Pentagon – they were often treated as second class at best, sexual prey at worst,” Helen Benedict, author of “The Lonely Soldier: The Private War of Women Serving in Iraq” and a journalism professor at Columbia University, told IPS.

“Disrespect lies at the root of misogyny, and misogyny lies at the root of sexual assault. A culture takes a long time to change, but officially recognising women as equal will help to change it.”

Speaking with Panetta at the public announcement on Thursday, General Martin Dempsey, the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, which spearheaded the new policy change, acknowledged that the U.S. military has an “ongoing issue with sexual harassment and sexual assault”.

“I believe that’s because we’ve had separate classes of military personnel,” Dempsey said. “When you have one part of the population that’s designated as warriors and another part that’s designated as something else, I think that disparity begins to establish a psychology that in some cases led to that environment.”

He continued: “I have to believe the more we can treat people equally, the more likely they are to treat each other equally.”

Reflecting service

Thursday’s announcement has been widely lauded, with many calling the move long overdue.

Although the U.S. military continues to be made up predominantly of men, over the past two decades the number of women in the armed forces has risen steadily. Today, women constitute around 15 percent of all personnel in active service, some 1.4 million people.

Over the past decade-plus of war in Iraq and Afghanistan, more than 280,000 women have been deployed. And, according to the Defence Department, since 2001 at least 140 U.S. women soldiers have been killed and 865 have been wounded in those conflicts, in what analysts have repeatedly referred to as wars without frontlines.

“This is a tremendous victory for equality and justice in our military,” Anu Bhagwati, executive director of the Service Women’s Action Network (SWAN) and a former
Marine Corps captain, said in a statement. “Women’s service in Iraq and Afghanistan set the stage for this – the policy on the books simply did not reflect the reality of women’s service.”

Bhagwati also noted the importance of a recent lawsuit brought by SWAN and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in putting pressure on the Pentagon.

According to the lawsuit, the ban on women in combat positions “categorically excludes (women) from more than 200,000 positions, as well as from entire career fields. Consequently, commanders are stymied in their ability to mobilize their troops effectively.”

The ACLU also warned that servicewomen were being “denied training and recognition for their service, put at a disadvantage for promotions, and prevented from competing for positions for which they have demonstrated their suitability and from advancing in rank”.

The United States lags behind many other Western countries in terms of allowing women in combat rolls. A British government report from 2009 called out only the U.S., U.K. and Australia as continuing to maintain exclusion policies on women.

Ameliorating disrespect

Importantly, Thursday’s announcement comes following a broad review at the highest levels of the military, indicating that the top brass is in general support of the changes. (Secretary Panetta is a civilian appointed by President Obama, who on Thursday stated his “strong support” for the policy change.)

Thursday’s decision comes after the military weakened the ban slightly last year, opening up 14,000 additional positions to women. It also follows the recent repeal of the controversial Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell legislation that had disallowed gay and lesbian soldiers from disclosing their sexuality.

“Just as the lifting of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell removed official permission to bully and persecute gays and lesbians,” Helen Benedict told IPS, “so will the lifting of the ban on women in ground combat help to ameliorate the disrespect with which they have so long been regarded.”

Still, the move has received some criticism, both from some Republican members of the U.S. Congress and from certain analysts worried about issues of privacy and how well men and women can work together in frontline situations.

On Monday, a group called the Center for Military Readiness released a lengthy report warning that the “Liberal media and feminists are trying to use the military as a laboratory for the testing of a controversial twentieth-century social science theory – that men and women are interchangeable in all roles, and any differences that do exist are primarily, if not exclusively, due to socialization.”

Although Thursday’s announcement indicates clear intention, it does allow for a significant period for potential tweaking. Panetta is requiring military heads to get back to him with implementation plans by May, and they will have until 2016 to make final recommendations.

Israeli soldiers and police blocking Palestinians from one of the entrances to the old city in Jerusalem. Credit: Mel Frykberg/IPS

By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON, Nov 14 2012 (IPS)

Israel tops the list of the world’s most militarised nations, according to the latest Global Militarisation Index released Tuesday by the Bonn International Centre for Conversion (BICC).

At number 34, Israel’s main regional rival, Iran, is far behind. Indeed, every other Near Eastern country, with the exceptions of Yemen (37) and Qatar (43), is more heavily militarised than the Islamic Republic, according to the Index, whose research is funded by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Co-operation and Development.

Singapore ranks second, followed by Syria, Russia, Jordan, and Cyprus, according to the Index, which is based on a number of weighted variables, such as the comparison of a country’s military budget with its gross domestic product (GDP), and the percentage of the GDP it spends on health care.

Six of the top 10 states, including Israel (1), Syria (4), Jordan (5), Kuwait (7), Bahrain (9), and Saudi Arabia (10) are located in the Middle East, while yet another of Iran’s neighbours, Azerbaijan, made its first entry into the militarised elite at number 8.

The former Soviet Caucasian state has used its vast oil wealth, which has placed it among the fastest growing economies in the world, to buy expensive weapons systems in recent years, apparently as leverage to press Armenia (23) into returning the disputed Nagorno-Kharabovsk enclave which Baku lost in a brief but bloody war after the Soviet Union’s collapse.

Bahrain’s placement in the top 10 was also a first for the Sunni-dominated kingdom which has been backed by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in an increasingly violent effort to suppress demands by the Shi’ite majority for democratic reform.

While the Middle East is far more militarised than any other region – all of its countries rank within the top 40 – Southeast Asia, led by Singapore, appears ascendant, according to Jan Grebe, the Index’s head researcher who directs BICC’s work in the field of arms export control.

In addition to Singapore, China (82) and India (71) are increasing their defence budgets at a relatively rapid rate, while the recent flaring of territorial conflicts between Beijing and its neighbours across the South and East China Seas will likely amplify voices within those countries for defence build-ups.

“It remains to be seen how this development will affect the degree of militarisation of individual states and the entire region,” Grebe said.

In contrast, both sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America are relatively low on the Index, which covers statistics for 2011 and ranked 135 countries altogether.

At number 30, Angola was a notable African exception, while Chile (31), Ecuador (36), and Colombia (38) topped the Latin American list. By contrast, Brazil, which has by far the largest defence budget in the region, ranked 76.

Among those excluded from the Index was North Korea, whose defence budget has proved impervious to independent analysts and which is widely thought to be one of the world’s most militarised states, if not the most. Eritrea, another state that has made it into the top 10 in the past, also was not included this year.

Created in 1996, the GMI, which has been updated each year, tries to assess the balance between militarisation and human development, particularly related to health.

In addition to BICC’s own research, data published by the Stockholm Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Health Organisation (WHO), and the Institute for Strategic Studies are used to compile the Index, whose rankings go back to 1990 at the end of the Cold War.

In addition to the comparison of military budgets, GDP, and health expenditures, the Index uses several other variables, including the total personnel in the paramilitary and military forces – albeit not the police – and total number of physicians vis-à-vis the overall population, and the ratio of the number of heavy weapons to the total population.

Each variable is given a certain score which is then “weighted” according to a set formula to determine a total quantitative score. The more militarised a country, the higher the score. South Korea which, for many years, ranked in the top 10, fell to 18 this year.

Eritrea, which fought a bitter war with Ethiopia and repeatedly cracked down hard against internal dissent, gained a “perfect” 1,000 score in 2004, the first of a three-year reign atop the list.

But Israel, which has carried out a 45-year occupation of Palestinian lands and Syrian territory, has topped the list for almost all of the last 20 years. On the latest Index, its score came to 877, 70 points ahead of Singapore, which has been number two for every year this century, except for the three in which Eritrea was number one.

Significantly, Greece ranked 14 on the list, the highest of any NATO country, far ahead of its regional rival, Turkey, which took the 24th slot, and Bulgaria (25).

The two countries with the world’s largest defence budgets, the United States and China, ranked 29 (591) and 82 (414), respectively.

In addition to the six Middle Eastern states in the top, Oman (11), the UAE (13), Lebanon (17), Iraq (26), and Egypt (28) were all found to be more militarised than Iran, which is currently subject to unprecedented economic sanctions imposed primarily by the West which accuses it of pursuing a nuclear programme that may have military applications.

The concentration of so many Middle Eastern states at the top underscores the degree to which the region has become a powder keg.

If the Middle East dominates the top ranks, sub-Saharan African states, with just a few exceptions, lie at the low end of scale. The region’s biggest economy, South Africa, ranks 98, while its most populous nation, Nigeria, stands at 117.

Too little militarisation carries its own risks, according to
Grebe, because states may not be able to guarantee order or even territorial integrity.

“This situation points to the seemingly paradoxical phenomenon that some state security apparatuses are incapable of preventing violence and conflict simply because the country concerned shows a degree of militarisation which is too low,” he said.

*Jim Lobe’s blog on U.S. foreign policy can be read at http://www.lobelog.com.

Activists want military leaders prosecuted for killing protesters during crackdowns. Credit: Cam McGrath/IPS.

By Cam McGrath
CAIRO, Sep 16 2012 (IPS)

When Egypt’s army was deployed to restore order in the streets during the uprising that ended president Hosni Mubarak’s rule, Egyptians greeted the troops as saviours. But by the time the generals handed the country over to a civilian president in June this year, many Egyptians regarded the 16 months of transitional military rule as more oppressive than the 29 years under Mubarak.

“The military claimed to be the guardian of the revolution, and at first we all believed it, but over time we realised we’d been deceived,” says youth leader Mohamed Abbas.

Activists accuse the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), which assumed power after removing Mubarak in February 2011, of transforming Egypt from an authoritarian police state into a military dictatorship. They claim military leaders must be held accountable for the human rights violations and crimes committed during the interim period, including repeated crackdowns on unarmed protesters that left scores dead and injured.

Many of the alleged crimes stem from the military’s efforts to stamp out dissent during its rule. Protesters report suffering torture and humiliation while in military custody. They were among some 12,000 civilians handed down harsh sentences by military kangaroo courts.

The Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR) says dozens of protesters were killed as army forces violently dispersed a series of sit-in demonstrations in central Cairo late last year. It also accuses the military establishment of inciting soldiers and mobs to attack a group of mainly Christian protesters in Cairo’s Maspero district last October, killing 28 protesters and injuring hundreds.

President Mohamed Morsi, who took office on Jun. 30, sent senior military leaders into retirement and put together a fact-finding committee to investigate responsibility for alleged abuses by the military during the transition period. The committee, comprised of government and civilian representatives, is expected to present its findings and recommendations later this month.

But Morsi’s decision to award the state’s top honours to former SCAF head Hussein Tantawi and former Chief of Staff Sami Anan has worried activists, who fear the new president may have cut a deal to grant military leaders immunity from prosecution. A “safe exit” would allow the generals to keep their wealth and receive amnesty for any crimes or mistakes committed while in power.

Activists who saw blood spilled during clashes with military police are not willing to let the country’s former leaders off that easy.

“Before the revolution Egyptians were afraid to claim their rights,” says Abbas. “Now, we will never back down.”

The April 6 Youth Movement, a grassroots activist group that was instrumental in organising the protests that led to Mubarak’s ouster, has announced plans to bring charges against Tantawi and other former SCAF members for the deaths of protesters during the transition period. The group has also accused former military leaders of inciting violence against peaceful demonstrators.

“We hold SCAF leaders responsible for killing protesters in clashes, the deaths of Christians at Maspero last October, and rumours and lies about protesters (that led to violence against them),” says Ahmed Maher, the group’s leader.

The case is one of many. Lawyers and activist groups have filed over two dozen complaints with military prosecutors against former SCAF members and senior security officials they accuse of betraying the revolution and committing crimes against the Egyptian people.

One obstacle, say campaigners, is that Egyptian law grants military officers immunity from civil prosecution. Article 8 of the Code of Military Justice stipulates that military courts are the only judicial authorities able to try serving or retired military officers.

“Military courts would neither be credible nor transparent,” argues Heba Hegazi, coordinator of the Hakemohum (“Prosecute Them”) campaign, which aims to move the trials to civilian courts.

Hegazi, a corporate lawyer turned rights activist, says earlier investigations by the military prosecution into the army’s rights abuses demonstrated its partiality. In March, a military court acquitted an army doctor charged with public obscenity for forcibly administering “virginity tests” on female detainees last year.

In another case, a military court convicted three soldiers of manslaughter for running over Coptic demonstrators with armoured personnel carriers during clashes at Maspero last October. Yet no senior officers were put on trial, despite evidence that SCAF had purposely spread fear and rumours in order to stoke the violence and inflame sectarian sentiments.

The Hakemohum campaign hopes to enact legislation that would strip former military leaders of their immunity, allowing them to be tried in special civilian courts in cases where crimes against the public are involved. A draft law submitted to parliament before it was dissolved in June outlines the jurisdiction and procedures of these “revolutionary justice courts” which would adhere to international standards of integrity and transparency.

“The courts would be presided over by judges selected (from a list of candidates) vetted to guarantee they had no loyalties to the old regime,” Hegazi explains.

Many Egyptians were disappointed by the outcome of the trial of Mubarak and his senior aides. While a civilian court sentenced Mubarak and former interior minister Habib El-Adly to 25 years in prison for killing over 800 protesters during last year’s uprising, the tedious and farcical trial absolved senior security personnel of any responsibility in the killings.

Prosecuting the military could present far greater challenges.

Hegazi says SCAF has consistently worked to protect its leaders and cover up abuses. Yet she is confident that those who abused their power will be held accountable for their actions.

“Before the revolution we would never have imagined that we could remove Mubarak and put him on trial, but we did,” she says.

Nearly 270,000 refugees have had to flee their homes since January, when conflict erupted in northern Mali. Credit: William Lloyd-George/IPS

By Souleymane Faye
DAKAR, Aug 14 2012 (IPS)

Military action by West African states against the insurrection in northern Mali would be extremely risky without diplomatic support from neighbouring Algeria and Mauritania, according to International Crisis Group researcher Gilles Yabi.

The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) has said it is ready to deploy troops to help Mali’s interim government fight rebels who seized the northern part of the country in March. However, Yabi says it is essential that Mali’s non-ECOWAS neighbours, who have a degree of influence over the armed groups in Mali, offer diplomatic support.

Yabi, West Africa Project Director for the Brussels-based Crisis Group, also told IPS that reintegrating northern Mali with the rest of the country could not be accomplished in the short term. Excerpts of the interview follow:

Q: In a recent report, ICG said that an armed intervention by ECOWAS carries risks, including that of widening the crisis into other countries. What is the nature of this risk?

A: Our report warned that an external military intervention would have to be carried out jointly with the Malian army, which is presently not fully under control. An intervention risks seeing the conflict spill over into neighbouring countries, which all have links with armed groups or communities originally from northern Mali. The risk of triggering conflict between ethnic communities will be high, and this would have repercussions in neighbouring countries.

There are also major risks in abandoning large areas to Islamist groups linked to terrorism. These include an increase in brutal practices such as stoning as well as seeing fresh recruitment into the ranks of the jihadist armed groups.

But this doesn’t justify a rush to armed intervention by ECOWAS countries, which are themselves fragile in political and military terms.

Q: Do you think that the ECOWAS initiatives could lead to Mali’s government recovering control of the north of the country from the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA) and the Islamist group Ansar Dine? Will Mali get U.N. approval for a military intervention?

A: The north has largely passed into the control of the Islamist movements, particularly Ansar Dine and the Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa (MUJWA), which are both linked to Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). The MNLA is no longer a significant military force on the ground.

I believe we must accept that the reintegration of the north into the Malian state will not happen in the short term.

Despite its willingness to act, ECOWAS does not have the means to help the Malian government – which is itself being restructured – to recover the territory captured by the Islamist forces. The political conditions in Bamako and the disarray of the Malian armed forces sharply limit the options. A military intervention in these conditions would be dangerous.

Once a new government is formed, the transitional institutions announced by interim president Dioncounda Traoré are put in place, and the real work of coordinating political, diplomatic and military actions between the Malian government, ECOWAS, and non-ECOWAS neighbours Algeria and Mauritania is accomplished… then we can expect a review of the issue of seeking authorisation from the U.N. Security Council for an external military deployment…

Mali can only have a clear position on this question when the battle for control of the transition in Bamako is finished.

Q: Do you think that a massive infiltration of Mali’s neighbours by elements of Ansar Dine and AQMI could take place?

A: That depends on what you mean by “massive”. That elements linked to Ansar Dine, MUJWA or AQMI could cross into Mali’s neighbours – or even that they already have – would not be surprising.

For Algeria and Mauritania, we can’t talk about infiltration. AQMI is originally a product of Algeria’s history and its principal leaders are still Algerians. And Mauritania has suffered several terrorist attacks in the last few years which were carried out by Islamists, directly linked to AQMI or not.

We can only talk about the risk of infiltration with regard to Mali’s neighbours in the south. There too, we can’t exclude the possibility, as it is easy to cross the borders in these areas. But the fear of an invasion of these southern neighbours by jihadists doesn’t seem reasonable to me.

Still, a handful of motivated and trained operatives could be enough to destabilise a country with terror attacks. So we can’t underestimate the threat.

Q: What’s your overall assessment of diplomatic and political initiatives by ECOWAS to resolve the political crises in Mali and Guinea-Bissau?

A: You can’t accuse ECOWAS of being unresponsive or lacking initiative in either Mali or Guinea-Bissau. The organisation has held several summits of heads of state and adopted strong resolutions on paper.

In the case of Mali, it even called for strong economic, financial and diplomatic sanctions to force a return to formal constitutional order following the coup (in March). But the framework agreement that Burkinabè mediators signed with the junta on ECOWAS’s behalf also sent mixed, even contradictory, signals to the country’s military and political actors.

Here once again, ECOWAS has shown its limitations when it comes to moving from affirming its principles to making decisions. ECOWAS is partly responsible for the weaknesses of the framework agreement and the conditions of implementation for the transitional government that it is today trying to reconstitute.

With respect to Guinea-Bissau, ECOWAS was very firm and did not hesitate once it chose a course of action, even if this left it open to criticism. The organisation condemned the April coup and worked with the military junta to set up a transitional government that was not truly legitimate, but was judged acceptable by a wide spectrum of political and military actors united against the former prime minister and favoured candidate in the presidential election, Carlos Gomes Junior.

ECOWAS sent a military mission to Guinea-Bissau which we have heard very little about. The problem is that no one really knows just what this force’s mandate is and how military and diplomatic action by ECOWAS would help the country to finally address the crucial reforms which now seem indefinitely postponed, beginning with reform of the armed forces.

This will be an important test of the capacity of the organisation to show coherence between its positions and its actions over time.

Q: Would the contribution of non-ECOWAS members such as Algeria or Mauritania be effective in resolving the Mali crisis? Is the “wait-and-see” approach of Algeria realistic and positive when the Islamist groups actually originated there?

A: All the so-called “pays du champ” (Niger, Algeria, Mauritania and Mali) are affected by the Mali crisis. They can’t be indifferent. If ECOWAS takes the military route without significant diplomatic backing from Mali’s neighbours – who can potentially influence the armed groups – then the organisation will be taking a big risk.

Diplomatic efforts in the past few weeks, especially towards Algeria, show that no one actively engaged with the Mali crisis is ignoring the importance of ECOWAS’s neighbours. That includes France, whose foreign minister, Laurent Fabius, toured several capitals in the region recently.

Algeria knows what is expected of it in this crisis, given its status as the region’s military power, as intermediary or mediator in many previous crises in northern Mali, and as the original home of AQIM.

The country’s attitude is no longer necessarily to wait and see: Algeria has expressed its preference for a political situation in northern Mali. ECOWAS and Mali’s transitional authorities must ask Algiers to say more about what it can contribute to a negotiation process with the armed groups, particularly Ansar Dine, whose leader Iyad Ag Ghali is well known in Algeria.

Excerpt: