General Muhammadu Buhari holding a broom at a campaign rally. Photo credit: By Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung (Flickr: Wahlkampf in Nigeria 2015)/CC BY-SA 2.0

By Lisa Vives
NEW YORK/ABUJA, Apr 2 2015 (IPS)

After several tension-filled months, a majority of Nigerians swept in an opposition leader and former military man, Muhammadu Buhari, to succeed incumbent President Goodluck Jonathan, whose failure to contain a terrorist wave in the northern states doomed his re-election chances.

Buhari had previously ruled Nigeria from January 1984 until August 1985 – a period in which there were widespread accusations of human rights abuses – after taking charge following a military coup in December 1983.

The Mar. 28 elections were observed by teams from the United States, United Kingdom, European Union, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and the African Union. Carl LeVan, an assistant professor at the School of International Service, American University in Washington, DC, took part in the National Democratic Institute’s election observation mission from the United States.“[President Muhammadu] Buhari has an unprecedented opportunity to recast the Muslim face of Africa at a time when violent terrorist movements have both perverted Islam and distorted Western foreign policies meant to be more multifaceted” – Carl LeVan, member of a U.S. observation mission for the Mar. 28 presidential election in Nigeria

Speaking with IPS, LeVan, author of Dictators and Democracy in African Development (2015), remarked on the surprise success of Buhari’s All Progressives Congress (APC) party that was only formed in February 2013.

“The defeat of Africa’s largest political party, the People’s Democratic Party, will bring the All Progressives Congress (APC) into power after barely two years of organising, mobilising and coalition building. (Muhammadu) Buhari will enter office with a strong mandate from the voters, having won four out of the country’s six geopolitical zones, and the APC will enjoy a comfortable majority in the Senate.

“Though a northern Muslim from Katsina, his support included the predominantly Yoruba southwest, where President Goodluck Jonathan recent delivered bags of cash to traditional rulers according to news reports and where the militant Odudwa Peoples’ Congress launched a wave of thuggery in recent weeks.”

The election upset was especially poignant for Nigerians of the northern states, the area most devastated by Boko Haram terror attacks. While some of the vote counting was impeccable, not all of the voting went smoothly. Observers told of protestors objecting to perceived rigging, harassment, ballot boxes snatched and over-voting.

“Even before the results were announced,” said LeVan, “voters in the north reacted with jubilation, and militant groups, including the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, began surreptitiously re-arming in the creeks of the south. Sources I met with over the weekend in Rivers State say they have seen caches of weapons in camps backed by militants such Ateke Tom and others.

“In addition to such seemingly minor procedural problems, the public was locked out of some collation (vote counting) centres. We also received credible reports of serious harassment. A soldier was killed in some of the violence in Port Harcourt, and a large protest took the state electoral commission by storm on Sunday.”

The opposition victory has been achieved but some are already wondering what the new leader, not known for his adherence to human rights, will prioritise.

According to LeVan, “Buhari has a mandate, and his most urgent challenge is to neither misinterpret nor abuse it.

“According to an Afrobarometer poll released on Mar. 23, 40 percent of Nigerians say the president ‘should be allowed to govern freely without wasting time to justify expenses’, and 25 percent say the president should ‘pass laws without worrying about what the National Assembly thinks’. Sixty-eight percent are not very or not at all satisfied with the way democracy is working.”

Recalling a recent national election won by a former dictator, LeVan said that “the last time Nigeria elected a former dictator, Olusegun Obasanjo in 1999, he spent his first term battling the National Assembly and quelling violence in the region that largely voted against him. But he also began building institutions and establishing trust with his sceptics.

“The last time Nigerians had Buhari at the helm, the jubilation quickly gave way to frustration, repression, and economic failure.

“Buhari’s ‘honeymoon’ will therefore be critical, and probably even shorter lived than his memories of 1984. He will need to do more than make grand rhetorical gestures to democracy; he’ll need to practice it and educate his own supporters about the advantages of the justice and fairness it offers, even where the cost may be the kind of efficiency the Afrobarometer respondents appear to be longing for.”

LeVan also urged the new president to “go south” in view of the fact that Nigeria has often been a divided country with loyalties to different regional centres and different religious and ethnic affiliations, because this would send a “valuable message to northerners that he is everyone’s president.”

By “going south”, he said, the newly-elected president “could also include a clear transition plan or policy for the status of the ongoing amnesty programme for the Niger Delta militants, who need reassurance that they do not need an Ijaw president [like President Goodluck Jonathan] in order to have “resource control” taken seriously, or to have environmental clean-up and developmental needs addressed.

“The sooner and more clearly they hear this message, the less likely will be the re-ignition of the Delta rebellions … This is also important because in a country partly divided along religious lines between north and south, Afrobarometer reports that trust in religious leaders at 29 percent is higher than in the National Assembly, governors, local governments, or even traditional rulers (16 percent).

“Christian Igbos in the east (who overwhelmingly rejected the APC) and minorities in the south need to know they can trust Buhari, and he needs their cooperation to govern peacefully and practically.”

LeVan also suggested that Buhari should “reset” national security strategy, perhaps by ”replacing key members of the national security establishment.

“While some continuity may help preserve institutionalised knowledge, particularly with regard to the recent ‘surge’ against Boko Haram, the mishandling of the Chibok girls’ kidnapping reduced confidence in the national security team, and the pressure applied to the electoral commission prior to the election delay has contributed to the perception that some soldiers and many advisers are partisan.”

Boko Haram has been displaced but not defeated, LeVan warned, and this means creating a “credible counter-insurgency strategy”.

Among others, such a strategy would include “sustained high-level interactions with the multinational coalition partners, and a repairing of bridges to the United States, United Kingdom and other allies with a stake in Nigeria’s peaceful prosperity.”

In this context, said LeVan, a visit to the United States and the United Kingdom would be beneficial to reconnect with a disenchanted diaspora. “This will be important in the United States, where leadership in Congress has interpreted Boko Haram as a war against Christians, rather than a complex insurgency with many different victims and deep historical and socio-economic roots.

“Buhari has an unprecedented opportunity to recast the Muslim face of Africa at a time when violent terrorist movements have both perverted Islam and distorted Western foreign policies meant to be more multifaceted.”

LeVan also advised Buhari to pick a “credible, competent and diverse economic team”, noting that “in early 2014, the government of Nigeria (along with the World Bank and others) highlighted trends in economic diversification. The near crisis triggered by the decline in oil prices since then suggests either these claims were overstated or much more work needs to be done.

Buhari could reform the refinery and oil importation mechanisms, commit to publishing all of the federal governments revenue transfers to subnational units each month (like it used to), and pick a combination of experts from academia, the private sector and the bureaucracy to get the economy back on track.”

“A few obvious steps,” concluded LeVan, “would go a long way: reaffirm the independence of the Central Bank (whose governor was replaced last year), stabilise the currency, and consult the National Assembly about budget plans and fiscal crises … The rest is up to the Nigerian people, who spoke on Mar. 28. Voting was just the beginning.”

Edited by Phil Harris    

Any views expressed by persons cited in this article do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, IPS – Inter Press Service. 

By Christine Ahn and Suzy Kim
HONOLULU, Dec 2 2014 (IPS)

On Nov. 18, a committee of the United Nations General Assembly voted 111 to 19, with 55 abstentions, in favour of drafting a non-binding resolution referring North Korea to the International Criminal Court (ICC).

Christine Ahn

While there is overwhelming evidence that economic and political conditions in North Korea must improve, missing from debates in U.N. corridors is the fact that the unresolved Korean War (1950-1953) underlies North Korea’s human rights crisis."While there is overwhelming evidence that economic and political conditions in North Korea must improve, missing from debates in U.N. corridors is the fact that the unresolved Korean War (1950-1953) underlies North Korea's human rights crisis"

After claiming up to four million lives with at least one member of every family in North Korea killed by the war, the Korean War was halted by an armistice agreement signed by North Korea, China and the United States representing the United Nations Command.

Suzy Kim

As James Laney, U.S. Ambassador to South Korea during the 1990s explains, “one of the things that have bedevilled all talks until now is the unresolved status of the Korean War” and he prescribes the “establishment of a peace treaty to replace the truce.”

What does the past have to do with the present state of human rights in North Korea?

The continued state of war affects the human rights of North Korean people today in at least two ways. Domestically, the North Korean government prioritises military defence and national security over human security and political freedoms. Internationally, North Koreans suffer due to political isolation and economic sanctions.

The fact that the Korean War ended with a temporary ceasefire rather than a permanent peace treaty gives the North Korean government justification – whether we like it or not – to invest heavily in the country’s militarisation.

According to the South Korean government’s Institute of Defense Analyses, North Korea invests approximately 8.7 billion dollars – or one-third of its GDP – on defence.

Pyongyang even acknowledged last year how the un-ended war has forced it “to divert large human and material resources to bolstering up the armed forces though they should have been directed to the economic development and improvement of people’s living standards.”

Since military intervention is not an option, the Barack Obama administration has used sanctions to pressure North Korea to denuclearise. Instead, North Korea has since conducted three nuclear tests, calling sanctions “an act of war”.

That is because sanctions have had deleterious effects on the day-to-day lives of ordinary North Korean people. “In almost any case when there are sanctions against an entire people, the people suffer the most and the leaders suffer least,” said former U.S. President Jimmy Carter on his last visit to North Korea.

International sanctions have made it extremely difficult for North Koreans to access basic necessities, such as food, seeds, medicine and technology. Felix Abt, a Swiss entrepreneur who has conducted business in North Korea for over a decade says that it is “the most heavily sanctioned nation in the world, and no other people have had to deal with the massive quarantines that Western and Asian powers have enclosed around its economy.” 

Whether in Pyongyang, Seoul or Washington, the threat of war or terrorism has been used to justify government repression and overreach, such as warrantless surveillance, imprisonment and torture (“enhanced interrogation techniques”) in the name of preserving national security.

In South Korea, one of the liberal opposition parties, the Unified Progressive Party, is currently on trial in the Constitutional Court on charges made by the Park Geun-hye government that its members conspired with North Korea to overthrow the South Korean government.

Amnesty International says that this case “has seriously damaged the human rights improvement of South Korean society which has struggled and fought for freedom of thoughts and conscience and freedom of expression.”

In the coming days, the U.N. General Assembly will vote on whether the U.N. Security Council should refer North Korea to the ICC, although it is likely to be vetoed by China and Russia. The United Nations vote, while lofty in principle, actually serves to further isolate Pyongyang, which will likely retreat even further behind its iron curtain.

“We’ve said from day one that if North Korea wants to rejoin the community of nations, it knows how to do it,” U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has said, referring to the precondition of denuclearisation for talks.

Instead of relying on the failed Washington policy of “strategic patience” it is time for a bold move that will truly bring North Korea into the community of nations, leaving no excuse to delay addressing human rights – sign a peace treaty to end the state of war. (END/IPS COLUMNIST SERVICE)

(Edited by Phil Harris)

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

Excerpt:

Fascism means unlimited surveillance of one's own people and others, made possible by postmodern technology. Credit: Frédéric BISSON/CC-BY-2.0

By Johan Galtung
ALFAZ, Spain, Jul 1 2013 (IPS)

The atrocious Second World War left behind lasting damage by lowering our standards for what is marginally acceptable.

Johan Galtung, rector of the TRANSCEND Peace University. Credit: IPS

War is bad but if it’s not nuclear war, the limit has not yet been reached.

Fascism is bad, but if it does not come with dictatorship and the elimination of an entire people, the limit has not yet been reached.

Hiroshima, Hitler, Auschwitz are deeply rooted in our minds. And we distort them.

Hiroshima makes us disregard the state terrorism against German and Japanese cities, the killing of citizens of any age and both genders. And Hitler and Auschwitz make us disregard fascism as the pursuit of political goals by means of violence and the threat of violence.

It takes two to make a war, by whatever means. But it takes only one to make fascism, against one’s own people, and/or against others.

What is the essence of fascism? A definition has been given: coupling the pursuit of political goals with massive violence. We have democracy exactly to prevent that, a political game for the pursuit of political goals by nonviolent means, and more particularly by getting the majority, as demonstrated by free and fair elections or referenda, on one’s side.

A wonderful innovation with a logical follow-up: nonviolence even when the majority oversteps lines or limits, for instance, as written into the codes of human rights. The strong state, able and willing to display its force – including through the use of capital punishment – belongs to the essence of fascism.

That means absolute monopoly on power, including the power that does not come out of a gun, including nonviolent power. And it means a view of war as an acceptable activity of the state, normalising, even eternalising war. It means a deep contradiction with an omnipresent enemy, like Aryans against non-Aryans, or Judeo-Christianity against Islam, glorifying the former, demonising the latter.

It means unlimited surveillance of one’s own people and others, made possible by postmodern technology. What matters is fear, that people are afraid and abstain from protests and nonviolent action lest they are singled out for the ultimate punishment: extrajudicial execution.

More important than actually checking everybody’s email and web activity and listening to telephone calls is that people believe this is happening. The trick is to do so indiscriminately, not focusing on suspects only but making people feel that anyone is a potential suspect.

The even more basic trick is to make fascism compatible with democracy. A piece of news comes to mind: “Admitting that British forces tortured Kenyans fighting against colonial rule in the 1950s – the government (has agreed) to compensate 5,228 victims.” (International Herald Tribune, 07-06-2013).

A staggering number, more than 5,000 – for sure there were more. Where was the Mother of Parliaments during this display of fascism? One senses a formula behind this decision, “the security of Britons in Kenya” – “security” being the bridging word between fascism and democracy, sustained by that academically institutionalised paranoia, “security studies”.

There are other ways to make fascism compatible with democracy.

First, a reductionist definition of democracy as multi-party national elections.

Second, making the parties close to identical in matters of “security”, ready to use violence internationally or nationally.

Third, privatising the economy under the heading of “freedom”, the other bridging word, essentially granting the Executive power over the judiciary, the police and the military – a move for which there is already manufactured consent. To arrive at that consent, a permanent crisis with a permanent enemy ready to hit is useful, but there are other approaches.

Just as a crisis defined as “military” catapults the military into power, a crisis defined as “economic” catapults capital into power. If the crisis is that the West has been outcompeted in the real economy, then the finance economy – the huge banks – start handling the trillions under the formula of freedom.

There is a way out, and sooner or later it will be traveled. People pay around 20 percent (in the U.S. they pay half) in tax to the state when they buy goods or services in the real economy – for end consumption – but the finance economy effectively lobbies against even one percent. Even a compromise like five percent would solve the dilemma of Western states that the real economy does not generate a surplus sufficient to run a modern state beyond force.

If freedom is defined as the freedom to use money to make more money, and security as the force to kill the designated enemy wherever he is, then we get a military-financial complex, the successor to the military-industrial complex in deindustrialising societies.

They know their enemies: peace movements and environment movements, threats to security and freedom respectively by not only casting doubts on killing, wealth and inequality but also framing them as counter-productive.

Both movements say that you are in fact producing insecurity and dictatorship. Both operate in the open, are easily infiltrated with spies and provocateurs, thereby eliminating badly needed voices.

So, here we are. Torture as enhanced investigation, de facto camps of concentration like Guantanamo, habeas corpus eliminated. And a U.S. president up front for the gullible, telling progressive tales he never enacts, never mind whether he is a hypocrite or is put up by somebody as a veil over fascist reality.

Those who pull the veil aside – Julian Assange, Bradley Manning, Edward Snowden – are criminalised, not those building fascism. The old adage: when democracy is most needed, abolish it.

(END/COPYRIGHT IPS)

Excerpt:

Courtesy of the American Security Project

By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON, Mar 22 2013 (IPS)

Defence establishments around the world increasingly see climate change as posing potentially serious threats to national and international security, according to a review of high-level statements by the world’s governments released here Thursday.

The review, “The Global Security Defense Index on Climate Change: Preliminary Results,” found that nearly three out of four governments for which relevant information is available view the possible effects of climate change as a serious national security issue.In many nations, the armed forces are the most respected arm of government, and their action on climate change can raise awareness throughout the country.

It found that the wealthy developed countries of North America, Europe and East Asia, including China, have made the most progress in integrating climate change into their national security strategies.

With the notable exception of India, leaders of South Asian countries have also made strong statements about the security threats posed by climate change, while smaller countries in the Pacific, the Caribbean, and Central America have expressed alarm at the possible catastrophic impacts of climate change on them, according to the review.

It was officially released at the this week’s Climate Security Conference in the Asia-Pacific Region in Seoul, South Korea by the American Security Project (ASP), a non-partisan group headed by former senior U.S. government and military officials.

The Index, which will go online later this spring and be constantly updated, will catalogue official documents and statements by national governments – and particularly their military establishments — about the relationship between climate change and security issues.

“In many nations, the armed forces are the most respected arm of government, and their action on climate change can raise awareness throughout the country,” according to ASP’s Andrew Holland, who co-authored the report with Xander Vagg.

The review’s release comes amidst growing frustration among both climate scientists and activists over the slow pace and weakness of multilateral and unilateral efforts to curb the emission of greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming.

Governments’ failure to take stronger action has been attributed in part to the fact that climate change has been seen primarily as an environmental issue. As such, it has been accorded a lower priority than other challenges faced by countries, particularly economic growth.

In recent years, however, governments in a growing number of countries have recognised climate change as a national security issue – a recognition welcomed by activists who believe it should bolster their efforts to push the issue up the national and international agenda.

Here in the U.S., such an effort has been underway for some time. Just last month, a bipartisan group of 38 former senior and cabinet-level U.S. foreign policy officials, military officers, and lawmakers published an “open letter” to President Barack Obama and Congress calling for urgent action, especially in funding programmes designed to help poor countries both curb emissions and adapt to climate change.

Unless such action is forthcoming, “climate change impacts abroad could spur mass migrations, influence civil conflict and ultimately lead to a more unpredictable world,” the letter, sponsored by the Partnership for a Secure America, warned.

“…(P)rotecting U.S. interests under these conditions would progressively exhaust American military, diplomatic and development resources as we struggle to meet growing demands for emergency international engagement.”

A recent joint report by the Center for American Progress, the Stimson Center, and the Center for Climate and Security found that crop failures resulting from both severe droughts and flooding in various parts of the world contributed to food shortages that helped spark popular unrest in key Arab countries, paving the way for the upheavals known as the Arab Spring.

In his annual global threat assessment report issued last week, the director for national intelligence (DNI) warned that “(e)xtreme weather events (floods, droughts, heat waves) will increasingly disrupt food and energy markets, exacerbating state weakness, forcing human migrations, and triggering riots, civil disobedience, and vandalism.”

At the same time, head of the U.S. Pacific Command (PACOM), Adm. Samuel Locklear, warned that the impact of climate change on his region was “probably the most likely thing that is going to happen …that will cripple the security environment, probably more likely than the other scenarios we all often talk about.”

He told the Boston Globe that his command was already engaging the militaries of other regional countries, including China and India, about co-operation in addressing the challenge.

But the security implications of climate change are by no means confined to the U.S. and other wealthy countries with large military establishments, according to the ASP review.

It found that the governments and militaries of a least 110 of 155 countries for which relevant information was available have identified climate as a threat to their security. And many of those have integrated into their defence and national security planning documents.

“It was fascinating to learn how many different nations with such a variety of political systems, economic practices, and geographic locales share a common view on the dangers posed by climate change,” Vagg told IPS in an email.

“More to the point, these states all share the view that climate change — and its direct/indirect effects — should no longer be treated as a purely environmental threat, but rather a full-blown national security issue.”

Of the 32 countries identified by the study as resisting the view that climate change poses a security threat, India and Brazil were by far the most important.

Both countries opposed a move last month sponsored by Pakistan and Britain to put climate change on the U.N. Security Council’s agenda, according to Vagg.

Russia and China also opposed “securitising” the issue by placing it under the Security Council’s jurisdiction, although senior political and military leaders in both countries have defined climate change as a security threat, along with other non-traditional threats, such as global pandemics, terrorism, and transnational crime networks.

Climate change poses the greatest – even existential – threats to small island states of the Pacific and Indian Oceans, and the Caribbean. Surrounded by rising seas and highly vulnerable to storm surges, they have been ringing the alarm for some time, sometimes with the help of their larger continental neighbours, such as Australia. Sea-level rise in another low-lying coastal country, Bangladesh, could also displace tens of millions of people.

Of all the world’s regions, the report found that the Middle East and North Africa are most resistant to defining climate change as a security threat, although Turkey, Israel, Qatar, Jordan and Kuwait were notable exceptions.

*Jim Lobe’s blog on U.S. foreign policy can be read at http://www.lobelog.com.

People at Labor Square in Gulshan-e-Maymar, Karachi, Pakistan wait for food aid after the 2010 floods. Forced migration and the displacement of vulnerable communities are issues of concern to U.S. national security experts. Credit: M Fahim Siddiqi/IPS

By Walter García and Joe Hitchon
WASHINGTON, Feb 27 2013 (IPS)

More than three dozen national security officials, members of Congress and military leaders are warning of the threat climate change poses to U.S. national security, the latest in an indicator that U.S. intelligence and national security circles are increasingly worried about a warming planet.

In a new bipartisan open letter, they stress the need for urgent action and call on both public and private support to address issues that included forced migration and the displacement of vulnerable communities, as well as the dangers related to food production during extreme weather events.

“We tried to accomplish two things: First, to make a call to action on the whole issue of climate change,” Lee Hamilton, a former member of Congress and a founder of the Partnership for a Secure America (PSA), a bipartisan Washington group that organised the letter, told IPS.It’s very weird we’re getting ‘100-year floods' every five years.

“Many people are frustrated that the political system doesn’t seem to be able to deal with question of climate change. It’s not on the agenda – the president has mentioned it, politicians have mentioned it, but we really have no action taking place.”

Hamilton continued, “The second thing we did was put it in a national security context, which I think was a unique way to frame it, and hopefully it will provide an additional stimulus for action.”

Signatories to the letter include former secretaries of state (George Schultz and Madeleine Albright), secretaries of defence and homeland security (William Cohen and Tom Ridge), a former director of central intelligence (R. James Woolsey), several generals (Gen. Anthony Zinni, Gen. Wesley Clark) and others.

They join the State Department, Defence Department, National Intelligence Council and a growing number of other security voices here in emphasising the national security implications of climate change.

“Even if you’re sceptical about any single part of climate change, it’s hard to get away from the … combination of feedback loops together with population growth and increasing consumption, which lead to a number of national security concerns,” Woolsey said here Tuesday, referring to “millions upon millions of hungry, thirsty neighbours to the south [of the United States], looking for somewhere to go.”

Unless precautionary steps are taken, the letter warns that “climate change impacts abroad could spur mass migrations, influence civil conflict and ultimately lead to a more unpredictable world.” And “protecting U.S. interests under these conditions would progressively exhaust American military, diplomatic and development resources as we struggle to meet growing demands for emergency international engagement.”

The new letter also comes against the backdrop of unfulfilled promises of action from the White House and a highly polarised Congress on the issue.

The national security aspect of climate change for the United States was given high prominence in December, when a major report from the National Intelligence Council (NIC), a high-level body coordinating all of the country’s intelligence agencies, listed climate change as one of four “megatrends” that will shape the world over the next two decades.

Other megatrends included factors relating to greater empowerment and prosperity of the individual, the growing political and economic power of developing countries, and dramatic changes in demographic patterns like rapid urbanisation.

The “Global Trends” report emphasised that climate change will severely impair the ability of food producers to meet a growing global demand for food, water and energy, each of which is forecast to increase by between 35 and 50 percent. Adding to this strain are the expanding consumer demands of a swelling worldwide middle class.

Most exposed

All of these issues will be exacerbated by the disrupted weather patterns associated with global climate change.

Scientists predict that the severity of existing weather patterns will intensify, with wet areas getting wetter, and arid areas becoming drier. Much of the decline in precipitation is expected to occur in the Middle East and North Africa as well as western Central Asia, southern Europe, southern Africa and the U.S. southwest.

“We are going to be see evidence of climate change beyond rising temperatures,” Jack Goldstone, a professor of public policy at George Mason University, said during an analysis of the Global Trends 2030 report Tuesday here in Washington.

“But as more thermal energy is put into the climate as a system, we will see more extreme events like the snowfalls across the country over the past couple of weeks, the floods in Thailand, floods in Pakistan, fires around Moscow … It’s very weird we’re getting ‘100-year floods’ every five years.”

Even as members of the U.S. Congress fail to arrive at any consensus on how or whether to overhaul the country’s energy sector, the Global Trends report notes that the United States is indeed moving towards “energy independence” – albeit not on the backs of renewable sources as pushed by environmentalists and others.

In fact, the U.S. recently regained its position as the world’s largest gas producer, largely due to its introduction of new “hydraulic fracturing” (or “fracking”) technologies. Experts now say U.S. reserves will be able to continue producing for the next century.

“It seems we are going to be stuck in an oil and gas world for quite some time, and we will see the impacts accumulate along with the temperature,” Goldstone said. “The poorer countries are precisely the ones left most exposed and vulnerable to climate change, and we need saleable, efficient, cost-effective solutions – and we need to keep vulnerable cities viable.”

Despite the expanding middle class and swelling urban populations and the resulting pressures on critical resources like food and water, the scientists point out that shortages are not inevitable, particularly through the effective management of natural resources.

Here in Washington, the close timing of the new letter and the report indicate a clear and growing recognition of the climate change threat as a national security issue. Yet whether this growing consensus can influence members of Congress has yet to be seen.

“It is quite clear that our national security establishment, especially over the past couple of years, has been keenly aware of the threat of climate change – but now its time to act,” Hamilton said.

The doctrine of national security imposed by the United States on Latin America, which fostered the dictatorships of the 1970s and 1980s, is making a comeback in Honduras where a new law is combining military defence of the country with police strategies for maintaining domestic order.

The law created the National Directorate of Investigation and Intelligence (DNII), a key agency in the security structure that does not appear to be accountable to any other body, and does not appear to be under democratic civilian control.

“This bill unites or fuses military defence and internal security, which is dangerous, because one of the aims after the Cold War was to separate these fields, due to the negative effects (their union had) on systematic violation of human rights” in the region, sociologist Mirna Flores, an expert on the issue, told IPS.

“We are back again with old national security concepts dating from the Cold War era in Central America, and the danger is that the former anti-communist rhetoric may be used against the ‘new threats’, such as allegedly criminal youth, dissidents against the regime, social protests or for the imposition of absolute powers,” she said.

The approval of the law on Jan. 14 took human rights organisations, civil society groups and academic bodies by surprise, because of the rushed nature of the legislation, the lack of consensus-building and the skipping of two of the three debates necessary for passing laws in parliament.

Sergio Castellanos, a legislator for the leftwing Democratic Unification Party, was the first to react when the bill was introduced. He asked for time for a fuller debate, but was overruled by the large rightwing majority comprising representatives of the governing National Party and one wing of the Liberal Party.

The law was passed amid a whirlwind of parliamentary activity, along with constitutional reforms and other laws that have engendered controversy in the country, such as mining regulations and suspension of all tax exemptions, pending review.

The Intelligence Law has some loopholes consisting of a lack of conceptual definitions, included in modern legislation in order not to allow room for discretionary interpretations or decisions.

Roberto Cajina, a civilian consultant on security, defence and democratic governance, told IPS that lack of definitions and limits in the text of the new law could give rise to “temptations” for abuse.

“It must be clearly understood what is meant by investigation, intelligence, strategic action, privacy protection, national security, special units, covert operations, special agents, special protection measures, secret funds and special risks, to cite just the most important definitions that are lacking in the law,” Cajina said.

Article 28 out of the 33 articles in the law says the DNII may recruit active members of the armed forces and the national police, Cajina said. This is “a very delicate matter and should be studied with care,” he said.

“As it stands, it is a dangerous precedent. One could warn of possible ‘piracy’ of the DNII toward the armed forces and police. What kinds of intelligence do each of them carry out?” he asked.

“If this is not clarified, problems and serious contradictions will arise, and the scenario will change radically. It is necessary to demarcate the boundaries of the fields of action of each of them,” Cajina emphasised.

Flores, the sociologist, and Cajina concur that another vacuum in the law is the lack of a chain of command subjecting the DNII to the control of any civilian institution or authority. It is not clear to what body it is affiliated.

The law compels private bodies to “cooperate by providing information required of them in order to support intelligence efforts”.

The experts said there should be a clearer description of the kind of information that private companies are required to give, because the current text leaves too much room for discretion. “The DNII director could, with very little justification, pick any organisation as a subject of interest which must provide the information (the DNII) demands,” they said.

“We are alarmed at this law that was tabled without ceremony, but also without debate, and furthermore, relying on old Cold War concepts,” activist Bertha Oliva, of the Committee of Relatives of the Detained and Disappeared in Honduras (COFADEH), told IPS.

Oliva said she was concerned by some aspects of the law, especially the power it gives the DNII to create “special investigation and intelligence units” and to cooperate with “other state intelligence bodies”.

“Does that mean there are more? Which ones? Why do we know nothing about them? I think there are many loopholes that could lead to abuses,” she said.

In the 1980s, members of the Honduran intelligence corps created the so-called Batallón de la Muerte (death squad), which was responsible for the forced disappearance of 187 people for political and ideological reasons, according to an official report.

This history raises fears that a similar body could be recreated, since the executive branch is giving the armed forces and police wide powers to run an intelligence corps which by law was supposed to come under the rule of the Commission on Public Security Reform, a civilian body working on structural reform of the police, prosecutors and the justice system.

But according to Matías Funes, chair of the Commission on Public Security Reform, its proposals do not have the ear of the legislative and executive branches. “It’s as if there were a parallel agenda,” and the institutional environment and democratisation of the country are not making progress, he said.