April 17th, 2016
By Syed Qamar Afzal Rizvi.
Pakistan upholds the right of the people of Jammu and Kashmir to self-determination in accordance with the resolutions of the United Nations Security Council. These resolutions of 1948 and 1949 provide for the holding of a free and impartial plebiscite for the determination of the future of the state by the people of Jammu and Kashmir. Pakistan continues to adhere to the UN resolutions. These resolutions are yet binding on India.
The UN’s mediatory role
The United Nations was involved in the conflict between Pakistan and India just months after the partition of British India. India brought the issue of Pakistani interference in Kashmir before the U.N. Security Council on January 1, 1948. Under article 35 of the U.N. charter, India alleged that Pakistan had assisted in the invasion of Kashmir by providing military equipment, training and supplies to the Pathan warriors. In response, Pakistan accused India of involvement in the massacres of Muslims in Kashmir, and denied any participation in the invasion.
Pakistan also raised question about the validity of the Maharaja’s accession to India (ii), and requested that the Security Council appoint a commission to secure a cease-fire, ensure withdrawal of outside forces, and conduct a plebiscite to determine Kashmir’s future (iii). The Security Council adopted a resolution establishing the United Nations Commission on India and Pakistan (UNCIP), to act as the mediating influence, and to undertake fact finding missions under article 34 of the Charter (iv). Shortly thereafter, the Security Council adopted another resolution in support of Kashmir’s right to self-determination, and in recognition for the need for a plebiscite (v). The plebiscite would be conducted under the supervision of an administrator appointed by the U.N. Secretary General and certified by UNCIP.
The resolution also called for withdrawal of armed Pakistani tribesmen and instructed India to reduce her forces. The Commission was informed that both countries had made the situation very complicated as Pakistani regular troops were already inside the borders of Kashmir and that the tribal invasion plus the Indian intervention had evolved into a larger state of war between India and Pakistan.
What about the instrument of accession?
A detailed examination into the legal order endorses the fact that India’s claim to Kashmir appears inconsistent with international law. Certainly, one may seriously question the Maharaja’s authority to sign the Instrument of Accession.
Pakistan argues that the prevailing international practice on recognition of state governments is based on the following three factors: first, the government’s actual control of the territory; second, the government’s enjoyment of the support and obedience of the majority of the population; third, the government’s ability to stake the claim that it has a reasonable expectation of staying in power.
The situation on the ground demonstrates that the Maharaja was hardly in control of the state of Jammu and Kashmir. In fact, almost all of Kashmir was under the control of the invading tribesmen and local rebels. The Maharaja held actual control over only parts of Jammu and Ladakh at the time that the treaty was signed. Moreover, Hari Singh was in flight from the state capital, Srinigar.
With regard to the Maharaja’s control over the local population, it is clear that he enjoyed no such control or support. Furthermore, the state’s armed forces were in total disarray after being thoroughly defeated by the invading forces and the local uprising. Finally, it is highly doubtful that the Maharaja could claim that his government had a reasonable chance of staying in power without Indian military intervention.
This assumption is substantiated by the Maharaja’s letter to the Government of India, in which he states that, “if my state has to be saved, immediate assistance must be available at Srinigar.” Therefore, if the Maharaja had no authority to sign the treaty, the Instrument of Accession can be considered without legal standing.
The legality of the Instrument of Accession may also be questioned on grounds that it was obtained under coercion. The International Court of Justice has stated that there “can be little doubt, as is implied in the Charter of the United Nations and recognized in Article 52 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, that under contemporary international law an agreement concluded under the threat or use of force is void.” As already stated, India’s military intervention in Kashmir was provisional upon the Maharaja’s signing of the Instrument of Accession. More importantly, however, the evidence suggests that Indian troops were pouring into Srinigar even before the Maharaja had signed the treaty. This fact would suggest that the treaty was signed under duress.
Finally, there is some doubt as to whether the treaty was ever signed. International law clearly states that every treaty entered into by a member of the United Nations must be registered with the Secretariat of the United Nations. The Instrument of Accession was neither presented to the United Nations nor to Pakistan.
While this does not void the treaty, it does mean that India cannot invoke the treaty before any organ of the United Nations. Moreover, further shedding doubt on the treaty’s validity, in 1995 Indian authorities claimed that the original copy of the treaty was either stolen or lost. Thus, an analysis of the circumstances surrounding the signing of the Instrument of Accession suggests that the accession of Kashmir to India was neither complete nor legal, as Delhi has vociferously contended for over fifty years. Kashmir may still legally be considered a disputed territory.
The core of the principle of self-determination
The principle of self-determination stipulates the right of every nation to be a sovereign territorial state. It affords to each population the right to choose which state it wishes to belong to, often by plebiscite. The principle of Self-Determination is commonly used to justify the aspirations of minority ethnic groups. The principle equally grants the right to reject sovereignty and join a larger multi-ethnic state. With regards to the Kashmir conflict, it is clear that Kashmir offered an ideological problem for both India and Pakistan. For Pakistan the Muslims of Kashmir had to be part of Pakistan under two nation theories (x), and for India, the failure of a Muslim majority state to survive within its system put under strain its secular vision. While considering the basic principle behind self-determination, as article 1(2) of the Charter of the United Nations 1945 states: ‘The purposes of the United Nations are…to develop friendly relations among nations based on respect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples, and to take other appropriate measures to strengthen universal peace…’ we must also recognize that the doctrine of self-determination is also part of two more international human rights treaties: the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (xi), and the International Covenant on Social, Economic and Cultural Rights (xii). Common article 1, paragraph 1 of these Covenants provides that: ‘All people have the rights of self-determination, by virtue of that right they freely determine their political states and freely determine their economic, social and cultural development.’
Pakistan’s argument
Pakistan argues that even if the Instrument of Accession is considered legal, India’s refusal to hold a plebiscite in Kashmir makes the accession incomplete. India, however, argues that its expressed “wish” to hold a plebiscite in Kashmir is amoral, not legal obligation. Pakistan, however, retorts that India’s obligation to hold a plebiscite in Kashmir arises out of India’s acceptance of the United Nations Commission for India and Pakistan (UNCIP) resolutions of August 13, 1948.
This resolution contains proposals for holding a plebiscite in Kashmir which would allow the people to choose between accession to either Pakistan or to India. India asserts that the resolution states that the plebiscite will be held when a ceasefire is arranged and when Pakistan and India withdraw their troops from Kashmir. Neither of these conditions has been met.
But India’s position seems murky and dwindling considering the legal principle expressed in the Latin maxim nullus commodum capere potest de injuria sua propria (no man can take advantage of his own wrong). In the context of the Kashmir dispute, this means that India cannot frustrate attempts to create conditions ripe for a troop withdrawal and ceasefire in order to avoid carrying out its obligations to hold a plebiscite.
The evidence suggests that India was clearly at least as equally unwilling as Pakistan to withdraw troops from Kashmir. The London Economist stated that “the whole world can see that India, which claims the support of this majority [the Kashmiri people]…has been obstructing a holding of an internationally supervised plebis-cite.”
The Kashmir mediator’s findings
Owen Dixon, the United Nations Representative to the UNCIP, reported to the Security Council that, In the end, I became convinced that India’s agreement would never be obtained to demilitarization in any such form, or to provisions governing the period of the plebiscite of any such character, as would in my opinion permit the plebiscite being conducted in conditions sufficiently guarding against intimidation, and other forms of abuse by which the freedom and fairness of the plebiscite might be imperiled. In September 1950, Sir Owen Dixon, reported, that all means of settling the dispute over Kashmir, had been “exhausted” and suggested that India and Pakistan, be left to negotiate a settlement among themselves.
In this regard, India’s apparent efforts to obstruct the holding of a plebiscite in Kashmir stand in violation of international law. International law, however, clearly declares that states are obliged to treat all of their “peoples” equally and to insure that minorities are treated in a manner that does not threaten their culture or identity. Principle VII of the “Declaration on Principles” in the Helsinki Final Act pronounces that “the participating States on whose territories national minorities exist will respect the right of persons belonging to such minorities to equality before the law, will afford them the full opportunity for the actual enjoyment of Human Rights and fundamental freedoms and will, in this manner, protect their legitimate interests in this sphere.
The last attempt made by the UN
A legal solution based on arbitration was possible in 1957 when UNSC reaffirmed its earlier resolution that require the plebiscite. Gunnar Jarring was appointed by UN to mediator between India and Pakistan. On his proposal to demilitarization Pakistan Prime Minister Sir Feroz Khan Noon’s declared that his country was willing to withdraw its troops from Kashmir to meet India’s preconditions, the Security Council once again sent Frank Graham to the area. He tried to secure an agreement between India and Pakistan but India again rejected it. In March 1958, Graham submitted a report to the Security Council (UNSC) recommending that it arbitrates the dispute but as usual India rejected the proposal.
The notion of Simla agreement
The Simla Agreement does not prevent rising of Kashmir issue in the UN. It also does not restricts both countries for seeking the bilateral resolution only. Para 1 of Simla agreement specifically provides that the UN Charter “shall govern” relations between the parties. Para 1 (ii) providing for settlement of differences by peaceful means.
Articles 34 and 35 of the UN Charter specifically empower the Security Council to investigate any dispute independently or at the request of a member State. These provisions cannot be made subservient to any bilateral agreement.
According to Article 103 of UN Charter, member States obligations under the Charter primacy over obligations under a bilateral agreement. Presence of United Nations Military Observes Group in India and Pakistan (UNMOGIP) at the Line of Control in Kashmir is a clear evidence of UN’s involvement in the Kashmir issue.
India’s legal & moral responsibility
As a party to both the Geneva Convention and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, India is obliged to follow standards of human rights enshrined in these treaties. Pakistan declares that India has committed gross violations of human rights in Kashmir, thereby violating international law and justifying Kashmir’s right to self-determination. Those Indian thinkers or policy engineers who think that the principle of self determination of the people of Kashmir comes outside the colonial context and has no justification for UN’s mandatory role in Kashmir are absolutely in line up with the Israeli policy thinkers who also argue that Israel’s today enjoys the leverage of the doctrine of uti possidetis juris (0f 1810).They both are wrong and delusional in their thinking. And the notion- that the UN’s resolutions on Kashmir are obsolete-holds no justification. The fact of the matter is that the UN Charter upholds the right of self- determination without compromising the political expediencies. It is why there are manifold UN’s resolutions on both Palestine and Kashmir.
The argument of ‘shared & international responsibility’ in international law
International law carries out the attribution of wrongful conduct pursuant to the agency theory, which operates en lieu of causation. The absence of causal analysis from the determination of internationally wrongful acts is the result of consistent State practice, based on a clear distinction between the national and international legal orders.
International responsibility is not domestic liability writ large; it is international accountability of international actors in the international community. The differences that international responsibility bears with domestic legal orders respond to the legal articulation of an international system of rules, distinct from the legal orders of the sovereign subjects it addresses. Given the logic of this argument of international law , the UNSC as well as India have to fulfill their ascribed roles of international responsibility vis-à-vis Kashmir dispute that causes great concern in international community.
Kashmir is an unfinished agenda of the partition of subcontinent. A solution to Kashmir is absolutely crucial to ensuring the integrity of both international law and international security on the subcontinent.
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April 14th, 2016
By Qamar Syed.
This week’s conference in Geneva(April 7-8) was organized to help build political momentum in the run-up to the 10th anniversary of the strategy and its review and to carry forward the debate that the General Assembly had in January on finding more areas of convergence on preventing violent extremism.
Violent extremism is an affront to the very purposes and principles of the United Nations, the Head of the world body’s Geneva headquarters said, urging government delegations and experts gathered there to endorse the comprehensive approach needed to proactively address the drivers of the scourge, including through support of the Secretary-General’s action plan on the issue.
“[Violent extremism] not only challenges international peace and security, but undermines the crucial work that Member States and the UN family are conducting to uphold human rights, take humanitarian action and promote sustainable development, said Michael Møller, Director-General of the United Nations Office at Geneva (UNOG).
Ban Ki Moon’s indoctrination
The Secretary-General has been of the view that no cause or grievance can justify the “unspeakable horrors” that terrorist groups are carrying out against innocent people, the majority of whom are Muslim. Women and girls, he added, are particularly subject to systemic abuses – rape, kidnapping, forced marriage and sexual slavery.
“These extremists are pursuing a deliberate strategy of shock and awe – beheadings, burnings, and snuff films designed to polarize and terrorize, and provoke and divide us,” the UN chief added, commending UN Member States for their political will to defeat terrorist groups and at the same time, urging them to stay “mindful of the pitfalls.”
“Many years of our experience have proven that short-sighted policies, failed leadership and an utter disregard for human dignity and human rights have causes tremendous frustration and anger on the part of people who we serve,” the UN chief said.
He outlined what he called four imperatives to deal with violent extremism. First, the world must look for motivations behind such ideologies and conflict. While this has proven over and over again to be a “notoriously difficult exercise,” it is vital to realize that poisonous ideologies do not emerge from thin air – oppression, corruption and injustice fuels extremism and violence.
“Extremist leaders cultivate the alienation that festers. They themselves are pretenders, criminals, gangsters, thugs on the farthest fringes of the faiths they claim to represent. Yet they prey on disaffected young people without jobs or even a sense of belonging where they were born. And they exploit social media to boost their ranks and make fear go viral,” Mr. Ban said.
Violent extremism affects all the 4 core areas (peace and security, humanitarian assistance, human rights and development) of the work of the UN, so all parts of the UN System have to work together on this issue.
The UN’s proposed plan of action
The action plan is based on five interrelated points, Mr. Ban Ki Moon said, namely prevention, national ownership, international cooperation, UN support and united action.
Security and military responses sometimes have proven to be counter-productive, and there is a need to address the drivers of violent extremism, he noted.
“There is no single pathway, and no complex algorithm that can unlock the secrets of who turns to violent extremism,” he stated. “But we know that violent extremism flourishes when aspirations for inclusion are frustrated, marginalized groups linger on the sidelines of societies, political space shrinks, human rights are abused and when too many people – especially young people – lack prospects and meaning in their lives.”
The Plan emphasizes conflict prevention, conflict resolution and political solutions, and urges full implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), as that will address many of the socio-economic drivers of violent extremism.
The Plan offers a menu of recommendations for Member States to forge their own national action plans, which should use an “all-of-Government” approach and engage “all-of-society” to be effective. No country or region alone can address the threat of violent extremism, he said, stressing the need for a dynamic, coherent and multi-dimensional response from the entire international community.
He pledged to leverage the universal membership and the convening power of the UN to further strengthen international cooperation at the national, regional and global levels, noting that he plans to create a UN system-wide high-level action group to spearhead the implementation of the Plan at both the Headquarters and field levels.
“We will not be successful unless we can harness the idealism, creativity and energy of 1.8 billion young people around the world,” he said, calling for a global partnership to prevent violent extremism. “I have no doubt that we will succeed if we are united in action,” he concluded.
UN agencies and other international organizations in Geneva work at the crossroads of peace, rights and wellbeing and are at the core of implementing the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. “Providing sustainable development opportunities, reducing inequalities, safeguarding human rights and providing a hub for mediation and peace negotiations, help to create a context and change realities on the ground that are better suited to resist extremism,” he said.
Further, the Secretary-General’s Plan of Action provides an important framework to address the issue at hand. The Plan has been welcomed by the General Assembly, showing the positive commitment of the international community to unite and act against this threat.
“To put the Plan into action, contributions from all actors are needed. The Secretary-General has put forward a multidimensional and ‘All of UN’ approach, explained Mr. Møller. Additionally, while recognizing the importance of the principle of national ownership to effectively address violent extremism, the Plan calls on all relevant actors – governments, civil society, academia, community and religious leaders – to act in unison through an “all-of-Government” and “all-of-Society” approach.
A backdrop to the UN’s strategy: uniting against terrorism
A real strategy is more than simply a list of laudable goals or an observation of the obvious. To say that we seek to prevent future acts of terrorism and that this world seeks better responses in the event of a terrorist attack does not amount to a strategy. Only when it guides the international community in the accomplishment of UN’s goals is a strategy worthy of its name. In order to unite against terrorism, the global community needs an operational strategy that will enable all nations together to counter terrorism.
It has been against this background that in 2006, the United Nations under the auspices of Secretary General Kofi Annan formulated the recommendations for a strategy seek to both guide and unite the global community by emphasizing operational elements of dissuasion, denial, deterrence, development of state capacity and defence of human rights. What is common to all of these elements is the indispensability of the rule of law, nationally and internationally, in countering the threat of terrorism. .
Inherent to the rule of law is the defence of human rights — a core value of the United Nations and a fundamental pillar of our work. Effective counter-terrorism measures and the protection of human rights are not conflicting goals, but complementary and mutually reinforcing ones.
Accordingly, the defence of human rights is essential to the fulfilment of all aspects of a counter-terrorism strategy. The central role of human rights is therefore highlighted in every substantive section of UN’s observatory report, in addition to a section on human rights per se. Victims of terrorist acts are denied their most fundamental human rights.
Accordingly, a counter-terrorism strategy must emphasize the victims and promote their rights. In addition, implementing a global strategy that relies in part on dissuasion, is firmly grounded in human rights and the rule of law, and gives focus to victims depends on the active participation and leadership of civil society. Therefore, there is no doubt that international civil society can play in promoting a truly global strategy against terrorism.
The role played by the Council of Europe?
The United Nations Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy was adopted in September 2006 (A/RES/60/288). The UN Security Council has adopted a number of resolutions to promote the implementation of the Strategy, amongst them two mandatory “Chapter VII” Resolutions, 1373 (2001) and 2178 (2014).
As a regional organisation, the Council of Europe is committed to facilitating the implementation the Strategy and the Security Council Resolutions. It does this by providing a forum for discussing and adopting regional standards and best practice and by providing assistance to its member states in improving their capacity to prevent and combat terrorism, to address the conditions conducive to the spread of terrorism and to ensure respect for Human Rights and the rule of law in the fight against terrorism.
The Council of Europe contributes to the biennial reports (2014 report A/68/841) of the UN Secretary General on the activities of the UN System in implementing the Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy and participates in the UN General Assembly reviews of the Strategy. The role played by the Council of Europe serves to be a model of paragon for other regional organizations to positively join this global cause against terrorism.
Countering violent extremism & UN’s challenges
The emergence of the so-called Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) has created a greater sense of urgency for many governments as they grapple with the outpouring of refugees; with national security concerns raised by the prospective return of foreign fighters; and the exacerbation of existing conflicts by the ideology and tactics exported by the group. While emerging from al-Qaeda, ISIL has premised its legitimacy on purporting to offer a just and effective state that ostensibly addresses many of the grievances of citizens in the region.
In its communications, ISIL does not portray itself as a secretive terrorist group, but rather as a welcoming state that seeks to offer its citizens healthcare, basic services, protection and infrastructure. In many ways, much of its recruitment material speaks the language of state-building and development, although it does not shy away from the use of brutality to assert itself.
The need to understand and respond to the development and security deficits that drive ISIL’s support and assumed legitimacy is therefore critical. Findings about the localised and individualised nature of drivers of violent extremism indicate that many of the UN’s core goals on preventing conflict and promoting human rights and sustainable development can be key to reducing the appeal of terrorism.
This was underscored in January 2015 when the UN Security Council described the relationship between security and development as “closely interlinked and mutually reinforcing and key to attaining sustainable peace”. The Secretary-General’s Plan of Action on Preventing Violent Extremism makes a clear association between PVE and development, calling for national and regional PVE action plans and encouraging member states to align their development policies with the Sustainable Development Goals, many of which were highlighted as critical to addressing global drivers of violent extremism and enhancing community resilience.
The General Secretary’s Geneva Plan of Action provides more than 70 recommendations to Member States and the UN system to support them. One of the key recommendations of the Plan is for Member States to consider adopting National Plans of Action based on national ownership.
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April 8th, 2016
By Syed Qamar Afzal Rizvi.
The Nuclear Security Summit that just ended on Friday in Washington, D.C. wrangled over several thorny nuclear proliferation and terrorism issues, and involved over 50 countries. But the two countries on everyone’s mind were China and Russia. China, because they have started on the world’s largest nuclear build-up in 50 years. And Russia, because they decided not to attend at all.
The fourth Nuclear Security Summit, in the series begun by the Obama administration, showcased definite successes, particularly the significant global reduction in nuclear weapons, the global reduction in nuclear material stockpiles, the increased security on nuclear facilities, the dozen countries that are now free of weapons-grade materials, a newly-amended nuclear protection treaty, and the historic nuclear deal with Iran that has, so far, gone as planned.
The IAEA’s role
International conventions adopted under both IAEA and other auspices have also assigned a clear role and functions to the IAEA in the field of nuclear security and have been approved as such by the Board of Governors. In particular, the Convention on the Physical Protection of Nuclear Material and the 2005 Amendment thereto, the Convention on Early Notification in the Event of a Nuclear Accident, the Convention on Assistance in the Case of a Nuclear Accident or Radiological Emergency, and the International Convention for the Suppression of Acts of Nuclear Terrorism have all assigned specific functions to the IAEA.
Non-binding legal instruments promulgated under IAEA auspices, including the Nuclear Security Recommendations on Physical Protection of Nuclear Material and Nuclear Facilities (INFCIRC/225/Revision 5) and the Code of Conduct on the Safety and Security of Radioactive Sources, also illustrate the IAEA’s role in elaborating such guidance and confirm its role in assisting States, upon request, in implementing the recommendations contained therein. Thus, like the international legal framework for nuclear security, the IAEA’s nuclear security mandate is embodied in both binding and non-binding legal instruments adopted under both IAEA and other auspices.
The notion of nuclear disarmament/ nuclear non proliferation
Over the past five years, the international community has devoted attention to the humanitarian, environmental, and developmental consequences of nuclear weapons detonations.
The final document of the 2010 Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference referred for the first time in NPT history to the “catastrophic humanitarian consequences of any use of nuclear weapons” and reaffirmed the need “for all States at all times to comply with applicable international law, including international humanitarian law.”
The discourse on disarmament has also shifted in recent years to a chronic debate over what preconditions must be satisfied to make disarmament ―possible.‖ Some of these make sense and are not at all opposed by serious proponents of disarmament – there is little disagreement, for example, that nuclear disarmament commitments must be binding, irreversible, transparent, universal, and verified. Yet other preconditions – including world peace, ―solving the problem of war,‖ resolving all regional disputes, ending all proliferation and terrorist threats, and even achieving world government – clearly have the thinly-veiled purpose of simply postponing disarmament indefinitely, as other goals displace disarmament as a priority.
The dictum that ―stability and order‖ are necessary preconditions for disarmament ignores the contribution that disarmament makes in strengthening international peace and security, through confidence-building, dispelling mistrust, lessening risks of conflict escalation, eliminating the danger of nuclear war, encouraging the peaceful settlement of disputes, strengthening the legitimacy (and effectiveness) of non-proliferation efforts, and discouraging the threat or use of force – all tied in various ways to the UN Charter.
The issue of legal gap
International law clearly places very heavy restrictions on nuclear weapons use. Nevertheless, there is no unequivocal and explicit rule under international law against either use or possession of such weapons. Although the two other categories of nonconventional weapons are explicitly prohibited because their use would conflict with the requirements of international humanitarian law, the use, production, transfer, and possession of nuclear weapons are not explicitly prohibited. This may reasonably be labeled a legal gap.
The reference to this legal gap in the Humanitarian Pledge does not make it clear whether a prohibition should be separated from the process of physical elimination and, if so, which to pursue first. The question of sequencing is significant. Should prohibition precede elimination? Should elimination come first when conditions allow, with prohibition then following? Could they be pursued simultaneously, in the form of a treaty that would resemble the Chemical Weapons Convention? Should the prohibition form part of a negotiated structure of legal instruments—a formal framework that could set out an agreed sequence or foreshadow the need to agree on a sequence at the outset of the initial negotiations?
The NPT & the emerging challenges
Four main approaches to nuclear disarmament feature frequently in debates in the UN General Assembly First Committee and the NPT review cycle: (1) a comprehensive nuclear weapons convention in which a single legal instrument would provide for prohibition and elimination and in which elimination would precede a prohibition, (2) a framework agreement in which different prohibitions and other obligations would be pursued independently of each other but within the same broad frame, (3) a step-by-step or building-block approach in which elimination would precede prohibition, and (4) a stand-alone ban treaty in which prohibition would precede elimination.
Unsurprisingly, governments have different views on these approaches, depending on the country’s status under the NPT, its membership in other treaty regimes, and its military alliances. At this point, it is not clear which view will prevail. It seems safe to say, however, that the legal gap will continue to be a hotly debated topic in the months and years to come, including in the open-ended working group on “[t]aking forward multilateral nuclear disarmament negotiations” that is meeting in Geneva during 2016.
Deterrence versus horizontal application of international norms?
The doctrine of nuclear deterrence – which Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has called ―contagious – is now being implemented in various forms by nine States and many more if one includes States that are members of nuclear alliances. More people actually today live in States that have either the bomb or a nuclear umbrella than in States that are fully nuclear-weapon-free. Possessor States also maintain that it is legal to use such weapons (China and India oppose first use but have not ruled out use in response to a nuclear attack) and most oppose the negotiation of a nuclear weapons convention, with the exceptions of China, India, Pakistan, and the Democratic People‘s Republic of Korea.
The western policy of double standard
Yet if such weapons are legal to use, effective in guaranteeing national security, and recognized symbols of power and status among a majority of the world‘s population, such claims are arguably more conducive to the evolution of an unwelcome norm of possession, than to the achievement of abolition. This is why efforts to achieve nuclear disarmament will have to rely upon more than the examples being set by the nuclear-weapons states. The western policy of double standards on this issue or vertical application of nuclear norms has been the root cause of promoting resentment in the comity of nations.
The examples of this western nuclear policy of nuclear segregation/favouritism can be rightly understood keeping in view the cases of both India & Israel.
A humanitarian approach based on non-use therefore would probably best be pursued not in isolation but as a clause in a nuclear weapons convention, as non-use was handled by the Chemical Weapons Convention and, indirectly, by the Biological Weapons Convention.
The successful efforts to negotiate treaties (though still not universal in membership) on anti-personnel landmines and cluster munitions did not seek merely to limit the use of such weapons – non-use was explicitly incorporated as a part of a disarmament (or nonarmament) commitment, and this seems a sensible approach for nuclear weapons as well.
Based on humanitarian law principles, and the evolving rule of law in disarmament, the only legitimate ―sole purpose of nuclear weapons (and other WMD) or, one day, even South Asia). All of these would complement the common purposes shared by the existing regional nuclear-weapon-free zones in Latin America and the Caribbean, Africa, the South Pacific, Southeast Asia, and Central Asia.
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April 4th, 2016
By Syed Qamar Afzal Rizvi.
Unnerved by the fact that one of its leading “Monkeys”, in service senior Raw officer Kulbashan Yadav, has got into the hands of Pakistan, New Delhi is frustratingly trying to get consular access which it had never demanded before in any other case. ‘Capture of spy proves Indian interference in Pakistan: Army’ said Dawn, Pakistan’s most sober newspaper – its headline departing from the rest by attributing the information about Jadhav (and the assessment of his ‘confession’) to the army. The newspaper quoted the military spokesman as saying Jadhav’s confession “is solid proof of Indian state-sponsored terrorism”. The article reveals that the captured India will be ‘prosecuted as per the law of the land’ and decisions regarding consular access for Indian authorities will be taken at a later date.
While Pakistani security agencies are preparing a strong case to expose India’s state-sponsored terrorism against Pakistan and there are hints of something more to unfold in the days to come, Indian propaganda machinery is frustratingly asking for consular access of Kulbashan Yadav aka Mubarak Hussain Patel. In response to Indian demand, Pakistani security agencies sources offer, “ India will have to accept, first, all the crimes of Kulbashan only then Pakistan will consider to exercise its discretion in granting the consular access or otherwise.”
Espionage & international law
The core of espionage is treachery and deceit. The core of international law is decency and common humanity. This alone suggests espionage and international law cannot be reconciled in a complete synthesis.
Espionage is curiously ill-defined under international law, even though all developed nations, as well as many lesser-developed ones, conduct spying and eavesdropping operations against their neighbors.’ Examined in light of the realist approach to international relations, states spy on one another according to their relative power positions in order to achieve self-interested goals. This theoretical approach, however, not only fails to explain international tolerance for espionage, but also inadequately captures the cooperative benefits that accrue to all international states as a result of espionage. Although no international agreement affirmatively endorses espionage, states do not reject it as a violation of international law.’
As a result of its historical acceptance, espionage’s legal validity may be grounded in the recognition that “custom” serves as an authoritative source of international law. Espionage is a crime under the legal code of many nations.
In the United States it is covered by the Espionage Act of 1917. The risks of espionage vary. A spy breaking the host country’s laws may be deported, imprisoned, or even executed.
The Third Amendment Amendment to the Constitution of Pakistan is an amendment to the Constitution of Pakistan went effective on 18 February 1975, under the Government of elected Prime ministrer Zulfikar Ali Bhutto an amendment to the 1973 Constitution of Pakistan. The amendment extend the period of preventive detention, of those who are accused of committing serious cases of treason and espionage against the state of Pakistan, are also under trial by the government of Pakistan.
A spy breaking his/her own country’s laws can be imprisoned for espionage or/and treason (which in the USA and some other jurisdictions can only occur if he or she take ups arms or aids the enemy against his or her own country during wartime), or even executed, as the Rosenbergs were. For example, when Aldrich Ames handed a stack of dossiers of U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) agents in the Eastern Bloc to his KGB-officer “handler”, the KGB “rolled up” several networks, and at least ten people were secretly shot. When Ames was arrested by the U.S.
Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), he faced life in prison; his contact, who had diplomatic immunity, was declared persona non grata and taken to the airport. Ames’s wife was threatened with life imprisonment if her husband did not cooperate; he did, and she was given a five-year sentence. Hugh Francis Redmond, a CIA officer in China, spent nineteen years in a Chinese prison for espionage—and died there—as he was operating without diplomatic cover and immunity.
International humanitarian law and its application
According to Article 29 of customary International Humanitarian Law, “A person can only be considered a spy when, acting clandestinely or on false pretences, he obtains or endeavours to obtain information in the zone of operations of a belligerent with the intention of communicating it to the hostile party.” If Pakistan can sufficiently establish through proof that the Yadav is a spy then his rights for consular access are automatically forfeited. No country has the right to treat unlawful combatants or spies inhumanely.
Article 30 of the same law states, “A spy taken in the act shall not be punished without previous trial.” India and Pakistan have been trying spies in military courts. The sentences have been rarely challenged in the Supreme Court. More recently, India has been exerting civil society pressure on the pretext of humanitarian grounds. In one case, an attempt was made to shield a convicted spy as a case of mistaken identity.
Sovereignty & international law
Sovereignty is a core precept of public international law, guarding a state’s essentially exclusive jurisdiction over its own territory. A concomitant principle is that “[e]very State has the duty to refrain from intervention in the internal or external affairs of any other State” and “the duty to refrain from fomenting civil strife in the territory of another State, and to prevent the organization within its territory of activities calculated to foment such civil strife.”
The principle of non-interference in sovereign affairs is recognized most famously in the U.N. Charter itself, which provides in Article 2(4) that “[a]ll Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.” The principle is, however, broader than this preoccupation with use of force suggests.
As the influential General Assembly Declaration on Principles of International Law concerning Friendly Relations and Co-operation Among States in Accordance with the Charter of the United Nations declares, “[e]very State has an inalienable right to choose its political, economic, social and cultural systems, without interference in any form by another State” and “[n]o State or group of States has the right to intervene, directly or indirectly, for any reason whatever, in the internal or external affairs of any other State.” While not itself a source of public international law, the Declaration is almost certainly a reflection of current customary international law.
The Indian case
There are undoubted examples of espionage – broadly defined to include, e.g., covert military assistance – that exceed the non-interference standard. In the case of Yadav, Islamabad is unlikely to budge given the ‘evidence’ of Indian support for terrorism in Balochistan and Karachi, which adds up in the statement of Premier Modi in Bangladesh of severing East Pakistan and then by those of his defense minister Manohar Parrikar and Ajit Doval, advisor on national security.
The exercise of what is known as “enforcement jurisdiction” by one state and its agents in the territory of another is clearly a breach of international law – it is impermissible for one state to exercise its power on the territory of another, absent consent or some other permissive rule of international law. Keeping this yardstick in mind, It appears that Indian spying over Pakistani territory is in gross violation of international law.
Pakistan is collecting evidence to prove India is a direct sponsor of terrorism. The fact of the matter is that if the confession- made by Yadav- indulges his activities in promoting Indian sponsored state terrorism against Pakistan,there is much likelihood that the case may take a grave turn.
The UN’s role may be a significant step in this case. Pakistan has already submitted to the UN officials the dossier regarding Indian terrorist involvement in Pakistan. Now,with the rising of Yadav’s case, Islamabad may hold the expectations that the UNSC should refer the case to the International Criminal Court(ICC).
“We have briefed the P5 (the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council) and the European Union on the issue,” Zakaria,Pakistan’s Foreign Office Spokesperson said. He added that Yadav’s revelations had vindicated Islamabad’s position and exposed India’s designs against Pakistan.
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March 28th, 2016
By Qamar Syed.
Pakistan is Afghanistan‟s most important neighbour, since it shares with Afghanistan history, ethnicity, religion and geography in ways none of its other neighbour does. We can, therefore, reasonably expect Pakistan to be more proactively concerned with the Afghan situation at this critical stage and reshape its own Afghan outlook accordingly. And it seems reasonably logical to conclude that the search for a lasting peace solution in Afghanistan has been lost because of the ongoing conflict of interests among regional actors.
Pakistan’s Afghan policy
Generally, discussions on Pakistan focus on its role in the ‘War on Terror,‟ whereby its support to Afghan Taliban is presumed as a given reality. In the process, any possibility of change in state approach to regional conflicts such as Afghanistan according to new circumstantial realities is often overlooked.
Pakistan did pursue a policy of „strategic depth‟ in the 1990s and faced international criticism for supporting Taliban during the current Afghan war. While such aspects of Pakistan‟s past Afghan policy deserve critical review, a question more relevant to the current context, and therefore worth examining, is how it is responding to the certainty of Western military exit from Afghanistan and corresponding uncertainties associated with the state of war and the prospect of peace in Afghanistan.
The evidence in the last few years, in the form of policy pronouncements by Pakistan‟s civil-military leadership and meaningful governmental initiatives, suggests the country has, indeed, taken a visible shift in its Afghan policy. What are its underlying motivations? Is this shift part of a broader transformation currently under way in Pakistan‟s regional priorities? And how far can it help in achieving sustainable Afghan peace and viable regional stability? Realism constitutes a more appropriate framework to answer these questions, since pragmatic considerations seem to underpin the evolving transformation in Pakistan‟s Afghan policy and regional outlook. However, its manifestations and motivations cannot be understood without a brief reference to Pakistan‟s past relationship with Afghanistan.
Despite those efforts by the new administration, there were credible suspicions that the Taliban continued to receive support from their foreign benefactors to wage war against the people and government of Afghanistan. Moreover, the misgiving between the two neighbors culminated in the brief fall in October of Kunduz , a strategic province in northern Afghanistan that connects the country to Central Asia.
On the other hand, the rising insecurity in different provinces initiated from the Taliban sanctuaries in Pakistan further damaged ties between Afghanistan and Pakistan. The acrimony and mistrust peaked to the point that President Ashraf Ghani in August publicly announced the withdrawal of political support to Pakistan for the reconciliation process and said that he would work with other stakeholders in the region in order to bring peace and stability to his country.
Firstly, it appears that Pakistan is losing its enduring influence over the fracturing Taliban movement. From Pakistan’s perspective, the Taliban, which has split into two major groups, are unable to turn the tide militarily. For this reason, there has to be a political solution to the Afghan crisis so that it can focus on its own domestic security problems.
To this end, a settlement could be achieved with the faction of Mullah Mansour, successor to Omar, who has close ties with Pakistani establishment. Secondly, given the split among Taliban ranks, any resolution that could maintain a modicum of Pakistani influence over the group is in the best interest of the country towards normalization of relations and reaching a favorable political solution with Kabul. Finally, with perpetual instability in Afghanistan, the security situation in Pakistan will also remain fragile because of the intertwined connection among various militant groups active in both countries.
Sure enough, with the announcement of Mullah Omar’s death, momentum toward peace came to a halt. The meeting set for July 31(2015) was postponed indefinitely. Then Omar’s successor, Mullah Akhtar Mohammed Mansour, rejected negotiations altogether and reissued the call for jihad against the United States and the Afghan government. Nearly a week after that, over the course of four days, three bombings wrecked Kabul, killing and injuring nearly 400 Afghans. The Taliban claimed responsibility. The question now is whether the window for peace talks is closed.
Talking to Taliban
The Taliban are immersed in a power struggle. Mansour is trying to secure his position against defiant rivals such as Abdul Qayum Zakir and Omar’s son Yakub, who question his right to rule. There are two possible outcomes to these struggles, each with its own implications for negotiations. One outcome is that the Taliban movement stays united. A single leader—Mansour
Afghanistan’s peaceful future depends to a great extent on an auspicious regional environment, with Pakistan at its core. Vice versa, an unstable Afghanistan will complicate Pakistan’s ability to refurbish its weak state and economy and suppress dangerous internal militancy. Assassinations and military coups have plagued Pakistan since the early years of independence, leaving behind a weak political system unable to effectively deliver elementary public goods, including safety, and respond to the fundamental needs of the struggling Pakistani people.
Rather than being a convenient tool for regional security schemes as Pakistani generals have often imagined, an Afghanistan plagued by intense militancy, with Kabul unable to control its territory and effectively exercise power, will distract Pakistan’s leaders from addressing internal challenges. Such a violently contested, unsettled Afghanistan will only further augment and complicate Pakistan’s own deep-seated and growing security and governance problems.
Pakistan fears both a strong Afghan government closely aligned with India, potentially helping encircle Pakistan, and an unstable Afghanistan that becomes—as has already happened—a safe haven for anti-Pakistan militant groups and a dangerous playground for outside powers. Whether the recent warming of relations between the two countries, following a change in government in Kabul in September 2014 when Ashraf Ghani became president, translates into lasting and substantial changes in Pakistan’s policy remains very much yet to be seen.
The Indian role
Now a word about India’s role in Afghanistan. It has invested more than 2 billion dollars in that country. It patronizes a number of top leaders of Northern Areas including Dr Abdullah Abdullah and Dostum and has made big strides in cementing relations between the two countries. As for back as 2011 we witnessed Mr. Karzai entering into a strategic partnership agreement with India which included training of senior military Afghan officers in India. India is also deeply involved in exploiting Pakistan’s problems in various parts of the country.
For evidence please read the following excerpts from speeches by what ex-US Defence Secretary Chuck Hegel and General Stanley McChrystal had said in their talks on Afghanistan: that India had been using Afghanistan as a second front against Pakistan and over the years financed problems for Pakistan. General Stanley McChrystal, former Commander of ISAF, had said, “Increasing Indian influence in Afghanistan is likely to exacerbate regional tensions and encourage Pakistani countermeasures. The recent worsening of relations between India and Pakistan is bound to encourage New Delhi to step up its unwholesome anti Pakistan activities. How weighty is the Pakistan evidence about details of India’s subversive activities in Balochistan and FATA, is yet to be known.
The tug of interests
While closely intertwined, the intra-Afghan and regional dimensions are often addressed separately or in the wrong order, starting with the regional angle and reducing the intra-Afghan settlement to a function of the interests of regional powers. With such an approach, one easily falls into the trap of conflicting national interests (between, for example, Pakistan and India, Iran and Pakistan, and the Gulf States and Iran). Such controversies do not prevent multilateral dialogue on Afghanistan, but they easily surpass the impact of any regional framework.
Ultimately, even a degree of balance among the interests of regional powers does not substitute for a genuine political settlement in Afghanistan. The right order, hence, is the reverse: a solution must begin with an adequate intra-Afghan settlement, formulated in a way that accommodates the main legitimate concerns of key regional stakeholders (first and foremost, Pakistan and Iran).The approach via Brahimi-Pickering plan seems pragmatic.
The intra-Afghan regionalization arrangement outlined in the previous section stands a chance of striking a balance between the domestic dimensions of settlement and the interests of key regional stakeholders. While the proposed decentralized framework for Afghanistan will not primarily be driven by—or satisfy—the maximum demands of regional powers, it will be in line with their legitimate interests. The Pakistan-supported Pashtuns in Taliban-controlled areas will receive a significant share of formal power at the regional level while remaining a constituent part of the decentralized Afghan state.
Regions with Shia dominance or a mixed population with a significant Shia presence will enjoy the same degree of autonomy. In particular, Hazarajat, as the most vulnerable region with the most victimized population, will likely become a natural center of gravity for any modified international presence. Iran will continue to play its role as the traditional benefactor of Afghanistan’s Shia and Persian-speaking populations and, together with other states like Uzbekistan, Russia, and India, support the northern regions.
The new hopes
The third meeting of the Quadrilateral Coordination Group (QCG) on Afghanistan at Islamabad on Saturday ended on a positive note. The QCG (comprising Afghanistan, Pakistan, US and China) adopted a road map, which was under discussion in the two earlier meetings last month, “stipulating the stages and steps” of the reconciliation process, as the Joint Press Release put it. The road map pertains to the parameters of shared responsibilities of the involved parties in the QCG mechanism. Its formal adoption was no big surprise but is a necessary step forward nonetheless.
Second, the QCG will keep up the momentum by holding its next meeting shortly on February 23 at Kabul. Third, importantly, the QCG expects that direct talks between the Afghan government and Taliban will take place “by the end of February”.
The QCG meeting “stressed that the outcome of the reconciliation process should be a political settlement that results in the cessation of violence, and durable peace in Afghanistan”.
The QCG had earlier reached a consensus that there shall be no ‘pre-conditions’ attached to the peace talks. There is now the added recognition that some ‘confidence-building measures’ are useful to cajole the Taliban to walk toward the negotiating table.
So, how does the balance sheet look? The jettisoning of pre-conditions means that Taliban cannot insist they first want to discuss the withdrawal of foreign troops. On the other hand, Kabul government cannot insist on Taliban bidding farewell to arms before talks begin.
Meanwhile, Pakistan has accepted that reduction in violence should be an important objective of the consultations. But Pakistan has underscored that the objective should be to bring in as many Taliban groups as possible into the peace talks. Presumably, it cannot be a ‘pre-condition’ on anyone’s part that, say, the Haqqani Network cannot participate.
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March 22nd, 2016
by Syed Qamar Rizvi.
Turkish and EU leaders on Friday agreed a “historic” deal for curbing the influx of migrants that has plunged Europe into its biggest refugee crisis since the end of World War II.
Turkey extracted a string of political and financial concessions in exchange for becoming a bulwark against the flow of desperate humanity heading to Europe from Syria and elsewhere.
“It is a historic day because we reached a very important agreement between Turkey and the EU,” Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said after the deal was struck at a summit in Brussels.
The dividends for EU & Turkey
After two days of negotiations, Turkey and the European Union reached a compromise agreement on a plan to reduce the flow of migrants from the Middle East to Europe. At a summit concluding March 18, the heads of government of the 28 EU members and their Turkish counterparts approved the plan, which should take effect March 20. While the deal could help reduce the number of migrants arriving in Europe, questions remain about the signatories’ ability and commitment to fully enforce it. The EU is also set to increase the €3 billion ($3.3 billion) it had already committed to help Turkey cope with millions of refugees.
In return, Turkey plans to take back migrants who arrive in Greece from Turkish shores, including Syrian refugees. For the latter, the deal would operate under a one-for-one principle, whereby EU countries would take Syrian refugees from camps in Turkey for every Syrian refugee Turkey takes back from Greece. The idea is to ensure there is only a legal, organized channel for Syrian migration to the bloc.
Previously, Turkish authorities were committed only to taking back asylum seekers whose claim was rejected by the EU after June 1 this year.
Turkey came into Monday’s EU summit demanding a doubling of EU assistance to €6 billion ($6.6 billion) and faster timetables for EU membership and visa-free access to the bloc than were in a previous migration deal reached in November.
With the March 18 agreement, Ankara agreed that all migrants arriving in Greece from Turkey will be sent back to Turkey. And for every Syrian migrant sent back to Turkey, a Syrian in Turkey will be given asylum in the European Union. The plan, however, caps the number of Syrians who can be sent to Europe from Turkey at 72,000. If that limit is reached, the European Union and Turkey would have to renegotiate.
The issue of Turkey’s EU bid
The agreement makes partial concessions to Turkey. In exchange for accepting returned migrants, Turkey wanted to open five chapters of its accession negotiation with the European Union. (In EU accession talks, chapters represent aspects of an applicant country’s policy that must be evaluated in comparison with EU standards before it can join the bloc.) The Cypriot government countered with demands for a stronger Turkish commitment to reunifying Cyprus, which was divided into distinct Greek and Turkish states after Turkey invaded in 1974. As a result of the talks, EU leaders compromised, agreeing to open only one mostly technical and not particularly controversial chapter.
The growing hopes
If implemented properly, the new plan could discourage migrants from trying to reach Greece. The idea is to punish people who try to reach Greece illegally by sending them back to Turkey, relegating them to the bottom of the list of asylum applicants. At the same time, people who wait in Turkey and use official channels to pursue asylum will be rewarded for their patience. But for the deal to work, Turkey will have to better prevent migrants from reaching Greece, and Greece will have to become more efficient at processing asylum applications.
So far, efforts to regulate the flow of migrants have been disappointing. On March 17, German media reported that German officials working on the recently approved NATO patrolling operation in the Aegean Sea are frustrated by its limited effect; human trafficking organizations are still managing to avoid controls and reach the Greek islands.
What the European reformists think
European Conservatives and Reformists group home affairs spokesman Timothy Kirkhope MEP has written to all 28 EU leaders and the Presidents of the European Council and Commission urging a rethink of the agreement.
He said:
“This agreement must not be rushed into in desperation. EU leaders need to think long and hard about the widespread implications it will have. European Prime Ministers must not become so anxious to be seen to do something that they end up doing the completely wrong thing.
“We seem to be breaking a number of our own rules and conventions, we are risking continued unsustainable levels of economic migration into the EU, we risk shifting pressures to other routes, and we are giving away six billion euros with no way of ensuring it will be used effectively. This is not a workable agreement.
“Turkey must be a major partner in stemming the flow of economic migrants, but it cannot do our job for us. An ambitious UNHCR-led resettlement scheme can be delivered alongside a strong readmission agreement with Turkey, then the resources we are handing away could be spent in Europe on detention, processing and returns. We need to get the basics right and stop trying to find a solitary solution that does not exist.”
The concept of emergency brake
An emergency brake built in to any deal with Turkey and activated if certain conditions are breached, or identified following an assessment by the European Commission. Such breaches would include:
1: An unmanageable number of persons having to be resettled within the EU. 2: Human rights violations by Turkey of those being returned. 3: Any misuse of the funds given by the EU.
It is my strong belief that EU leaders would be far better creating an ambitious UNHCR led resettlement scheme from Turkey and from conflict regions. This can be delivered by strengthening and expanding the existing EU Turkey readmission agreement, and using the funds being offered to Turkey to stabilise the EU’s external border, increase the capacity of EU agencies operating in hotpots and the external border, to speed up the process of asylum procedures, combat human trafficking, and provide dignified and adequate living conditions for those already in the EU.
To ensure the support of the European Parliament, the European Council must show that it respects the laws and international conventions in place, as new legislation is likely to require agreement of the co-legislators. We must not fight illegal immigration through illegal means ourselves.
Challenges ahead
As NATO and Turkey tightened patrols, and hundreds trying to make the journey were intercepted on Saturday, the fate of thousands already stranded in Greece remains unclear.
Conditions are increasingly desperate at the vast Idomeni tent camp on the closed Macedonian border. Aid agencies believe the situation is set to go from bad to worse.
“From the International Rescue Committee’s perspective, the deal is only going to lead to more disorder, more lack of dignity,” said IRC spokesperson Lucy Carrigan in Idomeni.
“The idea that you can base resettlement on conditions that people are returned from Greece to Turkey is unethical.”
Ironically, Turkey’s liberals, who have been the strongest supporters of Turkish EU membership for decades, are not thrilled with the new rapprochement between Ankara and Brussels. The lingering question on their minds is whether the deal will come at the cost of what little Turkish democracy remains. Turkey’s EU candidacy has long served as an engine of constitutional reform and democratic transition. To fulfil the Copenhagen criteria, Turkey undertook constitutional amendments to reform the judiciary, curb the military’s power in politics and strengthen fundamental rights and freedoms.
The deal & international law
The refugee crisis has left Europe increasingly divided, with fears that its Schengen passport-free zone could collapse as states reintroduce border controls and concerns over the rise of populist parties on anti-immigration sentiment.
European leaders voiced caution about whether they can finally seal the deal with Turkey, which has been trying to join the EU for decades.
Tusk said earlier he was “cautiously optimistic but frankly, more cautious than optimistic” while German Chancellor Angela Merkel warned there were “many things to resolve”.
Other EU leaders voiced worries that the deal – under which the EU would take in one Syrian refugee from Turkish soil in exchange for every Syrian taken back by Turkey from Greece – would be illegal.
The aim of the “one-for-one” deal is allegedly to encourage Syrians to apply for asylum in the EU while they are still on Turkish soil, instead of taking dangerous smugglers’ boats across the Aegean Sea.
Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite said the plan was “very complicated, will be very difficult to implement and is on the edge of international law”.
Despite the fact that all 28 EU member states have agreed to the terms of the final deal set out by Tusk, the experts on international law see this agreement with warranted suspicion. And there is also a growing concern in the European civil society that this agreement may cause a great harm to EU’s image as a soft power. But to predetermine any viable scope regarding this utilitarian agreement between Brussels and Ankara, yet remains a prophetic task.
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March 20th, 2016
By Syed Qamar Rizvi.
Geopolitics via CPEC
The China-Pakistan economic corridor is a significant bilateral agreement which has the potential to reconfigure the geopolitics of the South Asian region. China is set to invest $46 billion in this economic corridor which runs from Gwadar, a deep sea port in the province of Baluchistan in Pakistan to Kashgar in China’s northwest province of Xinjiang with roads, railways and pipelines. The Gwadar port lies on the conduit of the three most commercially important regions namely – West Asia, Central Asia and South Asia.
China-Pakistan growing strategic partnership
Meanwhile, China’s interest in deepening involvement with Pakistan is neither new nor particularly difficult to understand. With the United States having ended official military operations in Afghanistan in 2015, its interest in the region has declined somewhat, and China has effectively stepped into the vacuum created by America’s diminishing interest in Pakistan and the Asian subcontinent.
Thus, the East Asian nation has increased its long-term economic and strategic interest in Pakistan with the aim of strengthening its position in the world. In accordance with this overall strategy, China’s political leaders have been prepared to invest in Pakistani infrastructure, a decision which has obviously met with approval in the country that has struggled with economic and terrorism-related issues in recent years. The question which would obviously arise for policymakers in Washington is how this project will affect American interests in the region.
Geostrategic significance
It is expected to become a terminus point for trade and energy corridor emanating from the Central Asian Region. Operational control of this port gives the Chinese strategic and geopolitical advantage for the following reasons: First, the port is strategically located not far from the Strait of Hormuz and at the mouth of the Persian Gulf. Second, the Chinese face
considerable economic and strategic challenges from the US presence in the Asia-Pacific and the Gwadar port will provide a listening post to keep a tab on the US naval activities 460 kilometres further west from Karachi and away from the Indian naval bases. Third, the Chinese have expedited the process of developing Gwadar around the same time as US announced withdrawal of forces from Afghanistan, thus allowing them to conduct economic ventures in Afghanistan and other Central Asian countries. The Chinese aim to use Pakistan as a pipeline corridor to procure oil and gas from West Asian countries, especially Iran.
The growing Chinese benefits
Much is being said about the $46bn worth of Chinese investment coming into Pakistan. Although all analyses are speculative in tone, there is the understanding that this presents Pakistan with an opportunity to end its chronic power crisis and put its economy back on track. China, with its ever-increasing wistfulness to link up with Central Asia, the Middle East and Europe, is planning to go ahead with its long-planned economic corridor known as the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC).
This cohesive plan to develop Pakistan into an economic and energy hub entails coal, hydro, solar and wind plants. The corridor is a link between the prospective Northern and Southern Silk Roads that China is heavily focusing on in order to establish a transit for its manufactured goods all the way to Europe, the Middle East and Africa respectively.
This will allow China to monitor the vulnerable sea lines of communication as 60 per cent of its crude supply comes from West Asia. Moreover, most of its supply will be moved through this port which will save China millions of dollars, time and effort. This in a way will help reduce its dependence on the Strait of Malacca. China has also shown interest in joining the US$7.4 billion Iran-Pakistan gas pipeline, a project that faces stiff opposition from the US.
Russia and the CPEC
Perverted in the Western imagination as a backwards land of terrorism and poverty, the mainstream media myth about Pakistan carries little factual weight and purposely neglects the country’s rising geopolitical importance in Eurasia. Far from being a lost cause, the country is actually one of the supercontinent’s most important economic hopes, as it has the potential to connect the massive economies of the Eurasian Union, Iran, SAARC, and China, thereby inaugurating the closest thing to an integrated pan-Eurasian economic zone.
Russia recognizes Pakistan’s prime geopolitical potential and has thus maneuvered to rapidly increase its full-spectrum relations with the South Asian gatekeeper. Russia’s overarching goal, as it is with all of its partners nowadays, is to provide a non-provocative balancing component to buffet Pakistan’s regional political position and assist with its peaceful integration into the multipolar Eurasian framework being constructed by the Russian-Chinese Strategic Partnership.
The Indian factor
South Asia’s geopolitics were transformed by the end of the Cold War and the subsequent nuclear bipolarity that arose between India and Pakistan. The conclusion of the global ideological stand-off lessened the intensity of the Russian-Indian Strategic Partnership and the US’ dealings with Pakistan, as South Asia was no longer seen as a priority area of foreign policy focus by either superpower after that time. As a result, India began to drift westward at the same time that Pakistan was moving eastward, with New Delhi looking towards Washington while Islamabad embraced Beijing. This doesn’t mean that either of them completely turned their backs on their historical partners (Russia and the US, respectively), but that the changing global context forced them to adapt to a new reality of relations that continued the furtherance of their national self-interests.
The Afghanistan factor
The completion of this CPEC project would also enable China to link up with its significant economic and oil interests in neighboring Afghanistan. It is thus of interest that the former Afghanistan president, Hamid Karzai, has recently explicitly warned China and Russia of dangers emanating from ISIS involvement in Afghanistan. It could be that China is moving to cement its interest in the region at the moment with the CPEC project, while one can also see Afghanistan being a significant theater of conflict in the future between the Anglo-American old word order and the new BRIC-based superpowers.
Thus, the CPEC project may not be particularly common knowledge in the Western world at the moment, but it will almost inevitably play a role in a wide variety of geopolitical issues that will play out on the world stage in the coming years.
The Environmental challenges
China’s aid is more focused on developing Pakistan’s energy and infrastructure sectors as can be seen from the multi-faceted approach adopted by the latter in its program. What remains to be seen is whether the possible environmental implications of heavy reliance on coal-based energy have been thoroughly evaluated and clearly communicated to the Chinese. Does Pakistan even have a disciplined, well-funded and efficient disaster management infrastructure in place to monitor the repercussions of this grand endeavor? Have the relevant stakeholders been a part of the negotiation and planning process to ensure that Pakistan safeguard itself against the associated risks? Being a third world country, Pakistan is perhaps more prone to the hazardous impact of climate change. Hence, it is important to integrate the environmental perspective whilst embarking on the ambitious plan.
The Baluchistan factor
The security landscape in Balochistan needs to be monitored in this regard since it is rife with militant and sectarian violence. Maintaining stability and order in the province is of paramount importance for the successful implementation of the CPEC. It is crucial thus, to work towards facilitating
the evolution of a more inclusive approach at the state level as far as enabling Baloch participation in the plan is concerned.
Iranian factor
As far as Iran is concerned, Chinese promises of extending the Iran-Pakistan pipeline all the way to the Xinjiang capital of Kashgar offers incentives to Iran to remain optimistic about this initiative: the gradual lifting of American sanctions from the country has infused hope and positivity.
The dynamic nature of the US-Iran relationship in contemporary times has also reinforced the idea that we are looking towards a future of new precedents vis-à-vis forming alliances and forging cooperation in the wake of converging interests and the desire for greater economic connectivity. The course of foreign relations today in terms of leanings and longevity may be much harder to predict as we make the transition towards a multipolar world.
It will be absolutely fascinating to watch how China and Pakistan, simultaneously, may be able to keep the peace in both Xinjiang and Balochistan to assure booming trade along the corridor. Geographically though, this all makes perfect sense.
Xinjiang is closer to the Arabian Sea than Shanghai. Shanghai is twice more distant from Urumqi than Karachi. So no wonder Beijing thinks of Pakistan as a sort of Hong Kong West.
This is also a microcosm of East and South Asia integration, and even Greater Asia integration, if we include China, Iran, Afghanistan, and even Myanmar.
The spectacular Karakoram highway, from Kashgar to Islamabad, a feat of engineering completed by the Chinese working alongside the Pakistan Army Corps of engineers, will be upgraded, and extended all the way to Gwadar. A railway will also be built. And in the near future, yet another key pipeline is in the offing.
This pipeline is linked to the corridor also in the form of the Iran-Pakistan (IP) gas pipeline, which Beijing will help Islamabad to finish to the tune of $2 billion, after successive U.S. administrations relentlessly tried to derail it
The geopolitical dividends of China blessing a steel umbilical cord between Iran and Pakistan are of course priceless.
A new heraldry of Pak-China epic relationship
Traditionally, China and Pakistan have had a relatively profitable relationship. For over half a century, diplomatic relations between the two countries were pretty warm and friendly. However, the recent unveiling of the 2,900 km China–Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) during a visit to Pakistan by Chinese President Xi Jinping has had a significantly positive influence over the relationship.
Despite being encapsulated in never-ending security conundrums, Pakistan finally has a shot at emerging from murky waters. This has also propelled a number of other related questions. How the country’s security disputes with its neighbors figure into the equation is an important one.
The project in question is worth $46 billion, and involved as part of its remit is the construction of roads, railroads and power plants. This is an extremely broad-based infrastructure project, which will take 15 years to complete. Although this was a particularly significant landmark in Pakistan-China relations, it can also be seen in the wider context of numerous other agreements in the fields of military, energy and infrastructure in particular.
CPEC is one of numerous bilateral agreements being initiated in the world at the moment which is of geostrategic importance. CPEC is also buttressed by some earlier agreements between the two nations, ensuring that its qualitative importance is increased.
In April 2015, China was granted operation rights to the port of Gwadar on the Indian Ocean, in a strategically important location of the heart of the Persian Gulf. In exchange for this privilege, Beijing is later expected by analysts to invest over $1.5 billion in the region.
The development of this economic corridor is a win-win situation for both Beijing and Islamabad. This holds tremendous potential as it would increase economic prospects and activity in Pakistan. The pre-existing ports, Karachi and Qasim, cannot handle much more traffic and Gwadar will help accommodate the increasing domestic demand. It will also enable
Pakistan to expand its interactions with Central Asian countries and Afghanistan as in the case of China
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March 18th, 2016
By Syed Qamar Rizvi.
Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev has recently said strains between Russia and the West have pushed the world “into a new cold war”.
“On an almost daily basis, we are being described the worst threat – be it to Nato as a whole, or to Europe, America or other countries,” Mr Medvedev said.
Russian prime minister’s apprehensions
People who experienced the key events of the conflict describe how it affected them – and Cold War expert Scott Lucas, of Birmingham University and EA WorldView, explains how they fitted into the bigger picture. The world has plunged into a “new Cold War”, the Russian premier said Saturday, as Moscow came under attack at a global security gathering over its targeting of moderate rebels in Syria.
Medvedev said Russian President Vladimir Putin told the same Munich conference in 2007 that the West’s building of a missile defense system risked restarting the Cold War, and now “the picture is more grim; the developments since 2007 have been worse than anticipated”.
Medvedev criticised the expansion of NATO and EU influence deep into formerly Soviet-ruled eastern Europe since the end of the Cold War.
“NATO’s policies related to Russia remain unfriendly and opaque… Sometimes I wonder if it’s 2016 or if we live in 1962.”
The Russian prime minister added that “creating trust is hard … but we have to start. Our positions differ, but they do not differ as much as 40 years ago when a wall was standing in Europe.”
Medvedev’s comments came three days after NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg announced the Western military alliance would increase its presence in the Black Sea, which surrounds Crimea.
Nato’s rebuttal
US Secretary of State John Kerry told the Munich Security Conference that “the vast majority of Russia’s attacks (in Syria) have been against legitimate opposition groups.”
NATO secretary general Jens Stoltenberg also addressed the forum, vowing to combine a firm stance against Russia with more dialogue.
“We have seen a more assertive Russia, a Russia which is destabilising the European security order,” he said. “NATO does not seek confrontation and we don’t want a new Cold War.
At the same time our response has to be firm.” But U.K. Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond expressed skepticism
over the possibility of a cease-fire being implemented in Syria within the one-week deadline. Speaking Saturday at the Munich Security Conference in Germany, Medvedev said he sometimes found himself wondering whether this was 2016 or 1962.
“NATO’s policy with regard to Russia has remained unfriendly and opaque. One could go as far as to say that we have slid back to a new Cold War,” Medvedev said. “Almost on an everyday basis we are called one of the most terrible threats either to NATO as a whole or to Europe, or to the United States.”
Tensions between the West and Russia have increased in recent years, in large part — at least in the view of the West — due to Russia’s annexation of the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea and its support for separatists elsewhere in eastern Ukraine. Gen. Philip Breedlove, NATO’s supreme allied commander Europe, told CNN that NATO does not agree with Medvedev’s assessment. At an earlier briefing at the Munich Security Conference, Breedlove said Russia is not just trying to change the rules but rewrite them.
“We at NATO do not want to see a Cold War,” he said in an interview. “We do not talk about it. It’s not what we want to happen or anticipate to happen… We’re a defensive alliance who are arraying ourselves to face a challenge … [from] a nation that has once again decided it will use force to change internationally recognized borders
and so we take those appropriate actions to be able to assure, defend and deter.”
What about the new cold war narrative?
A ‘new Cold War’ narrative, increasingly popular, interprets this competition as a resumption of the Cold War. Many Western political figures and observers have asserted that Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, is trying to turn back the clock, even to rebuild the USSR, and therefore that the experience of the Cold War could offer useful lessons for politicians today.
This narrative, though seductive, is misleading. It too often frames the discussion in a repetitive and simplistic polemic that inhibits understanding of Russia and its relationship with the West. This makes it harder for the West to craft realistic policies with respect both to the Ukraine crisis and Russia generally. Russia and the West have competing narratives to explain Putin’s action.
Putin and those seeking to “understand” him now often argue that the United States has violated a deal made with Russia about not expanding NATO.
The British Army is to deploy 1,600 troops in Jordan to take part in war games which could be preparation for a potential ‘confrontation’ between Russia and NATO member countries in Eastern Europe, the Daily Telegraph has reported, citing sources.
Conclusion
In view of the Columbia University professor, an expert on the Russian studies, Robert Legvold the new Cold War was rooted in policies from the George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton administrations. It is important to note that Obama’s reset was the fourth time the United States has tried to reset relations with Russia. The ups and the downs in the past had elements among the downs that were pushing in this direction.
Under Primakov, Russia began to have serious concerns about US policy towards Russia though this was often synthesized with considerable optimism about the future. These problems were there as early as the late Kozyrev era. But the origins of Russia’s resistance to America’s use of power in a way that undermined Russian interests came with Primakov’s depictions of a multipolar world.
In the end, Russia’s diplomacy with China and India went nowhere, and Russia was not realistically looking at this time to supplant the United States. But the grievances began with NATO enlargement in the mid-1990s. There was another flow against the relationship in 1999 during the Kosovo War, when the Russians took a critical stance against NATO in that context.
The Russians have conceded that the territory they hold now is as far as they will go in Ukraine for now. So I have described an account of Russian involvement in Ukraine
that is event-driven; it is not implementing a plan, but the events driving them are not random or an extemporaneous reaction to Maidan(Kiev).
They are driven by strategic calculations, about the fear of an anti-Russian government in Kiev and concerns about events in Ukraine were part of a much larger US strategy promoting regime change in many places. US regime change efforts would spread across the region, and to Russia itself, according to this theory. Russia saw Maidan as part of a much larger geopolitical game that did not just focus on Ukraine’s international orientation but had profound impacts for the regime in Russia itself.
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March 16th, 2016
By Syed Qamar Rizvi.
The ambitious French idea first suggested by Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius at the end of January of holding an international conference to kick-start the two-state solution process in Paris in July is alive and kicking. A senior Western diplomat in Jerusalem told Al-Monitor that the initiative to restart Israeli-Palestinian talks has been adopted by the new French Foreign Minister, Jean-Marc Ayrault. French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius announced on January 29 that France will try to convene an international conference aiming to “bring about the two-state solution” to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Speaking in Paris at a conference of French diplomats, Fabius said that if the efforts to kick-start the negotiations reached a deadlock, Paris would recognize a Palestinian state, which was welcomed by the Palestinian presidency.
Taking note of the current impasse of the peace process, France calls for a change in the negotiation method. It promotes an increased role of the United Nations Security Council in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It promotes the Security Council’s endorsement of the parameters for resolving the conflict and a timeframe for ending negotiations.
France also calls for closer international support to encourage parties to conclude an agreement and a stronger involvement of Arab countries and Europeans alongside the United States. It stands ready to hold an international conference in this connection. It hopes that negotiations can be concluded in the near future.
The French initiative came after UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told the UN Security Council that Israel’s “provocative” expansion of the Jewish settlements in the West Bank raised questions about its commitment to a two-state solution.
Promise to recognise Palestinian state & the US response
In response to Fabius’ announcement, a senior US administration official said: “We are not going to speculate about the proposed Conference … The US position on this issue has been clear. We continue to believe that the preferred path to resolve this conflict is for the parties to reach an agreement on final status issues directly.”
The Middle East peace process has stalled because of differences over borders and settlements. There have been no serious moves to resume the peace talks between Israel and Palestinians.
If this last attempt at finding a solution hits a wall, “well … in this case, we need to face our responsibilities by recognising the Palestinian state,” Fabius said.
As a permanent member of the UN Security Council, Fabius added that France had a responsibility to try to keep up efforts to find a solution between Israel and the Palestinians.
The peace impediments
Analysts, however, eye three major obstacles faced by the French initiative.
“The first is the weak Palestinian position due to the internal division that started with Hamas movement in 2007,” said Hamada Fara’na, a political analyst from the West Bank.
“The second is the confused situation in the Arab world and the current conflicts and wars in the region, and the third is the international community’s involvement in the world’s economic crisis and fighting terrorism’’. Israel has rejected Fabius’ position. “Israel will not negotiate under threat,” Energy Minister Yuval Steinitz said Jan. 30 in response to Fabius’ statement.
The senior Western diplomat noted that there is nothing to suggest that France’s new foreign minister has backed away from that stance. “France’s goal right now seems to be bringing all parties to Paris and to reach that goal. The French want to be sure not to antagonize any party,” he said.
The Israeli reaction
Israel has criticized the French initiative, saying it represents a motive to the Palestinians to reject the peace negotiations.
Israel Public Radio said it will be so difficult by this way to hold a negotiation process and consequently, “peace cannot be achieved.” It added that the United States has also expressed reservation towards the French declaration.
The United States, European Union and the United Nations have issued unusually stern criticism of Israel, provoking a sharp response from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and raising Palestinians’ hopes of steps against their neighbour.
France condemns settlement activities, which are illegal in international law
Israel settlement building in the territories of the future Palestinian State constitutes illegal appropriation of lands, which should be addressed in peace negotiations between the parties on the basis of the 1967 lines. Settlement activities threaten the viability of a two-state solution.
Concrete measures were taken at European level to address the acceleration of settlement activities. EU guidelines adopted in July 2013 do not allow any Israeli
entities with activities in settlements to be awarded European funds as from January 2014. Many Member States, including France, issued recommendations warning of the financial, legal and reputational risks related to pursing activities in settlements.
The French standing on the resolution
France considers that the conflict can only be resolved by the creation of an independent, viable and democratic Palestinian State living in peace and security alongside Israel.
The two-state solution is one that fulfils the national aspirations of Israelis and Palestinians. With this in mind, France has defined, with its European partners in a number of conclusions of the Foreign Affairs Council of ministers of the European Union since 2009, the parameters that should govern resolution of the conflict:
Borders based on the 1967 lines with equivalent land swaps; Security arrangements preserving the sovereignty of the Palestinian State and ensuring the security of Israel; A just, fair and agreed solution to the refugee problem; An arrangement making Jerusalem the capital of the two states.
The French thinking on Jerusalem
France considers that Jerusalem should become the capital of the two states, Israel and the future State of Palestine
Pending a negotiated settlement of the conflict and under internationally recognised resolutions, France does not recognise any sovereignty in Jerusalem. It calls for the easing of tensions and particularly respect of the status quo on holy sites. Any challenging to the status quo would pose a major threat to stability.
France works closely with Israeli and Palestinian governments to encourage them to resume negotiations and reach a final agreement ending all the claims. It calls on them to avoid any unilateral action and any incitement to violence that could jeopardise a two-state solution.
A measure under consideration by Europe is asking Israel to compensate the EU for projects in the West Bank damaged by Israeli settlement expansion. But while EU member states share a clear consensus against the Israeli settlement policies, there is a divergence of views as to the severity of the necessary boycott measures, with Germany, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands being more lenient.
Conclusion
France has long called for the creation of a Palestinian State at the end of negotiations. A State for Palestinians is a right, repeatedly reaffirmed, and acknowledged in the partition plan of the mandated Palestine (1947). However
recognition of the State of Palestine must serve peace. That is why France defends the idea that this should happen within the framework of a comprehensive and definitive solution to the conflict, negotiated by the two parties. If negotiation is impossible, or if there are no conclusions, France will shoulder its responsibilities by recognising without delay the State of Palestine.
A major stumbling block to the conference has been the possibility of Israel refusing to attend over the French desire to recognize a Palestinian state if the talks fail, according to the former minister. Speaking to an annual gathering of French diplomats Jan. 29 about what France would do if it faced a wall of Israeli rejection, Fabius said, “Well, … in this case, we need to face our responsibilities by recognizing the Palestinian state
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March 15th, 2016
By Syed Qamar Rizvi.
The successor to Ban Ki-moon, the current UN Secretary-General, will be decided over the course of 2016.The formal decision is taken by the UN General Assembly – but it always based on a recommendation by the smaller and more powerful, UN Security Council. The new Secretary-General will probably be chosen in September and will take office in January – coincidentally, the same month that a new US president will be sworn in.
The selection criteria
By tradition, the UN operates an informal system of regional “rotation”, when it comes to choosing its next Secretary-General (SG). This time around, it is deemed to be the turn of Eastern Europe. There has also never been a female SG – and most countries seem to agree that it is high time that this should change. In a new development, the President of the General Assembly and the President of the Security Council “will offer candidates opportunities for informal dialogues or meetings with the members of their respective bodies…these can take place before the Council begins its selection by the end of July 2016 and may continue throughout the process of selection,” according to the letter.
“The process is started and the wish is that the membership, for the first time in UN history, is included totally in the discussion of the next Secretary-General,” Mr. Lykketoft, the GA’s president said, adding that he thinks “this is a watershed in the way that we are doing things.”
Though apparently the pendulum swings towards the East European region; but East Europe no longer exists as a political group since all its members, except Belarus, Ukraine and Russia, have joined or are in the process of joining Nato or EU or both. As a permanent member, Russia cannot be a candidate. Belarus and Ukraine would be unacceptable. Thus politically an East European candidate will in fact be a candidate from a West-dominated Europe.
The brewing competition
Since East is now West, a number of West European candidates have also entered the race. Among them, Portugal’s former prime minister Gutierrez and Helen Clark, former New Zealand prime minister. John Bolton the US representative to the UN said privately that the US could not have a UN secretary-General from a country that had has always opposed the US on the world stage. The General Assembly president said another two candidates are expected in coming weeks, meaning that it is likely that eight candidates will address the General Assembly in mid-April. Significantly, this will happen before the Security Council makes its considerations, which is why, Lykketoft argues, the consultations could be potentially game changing.
The prospective candidates
To date, the six official candidates, including Bokova, are: former Croatian foreign minister Vesna Pusic, former Slovenian president Danilo Turk, former Macedonian foreign minister and former UN General Assembly president Srgjan Kerim, Montenegro’s deputy prime minister and foreign minister Igor Luksic, as well as former Moldovan foreign minister Natalia Gherman
The new process means that this time candidates will have two hours each to engage with the General Assembly in informal interactions beginning April 12. While the informal consultations are new, Lykketoft said the 193-member assembly would still elect the secretary-general “after a proposal brought forward by the (15-member UN) Security Council”.
The 193 Member States of the United Nations will for the first time be included “totally” in the selection of the next UN Secretary-General, the President of the General Assembly said today, pledging to make the process as transparent and inclusive as possible..
Politicking is already under way, with pressure building for what would be two historic firsts: a female candidate from Eastern Europe, a region that has never had a turn at the top of the U.N. Some experts hope if a woman is at the helm, there will be a greater focus on conflict prevention and sustainable peace at a moment when the U.N. is embroiled in sexual abuse peacekeeping scandals, confronting growing challenges from terrorism and facing a refugee crisis around the globe.
But finding an Eastern European woman that Russia and the U.S. — both permanent members of the Security Council that have the ability to veto — can agree on could be a major challenge, particularly with ongoing conflicts in Ukraine and Syria. John Bolton the US representative said privately that the US could not have a UN secretary-General from a country that had has always opposed the US on the world stage.
The Women’s race
Interestingly the search is on for a woman from Eastern Europe. And it just so happens that two of the strongest candidates are Bulgarian. The first is Irina Bokova, who is currently head of UNESCO, the UN agency dealing with Science, Culture and Education. The second is Kristalina Georgieva, the current vice-president of the European Commission.These women have been nominated by the Bulgarian government.
The few provisions made by the Charter leave significant room for interpretation and expansion of the position, and each secretary-general has had to respond to the political landscape of their time. Much of the role is shaped by discretion and judgment; the secretary-general must balance their responsibility to the concerns of member states against the maintenance of the impartiality that has led to the office being called “the world’s most reputable intermediary.” The New York Times has endorsed German Chancellor Merkel for the post. But, since Germany (like Japan, India and Brazil) aspires to a permanent Security Council seat, it probably appears that Merkel may not become a defacto candidate.
The unique job of the Secretary General
The UN Charter describes the secretary general as the “chief administrative officer” of the world organisation who also performs “such other functions” as are assigned to him by the UNGA, the Security Council and the Economic and Social Council. Importantly, the secretary general has the authority “to bring to the attention of the Security Council any matter which in his opinion may threaten the maintenance of international peace and security”.
A secretary-general is uniquely placed to use their “good offices” to act as a mediator in international disputes, largely due to the role’s high degree of autonomy. But this authority of the secretary-general to act without explicit Security Council authorization was won only gradually. It took decades of careful diplomacy and good timing to grow this independence, which, though it can be an asset to the international community, has occasionally drawn the rebuke of more powerful member states who may be uncomfortable with the idea of the leader of the United Nations as an independent actor.
Another function of the role is its ability to direct the attention of the United Nations. The Charter explicitly requests that the secretary-general report to the General Assembly annually, and this report has grown to be used as a tool to influence conversation and draw attention to particular causes. The Charter also empowers the secretary-general to bring any matter thought to threaten international peace and security to the attention of the Security Council, and this has been another avenue for secretaries-general to guide UN efforts.
Great expectations from the new SG
It is generally believed that many big names have been associated with the UN, albeit not surprisingly,no one has remained so instrumental in wielding the decades old conflict resolutions of Palestine and Kashmir.The major failure of striking such a deal on world’s big issues gravely influencing the fate of peace is that the five permanent members of the UNSC do not exercise a unanimous political will to resolve these issues. And because of unjust veto’s intervention, the progress in this regard, has become an enigma. This is also an undeniable fact that the secretary generals seem to have been largely influenced by the policies and synergies of the P5.
But today world needs such a person who as secretary general should be one who may not be influenced by the P5 politics.And undoubtedly against this backdrop,the choice for the GA members may naturally and reasonably swing towards such a personality who has a strong determination to play a significant role in uplifting the status of international law, thereby making a dynamic stand on long awaited conflict resolutions of Kashmir and Palestine.
Obama’s aspiration
According to the Al Jarida report, President Obama wants to be appointed Secretary-General of the United Nations after he leaves the White House, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is working to thwart his ambitions.
Al Jarida has Netanyahu exclaiming, “Is it not enough that we have had to live through eight years of Obama’s rule, in which he ignored Israel? Now he wants to be in a position to cause us difficulty in the international arenas?”
UN member countries, including Australia, will be required within weeks to formally nominate a candidate as part of a British-inspired UN resolution to inject more clarity into the selection of the world’s most powerful diplomatic role.
With the five permanent members of the Security Council having a veto over potential candidates, Mr Kevin Rudd(an ex prime minister of Australia) remains a possible compromise candidate even if he is not officially put forward by the Australian government.
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March 8th, 2016
By Syed Qamar Afzal Rizvi.
The European British community seems largely divided over its choice regarding remaining in the European Union or leaving this decades old partnership.
Though a final word about it, will come once Britain undergoes a test of the public verdict through a referendum, that is likely to be held in June,as UK’s premier David Cameron has promised to hold it.
One key message from the opinion polls in advance of the conclusion of David Cameron’s renegotiation of the UK’s terms of membership was that if the Prime Minister came back from Brussels with what he insisted was a good deal for Britain, then the public would swing in behind a Remain vote. YouGov, for example, consistently found that a clear majority said they would vote to Remain in the EU in those circumstances, even though that was far from being the position when the same respondents were simply asked how they would vote in a EU referendum now. Conservative supporters, in particular, seemed especially inclined to be willing to change their minds on the basis of a recommendation from David Cameron.
The plausible free market argument
There would be a jobs boom as firms are freed from EU regulations and red tape with small-and medium-sized companies who don’t trade with the EU benefiting the most. In its recent paper, the EU Jobs Myth, the free market Institute for Economic Affairs seeks to debunk the claim that 3-4 million jobs would be lost if Britain left. “Jobs are associated with trade, not membership of a political union, and there is little evidence to suggest that trade would substantially fall between British businesses and European consumers in the event the UK was outside the EU,” it argues. “The UK labour market is incredibly dynamic, and would adapt quickly to changed relationships with the EU.”
EU:Cameron’s centripetalism versus Boris Johnson’s centrifugalism
The Conservative truce over the European Union referendum on Monday collapsed as the Prime Minister attacked Boris Johnson,the mayor of London and Cabinet ministers openly criticised one another, write Peter Dominiczak and Christopher Hope of the Telegraph.
In a sign of the deepening divisions over the in-out referendum, David Cameron used a Commons appearance to openly condemn Mr Johnson, who on Sunday announced that he would campaign to take Britain of the EU.
Mr Cameron suggested that Mr Johnson made his decision simply in order to further his own ambition to become prime minister.
He also described as “for the birds” an apparent suggestion by Mr Johnson that Britain could vote to leave the EU before negotiating a better settlement with Brussels.
The Prime Minister is said to be “livid” with Mr Johnson, who on Monday indicated that Mr Cameron and his allies are “wildly exaggerating” when they claim that a “Brexit” would be a “leap in the dark”.
Eurosceptics versus Europhiles
The arguments on either side are clear. If you’re a Eurosceptic, the impositions of European Union bureaucracy are daily infuriations, with Britain supposedly ceding control to Brussels of immigration policy, of its legal system, of its famously curved cucumbers. Britain contributes a small fortune to the European Union budget each year (somewhere between £8bn and £20bn, depending on whom you believe) and that’s after the hard-won common agricultural policy rebate secured by Margaret Thatcher in 1984(when Britain was the second poorest of the EEC members).
Anti-European feeling, stoked by an aggressively Eurosceptic press (or “Europhobic”, as Peter Mandelson called them), sees British secession from the EU as opening up new vistas of global economic co-operation and integration, while slamming the door on the legions of impecunious eastern European migrants coming to scrounge off the welfare state.
Mark Reckless, the Ukip MP who defected from the Tories because of what he saw as a soft line on Europe, told us: “Many of those who are now saying that Brexit would be a terrible thing for the country were the same people who were arguing very strongly that we should join the euro.
The obvious failure of the euro combined with the remarkable growth of emerging markets outside Europe and the relative success of the United States when compared with Europe – all of these are major factors which make it very difficult for people to argue to stay in the EU, and will make people feel that it’s much better for them economically to leave.” Supporters of Brexit argue that EU countries have every incentive keep trading with the UK, which is a large importer of goods and services.
But there is uncertainty over what would happen if the UK leaves and has to develop new trade agreements with the rest of Europe.
There are also pro-European concerns that foreign companies would be less likely to invest in Britain, and could move their headquarters, if it no longer has access to the single market.
Investor Neil Woodford, the founder of Woodford Investment Management, described pro-European claims that the economy would be damaged as “bogus”.
“I think it’s a nil-sum game frankly, whether we stay or whether we leave,” Mr Woodford said.
Remain campaigners say: Millions of jobs would be lost as global manufacturers moved to lower-cost EU countries. Britain’s large, foreign-owned car industry would be particularly at risk. “The attractiveness of the UK as a place to invest and do automotive business is clearly underpinned by the UK’s influential membership of the EU,” said a KPMG report on the car industry. The financial services sector, which employs about 2.1 million people in the UK, also has concerns about a British exit. “The success of the UK financial services industry is to a large extent built on EU Internal Market legislation. To abandon this for some untried, unknown and unpredictable alternative would carry very significant risks,” said global law firm Clifford Chance in a report by think tank TheCityUK..
What the European leaders think
Cameron and his team appeared to have been caught off guard by a fierce backlash from eastern European countries over his plans to curb benefits for EU migrants.
Beata Szydło, the Polish prime minister, and the leaders of the Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia – a group known as the Visegrad – were infuriated by plans to reduce the amount of child benefit that migrants working in the UK can send back home.
They said that the curbs should only apply to new arrivals in Britain – a concession which Mr Cameron refused to make because it would mean up to 16 years to phase in.
A diplomat said the obstruction was a “rigid, predetermined position”.
Tomas Prouza, the Czech Europe minister, goaded British diplomats on Twitter with pictures of the Visegrad’s “war room” of negotiators.
“As the time passes, I am more and more perplexed by the British approach of non-negotiation. Quite unorthodox, to say the least,” he wrote.
“Not looking forward to cold British breakfast served seven hours late.”
Meanwhile, Angela Merkel, the German chancellor who is wary of dominating Europe, refused to intervene and went for a bag for Brussels’ famous frites at the nearby Place Jourdan.
is Cameron’s most problematic figure. He doesn’t want Britain to leave, but he will be intensely reluctant to help Cameron’s Yes campaign by making concessions.
Hollande is France’s least popular president in decades. By the spring of 2017, when the UK referendum campaign will probably be at fever pitch, he will be fighting for a second term.
The French will resist any suggestion of reopening EU treaties to accommodate Britain, making it more difficult for George Osborne to settle the big question of the relationship between the 19 countries in the euro and those, like Britain, outside. In longer term, this is probably the biggest issue in the negotiations. But reopening the treaties could trigger a referendum in France, something Hollande was traumatised by a decade ago, when he led the Yes side in a referendum that rejected a European constitution. Hollande wants Britain to stay, not least because Brexit would be a triumph for Front National leader Marine Le Pen.
As on most big issues hobbling the EU, there will at some stage probably be an attempt by Berlin and Paris to agree a joint compromise position that becomes the basis for a deal.
The French were the first to go public in seeking to pin Cameron down. The day before Hollande went to Chequers, the Elysée Palace let it be known it wanted to see a “10-page” list of British requirements.
The smaller EU states of Scandinavia and northern Europe are a mixed bag with their own idiosyncrasies, although each is very keen to keep Britain in, and most are sympathetic to Cameron’s agenda.
Sweden, Denmark and the Netherlands increasingly veer towards UK-style Euroscepticism, albeit in different ways, while Belgium is more critical of the British. As the home of the EU institutions, Belgium is broadly federalist on Europe, although it struggles to keep its own national federation functional.
The Cameron rationale of regaining UK’s position
The rationale behind Cameron’s position is that some of the actions that the Eurozone might take to enhance the functioning of the euro could have an adverse effect on the single market. The latter is about ensuring the free movement of goods, services, labour and capital. The UK concern is that actions to shore-up the ‘monetary’ in economic and monetary union (EMU) could lead to conflicts if they erect new barriers to these four freedoms. However, this analysis neglects the fact that the ‘economic’ in EMU is about much more than the single market.
An economic union implies the building up of common policies and economic institutions. The emerging banking union, for example, entails a common approach to prudential supervision of banks and mechanisms for resolving failing banks, with the latter including a common resolution fund to facilitate the orderly winding-up of failing banks.
A potential extension of banking union will be the establishment of a form of common deposit insurance, more limited than the extensive federal provisions in the United States, but nonetheless implying closer economic integration.
Other directions in which an economic union move could include a collective approach to corporate taxation, something that would allay public concern about the ability of many multi-national companies to play governments off against each other, or measures to integrate labour market policies.
None of these will happen overnight and the appeal to the integrity of the single market will continue to resonate for many other member states, but the UK does need to be aware that the euro cannot be seen purely as about the currency.
It is worth pointing out, too, that while there will be some sympathy with Cameron’s insistence that the non-Euro countries should not be liable for the costs of dealing with Eurozone problems, there will still be occasions when a country requires support from the EU as a whole. This happened with Romania and Hungary during the financial crisis, resulting in EU-28 mechanisms being deployed to assist them financially.
Conclusion
Britain’s involvement in the EU project has always been conditional and pragmatic in character. While the upcoming referendum may be a response to specific EU policies of recent years, it is also in part the culmination of long-term disengagement with processes of European integration. “Ever since Britain joined the European Union support has been far lower than the equivalent in other EU Member States’’,an estimate fostered by a European researcher,James Dennison. “British membership of the European Union is based on cost-benefit rationale. For the first forty years, Europe was a source of stability; it did a great job of that. It institutionalized markets, it institutionalized democracy.
The height of British pro-Europeanism was when it was seen that Europe equals business. However in the last ten years, it has been a great source of instability’’,the researcher added.
It reasonably appears that myriad ‘uncertainties’ surround Brexit. Economic anxiety and lingering political reticence cloud discussion of Britain’s involvement in the wider EU project. The relationships, economics, financial and political, that Britain would adopt with the EU in the event of a Brexit remain wholly ambiguous.
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February 28th, 2016
By Syed Qamar Rizvi.
The nuclear weapons capabilities immensely contributed in India-Pakistan strategic doctrines and military postures. Instead of revolutionalizing warfare between belligerent neighbors, the nuclear weapons have necessitated strategic restraint between them without thwarting sub-conventional conflicts. Indeed, nuclear weapons have profound impact on the strategic stability, escalation control, nuclear confidence building measures and peace process between India and Pakistan.
The view of Pakistan’s National Command Authority
The NCA — the principal decision-making body on nuclear issues — at its meeting presided over by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif on Wednesday, “took note of the growing conventional and strategic weapons’ development in the region”, according to a press statement issued by the ISPR.
Besides expressing its resolve to do everything, short of entering an arms race, for keeping national security intact, the NCA “re-emphasised Pakistan’s desire for establishing the Strategic Restraint Regime in South Asia”.
Concern voiced over N-weapons build-up by India
The need for a sustained dialogue with India for resolution of outstanding disputes was also underscored.
The proposal for Strategic Restraint Regime has been on the table since Oct 1998, but India, which is opposed to a regional mechanism, has always avoided discussions on it.
Experts believe that regional stability, in the absence of such an overarching strategic architecture, has been tenuous.
The NCA was of the view that development of conventional and nuclear weapons by India had “adverse ramifications for peace and security” in the region.
Pakistan has been concerned over India developing nuclear submarine INS Arihant, which is reportedly close to commissioning. This will take India closer to completing its nuclear triad. A number of other Arihant-class strategic submarines and nuclear-powered attack submarines are also being developed. Reports about India building a secret Nuclear City in southern Karnataka state for producing thermonuclear weapons have also been seen as worrisome and so has been its expanding missile programme.
India, it is believed, has used the Nuclear Suppliers Group’s waiver to exponentially increase its fissile material stocks, upsetting the region’s strategic stability.
Recent reports by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute and the International Institute for Strategic Studies have confirmed that India is the world’s biggest arms importer, accounting for 14 per cent of global arms imports and which are more than those of China and Pakistan combined.
India has been the top importer since 2013 and the shopping frenzy aimed at boosting its conventional capabilities is continuing.
The western indifference to the Indian activities
Pakistan regrets that the West has been ignoring India’s activities because of its commercial interests and for the sake of containing China, but has kept pressure on Pakistan describing its nuclear programme as the fastest growing.
“The developments exacerbate Pakistan’s security dilemma, compelling it to make desirable improvements to achieve a balance and minimal developments in its conventional and strategic force posture,” an official explained on the background, saying the world’s focus has been on Pakistan’s reaction instead of Indian provocations.
Why the nuclear restraint strategy
The national requirement for strategic restraint for any country is derived from its political judgment given its location and the prevailing strategic environment. The cutting edge lies in the military domain and the contours of the quantum of strategic restraint depend on the military capabilities of the country concerned and the threats it faces both current and foreseen. While the military potential has its own impact on objectives and developments, it is largely in the diplomatic field in which efforts are launched and sustained in bilateral and multilateral engagement to reach the political objectives that define strategic restraint, and to deal with situations in which calls for such restraint go unheeded.
Few facts should be clear to any objective observer in the context of South Asia:- First of all, Pakistan as the smaller country with a correspondingly smaller economy, defence budget and armed forces has vested interests in better relations with India that include strategic restraint. This would allow Pakistan to devote a larger amount of its limited resources to nation building and the welfare of its people.
Secondly, any such policy and objective requires positive response from India.
Thirdly, Pakistan has already experienced to its cost regarding its division into two countries at the hands of a military intervention by India in 1971.
Fourthly ,the international community has the ability to act in a manner act which facilitates strategic restraint in South Asia or in a manner which leads to its destabilisation.
Fifthly, the empirical approach of India has been to keep Pakistan off balance and to destabilise it through a number of actions.
Pakistan’s initiative but a dismaying Indian response
As soon as both countries became overtly nuclear, Pakistan offered to India its Strategic Restraint Regime (SRR) proposal, with its three interlocking elements of nuclear restraint, conventional balance and dispute settlement. The SRR has remained on the table since then and, most recently, has been reoffered to India in the current Nuclear and Conventional CBMs talks that began in 2004.
India has consistently rejected Pakistan’s SRR. Nor have the Western countries since 1998 demonstrated any interest in, or support for, this regime.
On the contrary, the Western countries and Russia continue to build up India’s strategic capabilities in both the nuclear and conventional fields. Massive conventional arms sales dominate the bilateral agendas of the major Western powers and Russia vis-à-vis India.
On the nuclear side, the US-India nuclear deal, compounded further by the exemption that undermines the NPT given to India by the NSG, and followed by liberal bilateral nuclear agreements for nuclear technology and uranium supplies, demonstrates that rather than nuclear restraint, nuclear licence is the Western objective for a combination of reasons commercial and geo-strategic.
The NCA reiterated its policy of maintaining Full Spectrum Deterrence for covering the entire spectrum of threat, including Cold Start Doctrine and land-based standoff capability in Andaman and Nicobar Isles.
“Pakistan would continue to contribute meaningfully towards the global efforts to improve nuclear security and nuclear non-proliferation measures,” the statement said.
Pakistan’s warranted reservations over Indian nuclear honeymoon
Pakistan’s assertion that the upcoming summit in Washington was the final episode of the series started by President Obama is being implied as a signal that it is no more interested in any similar initiative in future and instead wants International Atomic Energy Agency to play the leading role in nuclear security commitments. The supplies of uranium from NSG countries free up India’s own limited uranium reserves for weapons production.
Furthermore, the overhang of India’s unsafeguarded Pu has been left out of safeguards. The International Panel of Fissile Material (IPFM) in its 2010 publication stated that India’s 6.8 tons of unsafeguarded plutonium was sufficient for 850 nuclear weapons, even if it be totally of reactor grade plutonium. Probably, due to low burn-up, a significant portion would be of weapons-grade plutonium.
However, the nuclear weapons capability of this Indian Pu overhang is never taken into account by Western critics of Pakistan.
One measure of the level of discrimination in the energy field towards Pakistan is the fact that, unlike India, all of Pakistan’s nuclear reactors for power generation are under safeguards, and the GOP has avowed that all future power reactors will also be safeguarded. In the US/NSG-India deal, India has been given the right to keep future reactors out of safeguards.
Pakistan’s policy position
The NCA approved, in principle, the decision to ratify the 2005 amendment to the Convention on Physical Protection of Nuclear Material.
At the last Nuclear Security Summit, Pakistan had indicated its willingness to consider ratification of the amendment, which provides for security of nuclear facilities and domestic transport. Pakistan is already a signatory to the Convention on Physical Protection of Nuclear Material, but the amendment has introduced significant changes in it because of which fresh ratification was required.
Pakistan’s proposals in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s in the nuclear and missile areas affirm the restraint DNA of Pakistan. The irony is that our friends advocate restraint only when they see Pakistan responding to a strategic environment facilitated and supported by them. They need to develop strategic clarity and realism as well.
To conclude with the way forward. Much depends on India reciprocating Pakistan’s objective and proposals for strategic restraint and much also depends on the international community supporting this objective in an even-handed manner.
The issue of Pakistan’s tactical nuclear weapons
India and Western analysts oppose Pakistan’s tactical nuclear weapons, without taking into account the need to close the gap posed by the aggressive Indian Cold Start/Proactive Doctrine aimed at placing India in a coercive position to threaten Pakistan with strikes to seize territory while remaining under the nuclear overhang.
Pakistan is quite transparent that if forced to, in extremis, it can use nuclear weapons, including tactical nuclear weapons, to defend itself. However paradoxically, India and others who hold that Pakistan should publish a nuclear doctrine, criticise this unambiguous Pakistan assertion, implying that it is ‘unfair’ to limit India’s otherwise available options accruing from its conventional superiority.
The Western analysts suggest unconvincingly that it may be disproportionate and against the concept of “just war” to use nuclear weapons against conventional attacks to seize Pakistani territory – as if aggression by conventional forces, a breach of the UN Charter, was permissible and deterring by any means such aggression was impermissible.
Pakistan’s argument
The balance of power or action-reaction theory predicts that the introduction of BMD in India’s arsenal may perhaps oblige Pakistan either to acquire BMD or structure and deploy operational nuclear weapons to solidify its defensive fence. While making its nuclear posture credible, Pakistan would confront an alarming deterrence/management trade-off, what the political scientist Scott D. Sagan terms the ‘vulnerability/invulnerability paradox’.
In theory, the deployment and operationalization of nuclear weapons capability generates a new conflict dynamic that constructs new strategic environment having ingredients of heightened instability.To refrain from such a vicious cycle of strategic instability in South Asia,the only viable alternative is that both India and Pakistan should sign a strategic restraint pact.
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February 17th, 2016
By Syed Qamar Rizvi.
During last year’s hostilities with Hamas, President Obama had to approve an emergency grant to replenish parts for Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system.On the contrary,Washington has imposed new sanctions on Iran regarding its ballistic missile defense program.Tehran views this American measure as unwarranted and unjustifiable since Washington has tendered its support for Israeli missile system.
Throughout the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, Israel’s Iron Dome defence system has received extensive coverage in the international media. It may be an Israeli defence system, but the United States provides significant financial support for the project, and has just approved an additional $225m (£133m) towards it. By funding, developing and deploying anti-missile shields, the United States claims that it is not just protecting its allies but also strengthening stability and disincentivising the use of force.
Israel’s regional strategy is based on the concept that it is, and must remain, the sole regional superpower. There is no place in Israeli geo-strategic thinking for a militarily and diplomatically powerful Iran, with or without the bomb.
The utility and the operation capabilities of Iron Dome defence system
The Iron Dome missile defense system, designed and developed by Israel and jointly funded through the United States, is a response to the threats Israel faces from short and medium-range rockets and mortar shells fired by Palestinian terrorists in Gaza. The system has the capability to identify and destroy such projectiles before they land in Israeli territory and is considered one of the most effective anti-missile systems in the world. Iron Dome is comprised of three key components:
(1) the design and tracking radar, built by the Elta defense company;
(2) the battle management and weapon control system, designed by the mPrest Systems software company; and,
(3) the missile firing unit, manufactured by Rafael Advanced Defense Systems Ltd.
The Iron Dome system is reportedly used by Israel to intercept rockets fired from Gaza and Hezbollah’s rocket arsenal in southern Lebanon, which is being supplied by Iran.
The Israeli-developed defensive system has reduced the effectiveness of rockets fired by terrorists out of Gaza into Israel by about 90 percent and has saved many Israeli lives during Operation Protective Edge, said UnitedWithIsrael.org.
One of the most advanced features of Iron Dome is its capability to determine where an incoming rocket will land and to only intercept such projectiles that pose meaningful threats to populated civilian areas.
Iron Dome joins Israel’s comprehensive missile defense network which includes the David’s Sling system, intended to protect against mid-range missiles, and the Arrow Interceptor system, designed to provide defense against long-range ballistic missiles. The lowest tier will consist of the Iron Dome short-range missile system which has been optimized against light rockets such as the Katyushas but has a growth potential.
The Iron Dome system was developed very successfully in record time – less than three years. Two batteries were delivered to the Israeli Air Defense Command and used against the April outburst of rocket fire from Gaza. They shot down an overwhelming majority of the incoming missiles.
The decision to build the Iron Dome system was made by the Ministry of Defense in 2007, following a year in which Hezbollah fired thousands of missiles into northern Israel during the Second Lebanon War. Israel had also experienced rocket attacks on its southern communities from the Gaza Strip, mainly carried out by Hamas.
During the middle of March 2012, when terrorists in Gaza went on a rocket offensive against southern Israel firing nearly 200 rockets in less than 72 hours, the Iron Dome system successfully shot down no fewer than 52 rockets aimed at Beersheva, Ashdod, and Ashkelon. Israel Ambassador to the United States, Michael Oren, thanked President Obama and American legislators for their allocation of funds to support the Iron Dome project.
In May 2012, President Obama directed US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta to allocate an additional $70 million to pay for more Iron Dome batteries and interceptor missiles in Israel. Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak had come to the States during the month to seek further resource allocation and thanked the administration for helping upkeep a system which has proven successful in saving lives and preventing an escalation in violence.
The US support for the Israeli system
The United States has now paid nearly $300 million for the Iron Dome system. In May 2014, the Israeli government agreed to spend more than half the funds allocated by the U.S. Congress for Iron Dome funding to be spent on contractors in the United States. The agreement stipulates that funds spent in the America will jump to 55% of the total allocations by 2015, a marked increase from 3% previously. To date, Congress has approved $703 million since 2011 for Israel to spend on Iron Dome.
On Friday August 1 2014, US lawmakers in Congress approved an additional $225 million in funding for the Iron Dome System. Although there were some attempts to block the legislation because the cost would pile into the national debt, it was eventually passed with a vote of 395-8. The United States continues to show its support for Israel in the fight against Hamas, pledging to spend more money on the Iron Dome and protect Israel’s citizens.
As a part of fiscal year 2015’s $585 billion Defense Authorization Bill, the United States government authorized the allocation of $351 million for Israel’s Iron Dome system. The funds are to be used to “procure additional Iron Dome interceptors,” including ones that are produced within the United States. This authorization of funds represents an increase of $176 million from fiscal year 2014’s allocation of $175 million for the same purpose.
Ending months of uncertainty, in December 2014 the United States Congress passed a spending bill that kept the government funded through September 2015. This bill authorized $1.1 trillion in spending, and includes the standard $3.1 billion annual US military aid to Israel and an additional $619 million designated for Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system. Israeli newspaper Globes reported that this aid package was one of the largest military aid packages that the US has ever given Israel. As a stipulation for this funding, it is included in the spending bill that 55% of the new components for the Iron Dome be manufactured within the United States by Raytheon. This bill also includes $268 million designated for Israel’s other defense systems, Arrow and David’s Sling.
The GCC states’ interests in the Iron Dome system against Iran
Member states of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), including Qatar, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, expressed interest in purchasing an Iron Dome missile defense system for their own countries in October 2015. This deal would be facilitated by the United States and would help the Gulf countries deal with a “growing arsenal of Iranian missiles.”
Iran’s Gulf state neighbours are planning to acquire the Israeli-developed Iron Dome anti-missile systems in response to Iran’s “growing stockpile of weapons,” according to reports by Sky News.
Negotiations for the purchase of the Israeli-developed weapons, which the United States has quietly brokered, are said to be in the advanced stages. Once a deal is finalised, it is expected to pour in “hundreds of billions of dollars” for the Israeli company the produces the system, the report said.
“The Israelis have their small Iron Dome. We’ll have a much bigger one in the GCC,” Sky News said, quoting Bahrain Foreign Minister Khaled bin Mohammed.
Sky News said the sale of the Iron Dome would also include longer range interceptor missiles such as David’s Sling, and the Arrow I and Arrow II which are capable of intercepting supersonic intercontinental ballistic missiles.
Sky News explained that Gulf states these days perceived Iran’s military strength and ambitions as primary threat to their existence after the nuclear deal was signed between the Islamic Republic and the US and coalition nations in July,last year.
Iran’s policy regarding missile defense
Recently Iran’s Ministry of Defense managed to successfully test-fire its Emad medium-range ballistic missile. According to Defense Minister Brig. Gen. Hossein Dehghan, “This is the first ballistic missile developed by Iran that can be precision-guided until it reaches its target.” A few days later, for the first time, Iran’s state television broadcast a report on one of Iran’s biggest underground storage sites for Shahab ballistic missiles.
The US controversial policy under criticism
The US missile defence policy has underlined that ballistic missiles are an attractive and inexpensive weapon for revisionist states and terrorist organisations. By providing its allies in the Middle East, Europe and east Asia with missile defence systems, the United States claims that it is giving them alternatives to pre-emption and retaliation, and widens the freedom of action for potential victims of attacks. Missile defence was always intended to address the threats from state actors rather than terrorist organisations.
They are designed to dissuade an adversary from pursuing aggression against a potential victim state, since its missile threat will be devalued while the aggressor can still be exposed to punishment. Is it possible to deter an organisation such as Hamas with virtually no allies and possibly nothing to lose? It is more likely to work with a state like Iran, which would have a tremendous amount to lose if it were to directly attack Israel, the Gulf states or Europe.
The new American missile sanctions come after Iran conducted an ‘Emad medium range ballistic missile’ test on October 10, and a month later it tested another ballistic missile.
Iranian Defense Minister Hossein Dehqan recently said the Islamic Republic will unveil new domestically-designed and manufactured missiles in the near future in defiance of new American sanctions against the country over its missile program.Iran would also start taking delivery of an advanced Russian S-300 surface-to-air missile defence system in the next two months, Hossein Dehghan, defence minister, added – a system that was blocked before a landmark nuclear deal with world powers.
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February 12th, 2016
By Syed Qamar Rizvi.
Also, joint anti-terror command and staff exercises of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization will be held, he added.
“Peace Mission – 2016, the joint drills of peacekeeping forces of the Collective Security Treaty Organization codenamed Indestructible Brotherhood, the Frontier-2016 joint command and staff drills, the Indra-2016 Russian-Indian exercises and the Selenga-2016 Russian-Mongolian drills will be held,” the commander said.
Indeed, Moscow and Islamabad have many common interests and objectives like: regional security and stability and countering threats of terrorism and extremism in all forms and manifestations. Besides, controlling illicit arms trade, drug trafficking, money laundering, cross-border organized crime.
There is sufficient desire on either side for cooperation for the early settlement of Afghan problems. Indeed, despite upheaval in the past relationship of Pakistan and Russia, there are opportunities.
The drivers of bilateral understanding
There is a solid foundation for constructing a multi-storey building of Russia-Pakistan relations. Traditionally an ally of India and hitherto supportive of India’s stance on Kashmir, Russia has shown clear signs of cozying up to Pakistan.The following mentioned parameters are the bases of Moscow-Islamabad rebuiliding bilateralism.
- Russia has articulated its national objectives in specific South Asian countries, such as fighting drug trafficking in Afghanistan, capitalizing on India’s economic growth, and working with Pakistan, but it lacks a cohesive South Asia strategy.
- Regional instability and Pakistan’s political regime mean the country may face serious security threats in the coming years.
- Pakistani and Russian security interests are increasingly intertwined, so Moscow cannot afford to ignore the emergence of new threats in Islamabad.
- Officials from Pakistan and Russia participate in various bilateral and multilateral forums to address their shared security concerns.
- Developing relations would benefit both countries, but there are obstacles to closer cooperation. Moscow does not want to provoke India, Pakistan’s regional rival; a history of conflict has damaged Russian-Pakistani trust; and security concerns make Russian companies reluctant to do business in Pakistan.
- Constructive dialogue is taking place on potential Russian-Pakistani civil nuclear cooperation. Although such collaboration is unlikely, these talks allow the two countries to address shared concerns on issues like nuclear security and nonproliferation.
The geostrategic dictates
The Russian ambassador, Alex Y. Dedov, emphasised the geo-strategic importance of Pakistan to Moscow because it plays an important role in maintaining peace in the region.He said even when relations between the two states were strained, dialogue had never truly broken down.
Ambassador Dedov was speaking at an Oxbridge lecture on ‘The Russian Federation, Pakistan and the Region’, recently held in Islamabad.
The envoy discussed the history of the two states in question, and their efforts to bring peace and stability to the region.Mr Dedov said Russia was determined to bring peace in the region and that Pakistan was a key ally in this mission.
He added that Russia was not interested in forcing its policies on any country because “such policies can have a detrimental effect, the kind we have seen in the Middle East”.The ambassador noted that a significant number of questions focused on the topic, and said that Kashmir was very important to Russia because it “involves two of our neighbours”.
In the wake of 9/11 attacks Pakistan reversed its Taliban policy and became part of the US and NATO led „war on terror‟ in Afghanistan. Russia now sees how central Pakistan is to any scheme of ending the conflict in Afghanistan and bringing peace in the region. Russia and Pakistan‟s strategic interests in working for peace in Afghanistan and the region have come even closer.
Moreover, Pakistan, which feels it was unduly treated to pressures from the US in the „war on terror‟ that Russian leaders took notice of in their statements in favour of respecting Pakistan‟s sovereignty, wants to put its relations with Russia on a firm footing to diversify its foreign policy options.
Similarly to have Pakistan‟s role in maintaining regional peace after the proposed Western exit from Afghanistan, Russia has been making appropriate moves. These changing perceptions and efforts on both sides to develop closer relations have been reinforced by the evolving strategic partnership between China and Russia.
Another development that inclines Pakistan towards Russia is India‟s strategic partnership with the US and Afghanistan which the former thinks is an attempt to establish Delhi‟s military influence in Afghanistan and which is a strategy that indeed may have the aim of encircling Pakistan.
In this context Pakistan thinks that despite its friendship Russia has a nagging skepticism about India‟s future role in Afghanistan and Central Asia which might be in service of US strategic objectives in the region. Russia which sees Pakistan as a supportive hand in regional peace will not therefore support India in its anti-Pakistan Afghan politics. The pursuit of the realist theory on this two way friendship track is thus quite evident.
Yet another dimension besides its strategic interests in the region that Pakistan seeks in this new phase of its relationship with Russia is in the economic realm which under the global drive can have its own growth momentum. Pakistan seeks Russian economic assistance in the form of foreign direct investment and technological cooperation particularly in the energy field. Russia seems inclined to responding to these needs in addition to increasing the trade volume.
Pakistan and Russia find it mutually advantageous to cooperate in the economic, military and regional politico-strategic and security areas. Prospects are bright for promoting trade, investment and joint ventures in the fields of energy, infrastructure development, metal industry and agriculture sectors.
The friendly projects
Russian offers of investment in energy sector of Pakistan like conversion of Muzaffargarh power house to the coal fired station, work at Jamshoro Thermal Power plant, Thar Coal project and oil exploration should be availed and steps should be taken for their implementation.
For energy flow from energy surplus Central Asia to energy deficit South Asia, Pakistan should play a vital role and in this regard strong Pak-Russia cooperation can bring economic uplift in the entire region.
Russian cooperation for expansion of Pakistan Steel Mills, precious minerals and metal exploration, their subsequent mining, extraction, processing and refinement, as well as assistance in defence, metallurgical and telecommunication fields, supply of civil, aeronautical and helicopter engineering capacity to Pakistan and for other such projects should be sought.
The economic and military cooperation
From Russian point of view, Islamabad is a very important player in joint efforts to maintain regional stability, especially in view of the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan and growing threats of international terrorism fuelled by ISIS and rampant drug production. These factors require collective counteraction and target-oriented capacity building.
Russia had lifted its embargo on arms exports to Pakistan in 2014 and also signed a bilateral defence agreement to strengthen military-to-military relations between Moscow and Islamabad.
In June 2015, the two countries signed a landmark deal for the sale of four Mi-35 attack helicopters to Pakistan.Not surprisingly, Moscow and Islamabad are to conclude the talks on the sale of the Sukhoi Su-35 fighter jet, a long-range combat aircraft that would enhance Pakistan’s ability to conduct maritime patrols andpenetrate deeper into enemy territory. The export of the Su-35 will provide a real test of the extent to which Russia is willing to depart from its historic alliance with India. Pakistan is also exploring the purchase of a range of other Russian defense hardware, including the Yak-130 combat trainer aircraft.
Pakistani has also been focusing on increasing exports of products like raw materials, agricultural produce, finished and unfinished textile, leather products as well as cheap skilled, unskilled and technical manpower to Russia.
Pakistan and Russia recently inked $2 billion North-South gas pipeline project with an additional capacity for LNG covering some 1100-kilometre link from Karachi to Lahore. Russia would be building the project with an estimated cost of $2 billion and its first phase would be completed by 2018.Russia may also joinTajikistan and Kyrgyzstan in the CASA-1000 energy project, providing Afghanistan and Pakistan with electricity.Russia wants to supply power through CASA transmission line during winter season when energy supplies from CASA partners will not be feasible.
The military drills
Pakistan and Russia have agreed to hold first-ever joint military exercises as part of their enhanced defence cooperation, in a sign of increasing bonhomie between the Cold War-era adversaries.
The agreement was reached during a meeting in Moscow between Pakistan defence minister Khawaja Asif and his Russian counterpart Sergei Shoigu, Express Tribune reported.
“We agreed to enhance cooperation in both defence industry and military training,” Asif was quoted as saying by state-run Russian news agency Sputnik International.Pakistan and Russia last year signed a military cooperation agreement to deepen their defence ties and vowed to translate their relationship in “tangible” terms during the first-ever visit of a Russian defence minister in 45 years.
Conclusion
The mutual overtures between Russia and Pakistan are part of a greater shift in international relations. In Europe, Russia is embroiled in a showdown with the West over Ukraine, with Moscow’s military adventure in Crimea being followed by Western sanctions. In the Asia-Pacific, China’s encroachments in the South China Sea has inflamed tensions with other Asia-Pacific countries allied with the U.S. These developments have forced Russia and China to look for allies, which explains the bonhomie between the two powers of late.
Some analysts question whether a partnership motivated by external factors could lead to an alliance of countries that formerly distrusted each other.
But the old adage “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” fits perfectly well here; the single most important factor that overrides all others is their concurrent perception of the U.S. and its “policy of containment” towards them. China needs allies to change the world order and it begins with Asia.
Pakistan and Russia enjoy an excellent relationship based on mutuality of interest in enhancing greater bilateral cooperation and convergence of views on various important regional and international issues. Russia also has other reasons for moving ahead with attempts to improve links with Pakistan. Russia is seeking new markets for its military hardware to keep its economy afloat.
There has also been anxiety in Moscow over India’s new found warmth with the US and other Western countries in the context of military procurements. Russia is also keen to gain Pakistan’s help in controlling its own Muslim insurgents. It thinks that better bilateral ties could help sort out some of these problems or at least mitigate their fallout.
The endgame in Afghanistan is one of the major factors behind the evolving Pak-Russia rapprochement. Russia would not like US military bases in Afghanistan and so would Pakistan. India foresees a role in Afghanistan and US military bases would provide her a dedicated strength to continue as an American proxy.
Russia and Pakistan have lately been working on enhancing defence cooperation and are believed to have already covered a lot of ground. Exchange of visits by military commanders in recent years is an indication of progress achieved in this regard. India’s decision to enter into tighter embrace with the US had prompted Russia to rethink its defence relationship with Pakistan.
Pakistan’s successful wooing of Russia is one example of its ability to deftly navigate the complexity of a G-Zero world, in which there are multiple centers of gravity and no sole country or alliance is able to “drive an international agenda.” With strong or growing ties with all permanent UNSC members as well as regional powers like Iran, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey, Pakistan is becoming what geostrategist Ian Bremmer calls a “pivot state.”
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February 4th, 2016
By Syed Qamar Afzal Rizvi.
There is a growing sense that the European social model is unsustainable and in need of reform. As the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, is fond of claiming, the European Union (EU) accounts for roughly 7 per cent of the world’s population and 25 per cent of its GDP, but over 50 per cent of its welfare spending. The implication is that Europe’s welfare states are not only generous in comparison with provisions elsewhere, but will become unaffordable without major recasting.
The European ‘welfare state’ eludes concrete or universal definition. Its principal purpose, however, has been to help governments reconcile the often competing dynamics of capitalism, equity and democracy. Free-market economies have an inherent tendency towards income inequality and distribute economic power unequally, while democratic government seeks to distribute political power more evenly and to promote notions of social equality.
In short, it seems that while the EU’s welfare activities perform not too badly if compared to the more cautious demands, they clearly fall very short of the more far-reaching conceptions. What remains is the suspicion, shared by many authors, that “member governments have lost more control over national welfare policies … than the EU has gained de facto in transferred authority”.
The growing challenges & the welfare state system
It is fairly noted and observed that the domestic welfare states are nowadays restrained by European integration: Firstly, by having to guarantee free movement of labour within the integrated Europe and the related trans-national social security careers with the related EU co-ordination rules. Secondly, by having to execute the anti-discrimination policies imposed by EU law aimed to support women and minorities with regards to age, racial and ethnic origin, religion and belief, sexual orientation, and disability. Thirdly, by having to respect the minimum standards laid down in EU regulation for the fields of health and safety at the workplace and labour law. Fourthly, by respecting some procedural rules under the open method of coordination (see above) and hence by regularly reporting and justifying the domestic choices in many other fields of social policies. These are all direct effects of European integration.
The Schegen agreement
Thirty years ago in Luxembourg, European leaders signed the Schengen Agreement, enacting a policy of freedom of movement that has been a source of pride for the whole continent.
While the Schengen Agreement tore down internal borders, Europe kept reinforcing its external ones with a complex system managed by the supranational agency Frontex. Then it began putting up fences, walls, and even resorting to the army. And now, Europe is erecting again its internal borders as countries try to stop the advance of migrants.
National borders are reassuring, but are largely useless when their re-establishment would mean hindering European exchange, dealing a new blow to the EU’s economic growth and disrupting a European unity that has already been under strain.
The EU is not working. The EU is unloved by its citizens. Over the next few months, its popularity will be measured by polls for the UK referendum. The EU, in spite of everything, will survive, but the last thing it needs is the end of the Schengen zone: after reaching that point, the uphill climb will just get even steeper.
Multiculturalism and the migration policy
Europe has constantly behaved with arrogance at all three levels: each country’s internal policies, continental policy, and international policy.
The failure of multiculturalism amid an exhausted welfare state, along with a short-sighted policy in the Middle East (where it has sent troops), are some reasons why people are massively crossing the Mediterranean sea to reach Europe.
The migration policy Europe’s welfare state has attracted migrants from all over the world for decades. However, that inefficient model is already crumbling under its own weight. It should be replaced immediately while countries open their doors to migrants.
Migration and mobility bear an enormous potential for the European Union, migrants, and also the countries of origin. For the EU and its Member States, migration can help to reduce the shrinking working-age populations, contribute positively to state finances and social security systems and create innovations and entrepreneurial potential. On the individual level of the migrant, well-managed migration means development: Migrants can improve their standard of living, expand their personal skill-set and qualifications and realise upward social mobility in the country of destination.
Countries of origin may benefit from remittances, knowledge transfer, investments and the establishment of new business relations. However, in reality, these benefits are often not – or only partially – realised; inadequate regulatory frameworks for mobility and integration lead to suboptimal results. In the EU, badly managed migration may cause wage-dumping, a lack of efforts to increase the labour market participation of the domestic working-age population and a sceptical public opinion on migration as well as populist politicians exploiting and fuelling this scepticism.
Finally, let’s not forget that behind all the statements, the calls for European solidarity, and humanitarian do-gooders, lies the never-ending negotiations and processes inherent to politics. Cold calculations, power games, and trade of favors are always present.
That’s why Europe, now led by the countries that migrants want to reach, reacts by imposing a quota, telling every country how many people they should receive.
Even so, it will be difficult to keep people in the country of arrival. They will continue their march from Eastern and Central Europe to Germany, France, and Scandinavia. There is where they want to live. And that is when Europe starts to clash with its own principles.
Maps are showing again internal borders and walls in Europe. And we all know that it is easier to build a wall than to tear one down.
The demon of Islamophobia
Islamophobia stretches across the political spectrum in Europe. The German organization, PEGIDA (Patriotic Europeans against the Islamization of the West), based in Dresden, is building ties with other right-wing populist movements throughout Europe.
Greater collaboration is driving the number of protestors who are angered in part by the European political establishment and media. To the PEGIDA ( a UK based anti Islamisation movement) demonstrators, the counter-demonstrators hold a monopoly on the public discourse surrounding the future of immigration and Islam in Europe.
While retaining the ideals of the social-welfare state favored by the left, the right-wing populist parties advocate for great restrictions on the construction of mosques and number of immigrant arrivals along with a healthy dose of Euroscepticism.
With the continuing economic troubles in the continent, the anti-immigration and anti-Islamization trend is becoming a part of the mainstream public discourse. The success of the Sweden Democrats (SD) illustrates this pattern all too well.
France, Austria, and Denmark are three countries that show how Islamophobia poses greater political risk to Europe’s struggling economy:
The reforming strategies
Those contemplating reforms of social models and policies should not overlook the abiding strengths of European welfare states, even if it is accepted that major challenges arising from the drivers of change discussed above have to be confronted. Transformation of the welfare state cannot, however, be avoided, so it is pertinent to ask towards what, for whom and how? It is worth stressing, first, that austerity and the aftermath of the financial crisis are largely short-term considerations.
Certainly, welfare states need to be fiscally sustainable. Countries that have allowed social spending to race ahead of fiscal capacity will have to rein in the excesses. Equally, however, the proposition that welfare spending needs to decline sharply as a proportion of GDP is a false one.
The welfare state offers a comprehensive response to social risks which, if not covered by the state, would still arise. Critics often overlook the fact that the welfare state deals with these risks efficiently. Instead, the question Europeans need to answer, not least in pondering the ‘Merkel formula’, is whether the costs of ‘non-social’ responses would be lower.
The employment challenge
New employment patterns are an acknowledged, if often insufficiently understood, part of the picture. As noted above, the median worker today is no longer a man employed in a factory, but is as likely to be a woman as a man, working in an office, hospital or care service. Careers evolve and may be subject to sharp changes of direction. Work–life balance is an objective that can have pronounced effects on welfare arrangements. In the light of these transformations, the answer may be to reinforce moves already apparent in some EU countries towards a system in which entitlement is based on citizenship rather than employment history.
A more pessimistic scenario of the future of European welfare states follows the argument of the German social thinker Fritz Scharp who says that, due to the inherent bias towards negative integration, the formation of a European social market economy with a strong social dimension is impossible. Instead, EU member states will converge towards a liberal welfare model, entailing retrenchment of the welfare state, especially in the social-democratic countries (following the Esping-Andersen conceptualization). Choices have to be made, and the means by which decisions are taken invites examination, particularly where new demands (e.g. for enhanced childcare provision) can only be met if other spending is reduced.
It is well known that welfare states are ‘sticky’, in the sense of being politically resistant to change – if only because losers from reform are bound to shout louder than new winners. Politicians apprehensive about losing elections find it easy to shy away from necessary reforms. Nevertheless, as Anton Hemerijck (the director of the Netherlands Council for Government Policy), taking issue with some of the more negative assessments, asserts: ‘’both the welfare state and EU, two major feats of mid-twentieth century institutional engineering, have at critical times been able to reinvent themselves’’.
The ‘Nordic model’ and the European integration
More specifically, the Nordic countries are the best examples for the rest of Europe to follow, according to the experts. Universalism is one of the main characteristics of the Nordic model of the welfare state, meaning that there is more generalized access to welfare state services and fewer conditions regarding access to social benefits. Another central characteristic of the Nordic countries is that they are sustained with high levels of taxes and high social contributions from both employees and employers. Usually, their services are very efficient and are characterized by high quality.
The European Economist Rodríguez Mora argues that the rest of Europe “will have to imitate the Scandinavian model.” Along the same lines, Bahillo cites Denmark, Finland and Luxembourg as models for the entire European Union to follow and imitate. More specifically, de Bustillo an economic researcher says that the right path forward for each nation “will depend on the ideal vision of society that each country has in its head.” While he generally agrees with his colleagues, he adds some nuances.
” for me, the Scandinavian model seems a particularly good example to follow because it combines competitiveness with solidarity and high levels of protection regarding risks of illness, unemployment, old age and so forth. The issue is that in order to have this model, you need — among other things — to be ready to support high levels of taxation. On the other hand, history shows that it is not easy to translate institutions from one country to another country, and institutions must be adapted to local conditions.”
In relation to European integration, the underlying challenge can be seen as a variant on Dani Rodrik’s ‘trilemma’, in which there is mutual incompatibility between global economic integration, the nation state and democracy. In his analysis, only two out of the three can simultaneously be sustained. The result is that much of the debate about designing a welfare state and judging the pros and cons of its different components is influenced by ‘political ideology’. For some, the state should play a central role in income redistribution in order to sustain welfare budgets. For others, the capacity to deliver social welfare is a by-product of a less interventionist approach to economic governance. Inevitably, the particular political outlook then influences the methods by which a government seeks to deliver welfare policies.
The Role of the European institutions
The political and attitudinal dimensions are rarely considered in academic analysis of the welfare state, but welfare regimes are always political constructions held together by a particular constellation of democratic and electoral forces. Many of the key institutions that supported the creation and expansion of the welfare state appear to have weakened over the last thirty years – not merely the trade unions and the major social democratic parties, but many post-war ‘neo-corporatist’institutions. On the other hand, welfare states have actually been remarkably resilient in the postwar era.
For example, the attempt by neo-liberals to shrink the welfare state in the United Kingdom during the Thatcher governments barely succeeded. Dismantling existing social provisions proved almost impossible, and was a recipe for electoral unpopularity. At the same time, few influential and politically powerful coalitions emerged to persuade sectional interest groups and key electoral constituencies that the welfare state ought to be reshaped. This has led to a politics of retrenchment based on cutting and trimming at the edges, rather than determining priorities on the basis of first principles and reshaping the welfare system accordingly. In fact, centre-right governments have often been most wedded to the status quo ante.
The David Cameron advocacy
The British government is currently pushing for EU rules on freedom of movement to be changed. Prime Minister David Cameron worries that generous welfare systems are being abused by workers travelling from poorer countries to wealthier ones, bringing along their families and draining public finances. The specific details of EU reform are vague, but are rumoured to at least partially strip welfare entitlements from recent EU migrants.
Conclusion
The biggest threat to social justice in Europe is not radical institutional change, but the ‘frozen’ welfare state landscapes where resistance to change is institutionalized. Social democratic parties have been adept in the past at using higher public spending commitments to build coalitions of voters based on appealing to ‘sub-sections’ of the electorate by dispensing benefits to working parents, poorer pensioners, public sector workers, and so on. There is, as yet, no real sense that any of the parties has fully grasped the implications of moving from an era of ‘plenty’ to an era of ‘less’, while addressing the in-built conservative ‘bias’ of the welfare state.
Just like ‘globalization’ has no equal impact on the European welfare states presents a very similar argument: the effects of European integration also seem to touch all clusters of welfare states in Europe, though in various ways and degrees.
The original six EU founding states had welfare systems of the Bismarckian type of workbased social insurance. Differences were then much smaller not only in terms of structures but also of levels. Therefore, harmonization on the EU-level would initially have been easier than ever since – but this was ‘a road not taken’. After the first EU enlargement during the 1970s, Denmark, Britain and Ireland had already increased the heterogeneity of the EU dramatically. Now one Scandinavian and two Anglo-Saxon types of welfare state were within the EU. Plurality increased even further later on, with Southern, further Scandinavian and Continental, and then Eastern European reform states becoming members.
A full convergence is neither functionally needed nor politically probable, for adaptation seems to generally happen ‘in national colours’. In the medium run, it seems therefore likely that the various direct and indirect effects of European integration will result in what can be called ‘bounded varieties of welfare’ in Europe.
It seems that the Continental systems are most adversely affected by the internationalisation processes inside and outside the EU because their sources of income a partly no longer viable. When mobile production forces can easily migrate and flee high employers’ contributions to social security, shifting the burden elsewhere will be hard to prevent.
Given focus on the European reforms model based on Conservative-Corporatist, Liberal, and Social-Democratic orientations,it appears that the European leaders need to get serious about addressing Europe’s economic and social problems in a clear and consistent way. Whitewashing the problems to appeal to voters will only encourage further populist tendencies that attract disaffected voters on either end of the political spectrum.
And yet there is a growing apprehension that the concept of the European ‘welfare state system’ could be under great threat because of the ‘divisive European policy’ regarding the ‘refugees crisis ‘ accompanied by the emerging exigencies of the European security’. And the thesis– that alienating the Muslim population will increase radicalization among the vulnerable and drive out both skilled and unskilled workers that the European economy so sorely needs–holds much logic.
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January 30th, 2016
By Syed Qamar Rizvi.
Israel confirmed that it was planning to appropriate a large tract of 150 hectares fertile land in the occupied West Bank, close to Jordan, a move likely to exacerbate tensions with Western allies and already drawing international condemnation.
The Israeli defence ministry unit that oversees civilian affairs in the West Bank, known as COGAT, said in a statement that the political decision to seize the territory had been taken and “the lands are in the final stages of being declared state lands”.
The appropriation, covers 154 hectares (380 acres) in the Jordan Valley close to Jericho, an area where Israel already has many settlement farms built on land Palestinians seek for a state. It is the largest land seizure since August 2014.
U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon denounced the move and Palestinian officials said they would push for a resolution at the United Nations against Israel’s settlement policies.
“Settlement activities are a violation of international law and run counter to the public pronouncements of the government of Israel supporting a two-state solution to the conflict,” Ban said in a statement.
The land, in an area fully under Israeli civilian and military control and already used by Jewish settlers to farm dates, is situated near the northern tip of the Dead Sea.
The farmland is said to be located in the Jordan Valley south of Jericho and, according to settlement watchdog Peace Now, would mark the biggest declaration since a seizure of 400 hectares in 2014.
Peace Now said the land had been taken over by Israeli settlers years ago for farming.Israeli media reported that it was north of the Israeli settlement of Almog.
Previous seizures have been harshly criticised by Palestinians, rights groups and much of the international community. Such moves erode the territory Palestinians see as part of their future state, further complicating peace efforts.
The Palestinian reaction
“Israel is stealing land specially in the Jordan Valley under the pretext it wants to annex it,” Hanan Ashrawi, a senior member of the Palestine Liberation Organization, told Reuters. “This should be a reason for a real and effective intervention by the international community to end such a flagrant and grave aggression which kills all chances of peace.”
The United States, whose ambassador angered Israel this week with criticism of its West Bank policy, said it was strongly opposed to any moves that accelerate settlement expansion.
In a development likely to further upset Europe, Israeli forces demolished six structures in the West Bank funded by the EU’s humanitarian arm. The structures were dwellings and latrines for Bedouins living in an area known as E1 – a particularly sensitive zone between Jerusalem and the Dead Sea.
Israel has not built settlements in E1, with construction considered a “red line” by the United States and the EU. It could potentially split the West Bank, cutting Palestinians off from East Jerusalem, which they seek for their capital.
“This is the third time they demolished my house and every time I rebuilt it, this time also I will rebuild it and I am not leaving here. If we leave they will turn the place into a closed military zone,” said Saleem Jahaleen, whose home was razed.
The West Bank’s trajectory
In the West Bank, Israel continued its construction of the wall/fence with attached guard towers, mostly on Palestinian land, routing it to afford protection to illegal settlements while cutting off Palestinian villagers from their lands. Palestinian farmers were required to obtain special permits to access their lands between the wall and the Green Line demarcating the West Bank’s border with Israel.
Throughout the West Bank, Israeli forces maintained other restrictions on the free movement of Palestinians by using military checkpoints and restricting access to certain areas by preventing Palestinians using bypass roads constructed for the use of Israeli settlers. These restrictions hindered Palestinians’ access to hospitals, schools and workplaces. Furthermore, Israel forcibly transferred Palestinians out of occupied East Jerusalem to other areas in the West Bank.
In the West Bank, Israeli forces continued to demolish Palestinian homes and other structures, forcibly evicting hundreds from their homes often without warning or prior consultation. Families of Palestinians who had carried out attacks on Israelis also faced demolition of their homes as a punitive measure.
Palestinian Bedouin citizens of Israel living in “unrecognized” and newly recognized villages also faced destruction of homes and structures because the authorities said that they had been built without permission. Israeli authorities prohibited all construction without official permits, which were denied to Arab inhabitants of the villages, while also denying them access to basic services such as electricity and piped water supplies.
Under the 2011 Prawer Plan, the authorities proposed to demolish 35 “unrecognized” villages and forcibly displace up to 70,000 Bedouin inhabitants from their current lands and homes, and relocate them to officially designated sites. Implementation of the plan, which was adopted without consultation with the affected Bedouin communities, remained stalled following the resignation in December 2013 of the government minister overseeing it. Official statements announced its cancellation, but the army continued to demolish homes and other structures.
An apartheid-state policy
Israel operates a two-tiered system in the West Bank that provides preferential treatment to Jewish Israeli settlers while imposing harsh conditions on Palestinians. Israeli courts apply Israeli civil law to settlers, affording them legal protections, rights and benefits not enjoyed by their Palestinian neighbors who are subject to Israeli military law, even though under international humanitarian law, military law governs the occupied territories regardless of citizenship.
Israel’s privileged treatment of settlers extends to virtually every aspect of life in the West Bank. On the one hand, Israel provides settlers, and in many cases settlement businesses, with land, water infrastructure, resources, and financial incentives to encourage the growth of settlements. On the other hand, Israel confiscates Palestinian land, forcibly displaces Palestinians, restricts their freedom of movement, precludes them from building in all but 1 percent of the area of the West Bank under Israeli administrative control, and strictly limits their access to water and electricity.
The one state strategy
The idea of a Jewish one-state solution has been detailed by a member of the current Netanyahu government. Naftali Bennett of the Jewish Home Party (HaBayit HaYehudi) gave specific information in an article published in the Times of Israel of how he would impose such a state starting with annexing Area C. That his party didn’t do so well in the last elections has largely weakened his party, but the idea of a one-state Jewish Israel continues to be reiterated by many Israelis, including many in the presiding Likud Party, the government and the presidency. A host of other right-wing Israelis have different formulas they believe will ensure the permanent Jewishness of the future state without the need for continued military occupation.
They are all supporters of some type of annexation (whether a gradual or one-time act) of the West Bank to Israel but refuse to annex the heavily populated Gaza Strip and, of course, they are totally against the return of any Palestinian refugee while supporting the right of Jews to return to this Jewish state.
There are many different streams of Jewish “one-staters.” Rivlin’s idea is that while the state would be a Jewish state, it could have two distinct parliaments, thus making it more of a confederation but under Israeli Jewish auspices. Tel Aviv journalist and editor Naom Sheizaf explained how this concept is seen in Israel. Writing for +972 Magazine, Sheizaf said, “The Israeli right thinks of it as a Jewish state with a large Arab minority, while many Palestinians envision a Palestinian state with a large Jewish minority, and intellectuals discuss models that have little support on the ground.”
The Bennett doctrine
The education Minister Naftali Bennett said Israel should annex the West Bank, beginning with the Etzion bloc and Binyamin regions. “We need to mark this as a strategic objective and stop the misunderstood message sent from Israel abroad,” added Bennett, who heads the Orthodox-nationalist Jewish Home party.
The caucus, which urges continued Israeli control over the entire West Bank, convened to celebrate the publication of a new wine guide. Bennett reiterated his longstanding call for West Bank annexation in an interview with JTA.
“The approach that I’m promoting is reasonable, sane. In the Middle East, we don’t have the luxury to indulge in fantasy. If it were up to me, I would not wait. I would start with the Etzion bloc [in the West Bank near Jerusalem], and apply Israeli law and sovereignty on the Etzion bloc first,” the minister and leader of the Jewish Home party said.
The illegal role of the IDF
For nearly 50 years the Israeli army has been treating settler violence against Palestinians as a decree of fate, some sort of force majeure that trumps it in the territories otherwise under its control and responsibility. In other words, the army has dealt with the phenomenon without actually dealing with it. International law, however, is quite clear that the occupying power, the Israeli army in this case, has an obligation to preserve the rule of law and public order in those territories. In countless rulings, the Israeli High Court has even emphasized that it is a basic and fundamental obligation — but the IDF paid no heed. However, the army once again dragged its feet.
Only in 2009, three years after the ruling on the olive harvest, did the army’s legal advisor for the territories send — for the first time — a fact sheet to commanders clarifying soldiers’ obligation to intervene in crimes committed by Israelis. In 2013, four years after that, the state comptroller found that army’s Central Command had not made any efforts to implement the High Court ruling or the legal advisor’s memo to commanders: soldiers were not trained to fulfil their role in enforcing the law; the very concept of law enforcement wasn’t mentioned in general orders; senior officers testified about the army’s failure to fulfil its obligatory role.
Conclusion
Back in 1983, the Israeli-government sanctioned Karp Commission already described the justice system, army and police’s failure to enforce the rule of law in the occupied territories as a vicious cycle. In order to break out of that unjust cycle the army must establish clear orders that clearly detail soldiers’ obligations when encountering crimes committed by Israelis against Palestinians. It must also codify standing idly by as a crime in the military’s criminal code.
Israeli settlements in the West Bank violate the laws of occupation. The Fourth Geneva Convention prohibits an occupying power from transferring its citizens into the territory it occupies and from transferring or displacing the population of an occupied territory within or outside the territory.
The Rome Statute, the founding treaty of the International Criminal Court, establishes the court’s jurisdiction over war crimes including the crimes of transfer of parts of the civilian population of an occupying power into an occupied territory, and the forcible transfer of the population of an occupied territory. The ICC has jurisdiction over crimes committed in or from the territory of the State of Palestine, now an ICC member, beginning in June 13, 2014, the date designated by Palestine in a declaration accompanying its accession.
For years, Palestinians and the international community have been calling for a two-state solution for Israel and Palestine as the most acceptable compromise for the conflict. With the Israelis’ continued rejection of the two-state solution, more and more Palestinians are calling for one secular state in which all citizens have equal rights. But while the Palestinians’ call for a secular state seems to be totally rejected by Israelis, more and more right-wing Israelis are adopting their own version of the one Jewish state.
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January 21st, 2016
By Syed Qamar Rizvi.
Recent developments in Turkey and Israel have led analysts to speculate that there is a possibility of a Turkish-Israeli rapprochement.
NATO member Turkey was a key regional ally of Israel until the two countries fell out over an IDF operation in the Gaza Strip in late 2008 and early 2009 and an IDF raid on a flotilla bound for Gaza a year later that killed 10 Turkish nationals.
Erdogan further raised hackles in Israel with his sometimes inflammatory rhetoric towards the Jewish state, but the atmosphere has transformed following the revelation last month the two sides were making progress in secret talks to seek a rapprochement.
“Israel is in need of a country like Turkey in the region,” Erdogan said in remarks to Turkish reporters published in leading dailies Saturday.
“And we too must accept that we need Israel. This is a reality in the region,” said Erdogan.
“If mutual steps are implemented based on sincerity, then normalization will follow.”
Ambassadors were withdrawn in the wake of the 2010 crisis and Erdogan said Turkey’s three conditions for a normalisation were clear — a lifting of the Gaza blockade, compensation for the Mavi Marmara victims and an apology for the incident.
Background
Turkish-Israeli relations were strained when former prime minister, current President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan criticized Israel’s policies on Gaza, saying “you know very well how to kill children” to Israeli then-Prime Minister Shimon Peres in Davos in January 2009. The bilateral relations entered a tougher period as Turkey suspended relations when Israel raided the Mavi Marmara, a Gaza-bound humanitarian flotilla, in May 2010.Although trade relations have continued to be strong, Turkey and Israel have been locked in a diplomatic battle. In 2011, Ankara expelled the Israeli ambassador. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has come to be known for his fiery condemnations of Israeli policies toward the Palestinians, and Israeli officials have accused Turkey of supporting Hamas.
Recently some Israeli news outlets, particularly Haaretz, have published a stream of news reports saying that relations have improved and the two countries have come to terms. However Turkey has announced that there is no such conclusive agreement yet.
The expected deal
Landmark understandings reached in meetings in Switzerland between designated Israeli Mossad Chief Yossi Cohen and Turkey’s Deputy Foreign Minister Feridun Sinirlioglui have resulted in Israel’s consent to set up a $20m fund for the victims of the Turkish ship boarded by Israeli soldiers three years ago. No more claims against Israel over the episode will be outstanding and the two ambassadors will return to their posts in Tel Aviv and Ankara. This package is subject to signing by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and president Tayyip Erdogan.
Ankara agreed to ban Palestinian Hamas terror master Salah Arouri’s reentry to his base in Istanbul when he tries to return from a visit to Qatar – a goodwill gesture to Israel. The two parties agreed to launch negotiations without delay on the sale of Israeli offshore gas to Turkey. Ankara also offered to start talking about a pipeline to Europe via Turkey from the largest Israeli gas well, Leviathan, when it goes into production.
The Israeli conviction
Israel is more willing than Turkey to normalize bilateral relations, as it wants to establish a partnership with Turkey over natural gas.
On the other hand, it is a nightmare for Israel that Iran’s influence is increasingly growing, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani inked a nuclear deal with the U.S. and Iran is siding with Russia in a clearer manner. Indeed, this course of affairs disturbs not only Israel, but also all Arab countries in the region, particularly Saudi Arabia. Iran controls Iraq (through sectarianism), Syria through President Bashar Assad and Yemen through the Houthis.
So Iran has disturbed the balances in the region in favor of the Shiite bloc. Israel is in quest of an alliance against Iran, which is one of the leading powers which poses the biggest threat in the region. Likewise it is no secret that there are attempts to pressure Turkey on Syria via Russia and Iran, after the downing of the Russian Su-24 fighter jet which violated Turkish airspace near the border with Syria. This is why the strategic cooperation council which has been established with Saudi Arabia — and close relations with Qatar — matters so much.
Grounds for reconciliation
Secret meetings between Israeli and Turkish senior officials as well as an encouraging statement by President Erdogan have furthered the impression that the moment is ripe for reconciliation. Nevertheless, it seems that the most complicated hurdles to reconciliation: Turkey’s close relations with Hamas, its demand that Israel officially lift the blockade over Gaza, and energy security, have yet to be removed, suggesting that rapprochement might be premature.
To position itself as a central actor in the Muslim world, Turkey sought to take the leading role in the Palestinian issue away from other regional powers, such as Iran and Egypt.
As a party with deep Islamist roots, the AKP has courted the Palestinian Islamist movement, Hamas. Turkey officially hosted a Hamas delegation following the movement’s victory in the 2006 Palestinian Authority general elections. After Hamas leadership denounced Syrian President Assad’s war of against the rebels, the Syrian government closed Hamas’s Damascus headquarters and expelled its leaders. Iran, Syria’s ally, withdrew its financial and logistic support to Hamas. Turkey stepped in to become the movement’s patron, offering a safe haven for Hamas members, who operate from its soil.
The Turkish demand that Israel lift the blockade of the Gaza Strip stems from the Turkey’s effort to position itself as the patron of the Palestinian cause, but for Israel, the demand is a major hurdle to reconciliation.
In open conflict with Hamas, which controls Gaza, Israel feels that the next bloody round against Hamas is only a question of time. With the blockade lifted, Hamas and other Jihadist groups in Gaza will flood Gaza with sophisticated arms – in particular, long-range missiles that endanger Israel’s civilian population and military. As the 2014 war showed, consequences to Gaza’s civilian population can be disastrous. Turkey is also interested in diversifying its energy resources by importing gas from Israel’s large Leviathan Mediterranean gas field. Turkey’s interest in Israeli gas might grow in light of Turkey’s recent crisis with Russia, which provides Turkey with about half of its total gas needs.
But correlating Turkish-Russian tensions with Turkish-Israeli rapprochement may not be sound. Dramatic statements from both capitals aside, Ankara cannot afford to cut off its relations with Moscow, a major global power with increasing involvement in Syria.
“Turkey is determined to not accept any sort of restriction on Turkish assistance to Gaza,” the newspaper said, citing an unnamed senior government official as its source.
Turkish negotiators have presented the demand to their Israeli counterparts in continuing talks over normalizing relations that eroded after the Israeli Navy intercepted a flotilla bound for Gaza in 2010. Israeli officials were attacked as they boarded the Mavi Marmara passenger ship, and the raid concluded with nine dead Turkish activists and dozens of people wounded, the Times of Israel reported.
The two sides resumed reconciliation talks in June after a break of more than a year. With Turkey havingreceived a formal apology from Israel in 2013, Ankara is waiting for Jerusalem to meet the remaining two conditions: compensation for the Turkish citizens who were killed or injured on the Mavi Marmara and an end to the naval blockade of Gaza.
However, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Monday the Gaza blockade wasn’t going anywhere, according to the far-right news site Arutz Sheva in Israel. “They [Turkey] argued against the blockade on Gaza and of course we don’t intend to change our naval blockade policy,” Netanyahu said at a meeting with his Likud party. “Even though Israel is the country that transfers the [goods for the] existence and rehabilitation of the Gaza Strip, we cannot give up on our security.”
Governed by the Palestinian militant group Hamas, Gaza has been under an Egyptian-Israeli blockade since 2007. The total land, sea and air closures have deprived the coastal enclave of basic infrastructure and denied its roughly 1.8 million inhabitants access to vital commodities such as food, fuel and medicine, according to a July report by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
The Palestinians’ thinking
The Palestinians — who look to Turkey as one of the countries in the region that stands by their side — were split. Some believe that the Israeli leaks are true, whereas others are convinced that even to achieve its interests, Turkey would never drop the condition or at least request that the siege be relaxed. Complicating matters are the strained relations between Turkey and several countries, most recently Russia, following Turkey’s downing of a Russian jet on the Syrian border Nov. 24.
Wujdi al-Munirawi, a university student from Gaza City, told Al-Monitor that he is convinced that Turkey will not drop its condition that the siege be lifted because the Palestinian issue is a Turkish foreign relations priority.
He said that the Palestinians are accustomed to the Israeli policy of leaks and broadcasting fabricated news to frustrate the Palestinian street and create an atmosphere of hostility between Palestinians and the Turks. According to Munirawi, the latter have always been at the forefront of supporting Palestinians politically, financially and morally. Since last year, Israel and Turkey have been discussing building a sub-sea pipeline from Israel’s Leviathan gas field to Turkey that would give Israel access to Turkish and European energy markets by 2023. However, ongoing violence in Gaza has scuppered progress.
The Egyptian role
The primary stumbling block to reuniting the important Middle Eastern economic powers, however, has revolved around the Gaza Strip, which Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan would like to see opened to the world — or at least to Turkish aid agencies.
But as a deal nears, Turkey’s top regional rival, Egypt, has expressed worry to Israeli officials over Ankara’s potential reach into the region, Haaretz reportedThursday.
Egyptian officials are concerned a role for Turkey in Gaza, which borders Egypt’s restive Sinai province, could threaten its own security. While analysts said the agreement was likely to support regional peace, they also said the deal, depending on its conditions, could also be seen in Egypt as lending power to a top adversary, as well as causing security concerns by propping up Islamist forces.
Israel has repeatedly sought to have Egypt take on a greater role in Gaza, but according to Schenker, Egyptian leaders have largely shunned the responsibility. Instead, its leaders have imposed a heavy closure on the border, cutting off underground tunnels used to smuggle goods and weapons in and out of Gaza.
Conclusion
Given Turkey’s well-developed technical and institutional infrastructure on the downstream and its desire to become an energy hub, the involvement of skillful US companies such as Noble Energy on the upstream and likely US political and military backing, exporting Israeli gas to Turkey and Europe is a real possibility — despite Ankara’s disagreements with Greece and Cyprus over the latter’s exclusive economic zone.”
In fact, some AKP constituents are already opposing a deal with Israel. Quite tellingly, news of the Turkish-Israeli deal led to an uproar from the Istanbul-based IHH Humanitarian Relief Foundation, the aid organization that organized the flotilla to break the Gaza blockade in 2010. The religious-oriented IHH’s nine activists died at the hands of Israeli naval commandoes on the Mavi Marmara. On Dec. 18, the secular and anti-AKP website OdaTV quoted IHH Secretary-General Yavuz Dede, who labeled a deal with Israel “treachery.”
Despite the tensions and reservations posed to the deal, both Erdogan and Netanyahu have a clear interest in restoring the relationship between the two states. Both understand that the most beneficial way to make use of Israel’s natural gas reserves in the Mediterranean is to sell the gas to Turkey and to get it there through an underwater pipeline.But Israeli policy– towards the Palestinians ,particularly in the Gaza Strip–holds the key to any positive deal between Ankara and Tel Aviv.
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January 18th, 2016
By Syed Qamar Azfal Rizvi.
International sanctions against Iran have been lifted after the UN atomic watchdog announced the country had complied with the terms of last July’s landmark deal aimed at scaling down its nuclear programme.
The sanctions have cost Iran more than more than $160bn (£102bn) in oil revenue since 2012 alone. Once they are lifted, the country will be able to resume selling oil on international markets and using the global financial system for trade. Iran has the fourth largest oil reserves in the world and the energy industry is braced for lower prices. Iran will also be able to access more than $100bn in assets frozen overseas.
Iran and the IAEA
Iran has completed the necessary steps in a deal to restrict its nuclear program, meaning international economic sanctions are lifted, officials from the EU and the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency said Saturday.
“Relations between Iran and the IAEA now enter a new phase. It is an important day for the international community. I congratulate all those who helped make it a reality,” said Director General Yukiyo Amano of the International Atomic Energy Agency.
US Secretary of State John Kerry, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, and other officials involved in the accord met in Vienna on Saturday as the diplomatic achievement unfolded.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said Tehran had put in place all nuclear measures required under the deal reached with six world powers.
Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani said it was a “glorious victory” for the “patient nation of Iran”.
International sanctions against Iran have been lifted after the UN atomic watchdog announced the country had complied with the terms of last July’s landmark deal aimed at scaling down its nuclear programme.
US Secretary of State John Kerry, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, and other officials involved in the accord met in Vienna on Saturday as the diplomatic achievement unfolded.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said Tehran had put in place all nuclear measures required under the deal reached with six world powers.
In a sudden, though well-choreographed and much-expected dramatic succession of news releases, Iran has emerged from years of economic isolation when the heavy shadow of crippling economic sanctions were lifted in exchange for a drastic curb in its nuclear programme.
“Iran has carried out all measures required under the [July deal],” according to reports, “to enable Implementation Day [of the deal] to occur,” the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency has said in a statement,” paving the way for the lifting of these crippling economic sanctions.
In a no less dramatic announcement, deliberately designed to coincide with the lifting of these sanctions, Iran was also reported to have released five US citizens, including the much-publicised case of Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian, as part of a prisoner exchange with the United States.
The release of billions of dollars of frozen Iranian assets will open a floodgate of European and international conglomerates to rush to Iran for lucrative contracts.
At a time when a dramatic drop in the price of crude oil has plunged all oil producing countries (and with them the world economy) in deep despair, the release of these funds amounts to a bonanza for Iranian economy – as if the world had created a safe deposit account for Iran to give it back in its time of need. In taking steps to halt its nuclear progress, Obama claimed, “the world has avoided another war.”
To meet the IAEA’s certification, Iran had to take a number of steps, including removing the core of its Arak heavy water reactor and filling it with cement.
The country also had to dismantle roughly 13,000 centrifuges and dramatically reduce its stockpile of low-enriched uranium, which was sent to Russia in December.
The US and the sanctions
The US has imposed fresh sanctions on Iranian companies and individuals over a recent ballistic missile test.The new sanctions prevent 11 entities and individuals linked to the missile programme from using the US banking system.
The move came after international nuclear sanctions on Iran were lifted as part of a deal hailed by President Barack Obama on Sunday as “smart”.
The only sanctions being lifted by the U.S. concern foreign companies doing business with Iran. The American embargo on Iran will remain in place, barring U.S. companies from engaging directly with Iran, with a few small exceptions for passenger aircraft, carpets and pistachios.
Additionally, existing U.S. sanctions will remain in place on Iranians connected to the country’s humans rights abuses and support for terrorism. While most US sanctions will remain in place, the lifting of EU sanctions will benefit a number of industries. The most significant beneficiaries are likely to be the financial, energy and transportation industries.
The impact on the financial industry
The financial industry will largely benefit from the lifting of sanctions that have, over the last three years, prohibited international banks from using SWIFT – the global payments system – to conduct business with Iran’s banks. Iran’s readmittance to SWIFT will lead to many new opportunities for international finance and banking. As financial transactions affect all types of industry there will be other significant opportunities that come from Iran’s access to the global payment system. (For more, see: Sanctions on SWIFT Could Hit Russia Where It Hurts Most.)
As Iran is home to the fourth largest proven crude oil reserves and second largest natural gas reserves, lifted sanctions represent a huge opportunity for global energy companies. While American energy companies will have a tougher time, European firms like Royal Dutch Shell (RDS.A) and Total SA (TOT) should see increasing business opportunities. But other oil industry-related companies such as those that build oil tankers or provide oil field services should also benefit from the opening of the Iranian market.
Although most US sanctions remain, the recent agreement, in removing EU sanctions, is a major step towards bringing Iran into the global economy. While US businesses and citizens will still find it hard to conduct business with Iran, European citizens and companies should begin to see significant benefits in the near term, with the financial, energy and transportation industries poised for considerable opportunities.
The impact on the Iranian economy
Iran is the second-largest economy in the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region after Saudi Arabia, and the 18th biggest in the world, according to the World Bank. With a population close to 80 million people, it’s the second-most populous nation in the area, with 60% of its people under the age of 30. But youth unemployment is very high (17.9% for men and 39% for women), and that is one area the government wants to tackle. Its aim: Create 8.5 million jobs in the next two years, and fresh foreign investment should help.
Iran’s economy shrunk by 6.8% in 2012 and 1.2% in 2013, with sanctions blamed for a loss of $17.1 billion in export revenue in 2012-2014 — a 13.5% decrease, according to the World Bank. Since President Hassan Rouhani took office in July 2013, he has pulled the country out of recession and inflation is now down to 17% after skyrocketing to 40% two years ago, according to The Economist. When trade resumes, Iran’s GDP may rise to 5% from the current 2.8% rate, the World Bank forecasts.
However, for the American consumer, the biggest impact might be a lighter bill at the gas pump.
The oil factor and the uplift in Iran’s economy
When Iran begins selling its oil more freely again, global oil prices may drop 14% by 2016. Bloomberg reported that Iran has already started producing 2.8 million barrels a day. Oil importers like the U.S. and Europe will benefit from lower energy prices while OPEC members, like Saudi Arabia, and other oil producers will lose out. Iran has the fourth-largest oil reserve in the world and the country’s oil revenues could rise $15 billion in the first year.
As much as 42% of Iran’s government revenues come from crude oil. Since sanctions with European countries have been in effect, exports have dropped by almost 50%. Prior to the Iranian Revolution in 1979, U.S. oil companies were major players in Iran, notes Wharton finance professor Bulent Gultekin. “Iranian oil fields are suffering in that they don’t have the technology for drilling in marginal fields,” he says. “American oil companies should have an interest … but it’s not going to be easily resolved. It’ll be an interesting competition to watch” between European and American companies.
It’s not a vast, untapped market. The firms going in, for the most part, are resuming relationships rather than forging new relationships,” says Philip M Nichols an Associate Professor of Legal and Business Ethics.
“The nuclear talks accomplished and resulted with guidance of the Supreme Leader of the revolution, the support of the nation, and companionship of all pillars of the state, is truly one of the golden pages of the history of this country,” Rouhani said. “As of today, our banks can now interact with the banks of the world for financial and monetary purposes,” he said.
Conclusion
Looking forward, Iran will see more multinationals hunting for opportunities. The World Bank estimates foreign direct investment may double to $3 billion a year, which is still below the 2003 peak. Many countries in the EU stand to benefit. Gultekin notes that Iran has a “very sizable economy with an absorption capacity much higher than many. It invariably will be an economy that will attract interest from everywhere. [Other countries] will have the first-mover advantage.”
“Large trade delegations from Europe — Germany, France, Italy — including CEOs and chambers of commerce, are calling on Iranian businessmen and advancing the cause of European businesses,” notes Marvin Zonis, professor emeritus at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business.
Lifting of Iran sanctions will help Tehran resume its oil swap transactions with Russia, Turkmenistan, and Kazakhstan. That, in its turn, will enhance Iran’s foreign policy influence in the Caspian region.In the past,Iran had a very large public sector that began a process of shifting ownership to other actors, like semi-public entities such as pension funds, state banks and foundations linked to the Armed Forces and Revolutionary Guard Corps, notes Kevan Harris, a UCLA sociology professor who studies Iran’s political economy.Harris adds that Americans “will have one less mortal enemy. Hopefully, this will change the dynamics in the Middle East. The U.S. hasn’t had an economic advantage in 35 years. Any trade will be beneficial, but that won’t be the real benefit. The U.S. didn’t do this for economic reasons. The U.S. is doing this for geopolitical reasons.”
The thaw in relations with the West could also help Asian businesses invest more easily in Iran. For countries such as Japan, looking for outward growth, Iran with its cheap but educated labor force could be an ideal place to invest.
China, in particular, stands to advance its rapidly growing interests in Iran, while India and Japan will undoubtedly launch a push to reap their respective benefits.Asian investment in Iran may be further spurred by the nascent battle for influence in the Middle East between Japan, China and India.
It positively appears that in the coming years,Iran may emerge as a geoeconomic power in the region.
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January 14th, 2016
By Syed Qamar Rizvi.
While deeply caught in a dilemma regarding Iran- Saudi Arab tussle, Pakistan has decided to symbolically become a part of the Saudi-led coalition in the Mideast. Though this decision of the Pakistani government to technically support the 34 states’ formed alliance may put Pakistan in a tough policy choice, yet viewing pragmatically, Islamabad’s choice of cooperating with the coalition may not be a wrong one because of the emerging security threats from the Daesh/ISIS; and Islamabad’s uncompromising stand against terrorism.
Adviser to the Prime Minister on Foreign Affairs, Sartaj Aziz, on Tuesday said Pakistan will not send ground troops to Saudi Arabia or any other country after having joined the 34-state Islamic military alliance led by Saudi Arabia.
In a briefing to the National Assembly Foreign Affairs Committee at the Parliament House, Aziz said all matters between Pakistan and Saudi Arabia have been settled.
He said Pakistan will be sharing intelligence with Saudi Arabia to counter terrorism.
A retrospective preview
Under Saudi pressure in 2014, Pakistan came precipitously close to abdicating its non-partisan policy in Syria. With China now adding its name to a list of global powers calling for a political solution in Syria, pressure is likely to mount on Pakistan to clarify its position at the United Nations. And while Pakistan may be on the periphery of Syria’s killing fields, the diffusion of IS and its splinter cells to ‘Khorasan’ training camps in Afghanistan has given rise to considerable strategic anxiety in Islamabad. Of particular concern to Pakistan will be the long-term viability of any prospective anti-IS coalition, in the absence of real and meaningful plans to stabilize an Afghan regime that is already under attack.
The eastern hillsides of Achin, Kot, Haska Mina, and Pachir Agam in Nangarhar province — a stone’s throw away from an embattled Pakistani border — have become strategic IS footholds, where locals are now forced to carry ‘Khorasan’ residency cards. The Islamic State is presently recruiting in as many as 25 out of 34 Afghan provinces, as suggested by a recent U.N. report.
In a statement on Tuesday, the Saudi government surprised many countries by announcing that it had forged a coalition for coordinating and supporting military operations against terrorism in Iraq, Syria, Libya, Egypt and Afghanistan. The headquarters of the new Saudi-led coalition would be based in Riyadh.
This is not the first time that Saudi Arabia has named Pakistan as part of its military alliances without Islamabad’s knowledge and consent. The Saudis earlier named Pakistan as part of the coalition that carried out operations in Yemen and a Pakistani flag was displayed at the alliance’s media centre.
The Yemen dilemma and Pakistan
In past,Saudi Arabia’s demand that Pakistan joins its coalition against the Houthi uprising in Yemen had put Islamabad in a catch-22 between joining the Saudi alliance and not antagonising its neighbour Iran. Joining the Saudi coalition would have long-term political, economic and security repercussions for Pakistan.
Pakistan is not in a political position to say ‘no’ to the Saudis. Historically, Saudi Arabia has provided Pakistan with generous economic assistance. Millions of Pakistanis who work in the Middle East form the largest part of the global Pakistani diaspora. The foreign remittances sent home from the Middle East are a mainstay of Pakistan’s struggling economy. So, a blunt ‘no’ to the Saudi demand could put the livelihoods of these Pakistanis in danger.
At the same, Pakistan simply cannot afford to commit its troops. Surrounded by a multitude of internal and external security challenges, Pakistan’s plate is full on all sides. Joining the coalition would thus have serious long-term political, economic and security repercussions for the country.
Criticism and important ramifications
The argument–that getting sucked into the Iranian–Saudi power struggle could be detrimental to Pakistan’s fight against home-grown terrorism–takes leverage. After more than a decade of conflict, the situation in Pakistan is gradually stabilising.
Pakistan’s armed forces are already stretched. Forty per cent are engaged in combat positions. A third of the military and paramilitary troops are involved in counter-terrorism operation in Afghan–Pakistan border areas. And the remaining troops are deployed along the eastern Indian border or engaged in a multitude of counter-terrorism-related activities inside the country. So, Pakistan would do well to keep itself neutral and focus on more urgent domestic security matters.
Committing Pakistani troops to Saudi Arabia in return for financial assistance will certainly come with a caveat allowing for Saudi-backed Salafist groups to preach their radical version of Islam in Pakistan unchecked. This will only increase the already entrenched religious radicalisation and polarisation in the country.
Joining the Saudi coalition will only antagonise Iran, with which Pakistan shares a 900-kilometre border. It could even result in another episode of Saudi–Iranian proxy war on Pakistani soil between Saudi-backed Sunni and Iran-backed Shia militant groups. After Iran, the second largest number of Shia in the world live in Pakistan. Iran can use the sectarian card against Pakistan. Shia and Sunni militant groups have been involved in tit-for-tat sectarian killings in Pakistan for last three decades.
Saudi-backed Sunni groups like Ahl-e-Sunnat Wal Jamaat, Jamat-e-Islami and Iranian-backed Majlis-e-Wahdat-ul-Muslimeen and the Imamia Student Organisation (ISO) are already protesting either in favour of or in opposition to Pakistan’s prospective decision to join the coalition.
The futurist William Gibson noted, “the future is already here — it’s just not very evenly distributed.” Already, Saudi Arabia and Iran are killing each other’s proxies, and indirectly are killing each other’s advisors and troops, in Yemen, Syria, Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia’s Shiite Eastern Province.
The future is likely to look similar. The existing pattern will intensify, eventually spill over in a short, sharp direct clash, and then sink back down again to the level of proxy wars in other people’s territories.
The preferred method of conflict between these states has for a long time been proxy warfare. Since its devastating eight-year war against Iraq, the leadership in Tehran has demonstrated a strong preference for acting through proxies like Lebanese Hezbollah, the Iraqi Shiite militias, and Hamas. Lacking a strong military for most of its existence, the state of Saudi Arabia has likewise used proxy warfare to strike painful blows against its enemies, notably against Egypt’s occupation forces in the 1962-1970 Yemeni civil war and against the Soviets in Afghanistan. Both these players try to get others to do most of their fighting and dying for them.
Pakistan’s current policy
It is Pakistani government’s policy that it will not deploy its troops outside the country’s borders except for UN peacekeeping missions.
In the past Pakistan has twice rejected US calls for joining alliances against the militant Islamic State (IS) group on the same pretext.
Pakistan, however, has counter-terrorism cooperation with Saudi Arabia.
The IS operations and activities across the Middle East have led to military responses executed by alliances that most of the time rival each other. Syria has been battling IS and other militants with the help of Iran and Russia.
Pakistan is ready to play the role as mediator
Pakistan on Sunday offered its ‘good offices’ to defuse tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran even as it supported the Saudi initiative to establish a coalition of likeminded Islamic states to counter terrorism and extremism. The offer came from Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif during his meeting with Saudi Deputy Crown Prince and Defence Minister Prince Mohammad bin Salman, who visited Islamabad as part of the kingdom’s efforts to seek Pakistan’s backing for the recently formed Saudi-led coalition.
Mohammad bin Salman, who was the second high-level official from Saudi Arabia to visit Pakistan in three days, also held talks with army chief General Raheel Sharif at the GHQ in Rawalpindi. Earlier in the week, Saudi Foreign Minister Adel bin Ahmed al Jubeir visited Islamabad.
The focus of the Saudi defence minister’s discussions both at the PM Office and GHQ was on securing Pakistan’s support for the Saudi move to cobble together a coalition of 34-nation Islamic countries as well as current tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran.
To aggravate the situation, any Sunni–Shia rift in Pakistan would provide an ideal opportunity for Islamic State-affiliated militant groups to exploit the sectarian fault lines to gain a foothold and increase their influence in the society. Anti-Shia and anti-Iranian militant groups like Lashkar-e-Jhangvi and Jandullah can also join hands with Islamic State in such a situation.
Following meetings with Prince Mohammed bin Salman on Sunday, the Pakistan army issued a statement asserting “that any threat to Saudi Arabia’s territorial integrity would evoke a strong response from Pakistan.” Pakistan’s Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif struck a more conciliatory tone, suggesting that Islamabad was willing to play the role of mediator between Saudi Arabia and Iran.
The issue of sectarianism
Pakistan, which is thought to be home to both the world’s second largest Sunni and Shi‘ite populations, fears inviting the Middle East’s sectarianism to South Asia.
The Saudis and other Sunni Gulf states armed Syrian rebels who are Sunni hard-liners, knowing their anti-Shia views made them more hostile to Iran and more loyal to Saudi interests.
Iran used much the same strategy, portraying the Syrian war as a genocidal campaign against Shia. This helped Tehran attract Shia militias from Iraq and Lebanon that would fight for Iranian interests. Making the Syrian civil war as sectarian as possible also ensures that the Syrian government, which is Shia, will remain loyal to Iran.
It’s important to understand that the Middle East is mostly Sunni. So for Saudi Arabia, it might seem like a winning strategy to promote sectarianism, and to align itself with Sunnis and thus force Shia to align themselves with Iran. By forcing a Sunni-Shia divide, the Saudis can make sure they are on the stronger side.
But Iran has used sectarianism as tool as well. While you could argue that Iran was at times backed into this strategy by Saudi Arabia — if the Saudis support Sunnis to isolate Iran, Iran could be expected to back Shia to hold on to some influence — it also pursued it aggressively, for example in Iraq and now in Syria. It did not always begin the sectarian competition, but it was happy to join Saudi Arabia in playing that game.
Sectarianism has always been a double-edged sword for Saudi Arabia, serving short-term political aims while also creating potentially terrible long-term problems for the Middle East and Saudi Arabia itself. Sectarianism did not cause the war in Syria, but it is making that war a lot worse. Sectarianism also did not cause ISIS, but it was a factor, and one in which shortsighted Saudi policies did not exactly hurt.
Conclusion
It fairly that the Daesh factor has been the end-all and be-all regarding Islamabad’s support for the Saudi-led coalition.Pakistan’s current decision may have also been influenced by learning lessons from India’s smart ‘Link West’ approach to the Middle East. But following through on change will require action and sustained commitment, in line with Pakistan’s now well-established interest in regional peace and stability. Given the Islamic State’s steady eastward advance, Pakistan will have to think seriously about rebooting, and executing, an informed Middle East strategy — one that can withstand a new generation of security and diplomatic challenges. The most important consideration is that the Saudi led coalition has ‘no inclusion’ of Iran,Iraq and Syria.Pakistan’s current policy notion does not mean that Islamabad is ‘distancing itself from Tehran’.
The question arises here is that by keeping out these three big stake holders in the Mideast region,how this alliance may fully address the challenges of threats posed by the Daesh/ISIS. To take theses three states into confidence is by all means an inevitable need.As for moral commitment,Pakistan’s determination to defend the sanctity of Holy Kabba,in case if threat comes to Mecca,seems logically advocating.By making the choice of joining with the Saudi -led alliance, Pakistan seems to have been out of ‘diplomatic obfuscation’. But Islamabad will have to keep its balance regarding regional ‘geostrategic and geopolitical imperatives’.
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January 7th, 2016
By Syed Qamar Rizvi.
In three days, relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran have gone from tense to disastrous — and that may reverberate across the Middle East and worldwide.
Within hours, Bahrain and Sudan joined Saudi Arabia in severing ties with Tehran and announcing it would expel Iranian diplomats within 48 hours. The United Arab Emirates announced it was downgrading its diplomatic team in Tehran.
Saudi Arabia’s decision to break relations with Iran can be traced back to Saudi Arabia’s Friday execution of a top Shiite cleric — one of 47 people executed that day by Saudi officials.
The execution of Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr sparked protests in the region. In Iran, protesters attacked and ransacked Saudi Arabia’s embassy in Tehran and its consulate in Mashad. Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, threatened divine retribution for the killing of the cleric, whose only crime, he said, was criticizing the Saudi goverment.
Riyadh gave Iranian diplomats 48 hours to leave Saudi Arabia after Iranian leaders condemned the execution of a popular Shiite cleric, Nimr Baqr al-Nimr, and after protesters stormed the Sunni kingdom’s embassy in Tehran in anger over his death.
Saudi Arab’s geostrategic and geopolitical concerns about Iran
When popular uprisings began to spread across the Arab world in 2011, Saudi Arabia felt its foundations shake. At its most vulnerable point, it watched as the US withdrew support from longtime ally Hosni Mubarak and choked as it saw anti-regime demonstrations building in neighbouring Bahrain. Seeing Iran’s hand behind a legitimate popular opposition movement, Saudi Arabia sent tanks across its causeway with Bahrain to crush the uprising and to prevent Iran from establishing itself on Saudi Arabia’s eastern border. But Saudi Arabia seemed unable to shoot down Iran’s rising star.
As the Syrian rebels failed over and over again to receive the aid they needed from the international community, Iranian support enabled President Assad’s resurgence in the Syrian civil war. And the rise of Isis in Syria and Iraq precluded serious efforts to remove Assad from power, and strengthened Iran’s hand as the convener of Iraqi Shia resistance forces in Iraq.
Saudi Arabia feels that the US has abandoned any attempt to check Iranian power in the Middle East. So if Iran is to be stopped, Saudi Arabia will have to take matters into its own hands – starting with building a coalition to defeat Iran in Yemen. Factually seen, Iran did not create the militias in Iraq; Iraqi Shias joined militias in order to defend themselves and their country
Saudi has been jostling with Shia Iran for influence across the Muslim world and especially in the Middle East. The countries are literally at war in Yemen, where Iran is backing the Zaidi Shia Houthi rebels who have been targeted by Saudi-led airstrikes. They are also at each other in Syria, where an unofficial coalition of Iran, Russia, Hezbollah and President Bashar al-Assad’s forces are fighting Saudi and western attempts to remove the Alawite Shia minority from power. The situation is complicated by the Daesh — while the Saudis and their Gulf partners are against the IS, evidence of links between them too has been surfacing regularly.
The Saudis have been especially nervous since relations between Tehran and Washington took a positive turn recently. While Iran, the leader of Shias across the world, hopes to take over the leadership of the entire Muslim world, Saudi would like to sharpen the historical Shia-Sunni divide so that the focus remains on the sectarian differences — and allows the perpetuation of the control of the ruling Saudi family over the country that houses Islam’s holiest shrines.
Reaction of the Arab allies and other Muslim states
“Bahrain has decided to end diplomatic relations with Iran because of its continuous interference in the affairs of the kingdom, and also of the GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council),” and official statement said.
Also on Monday, Sudan decided to expel the Iranian ambassador and the whole Iranian diplomatic mission.
It also decided to recall its envoy from Tehran.
Sudan stressed its condemnation of what it sees as Iranian interference in the Arab region and inaction to protect the Saudi Embassy and Consulate in Iran.
At a less tense level, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) decided on Monday to downgrade its diplomatic relations with Iran and reduce the number of Iranian diplomats in the country.
The UAE Foreign Ministry said in a statement that it has recalled its ambassador to Iran Saif Al Zaabi in support of Saudi Arabia.
This step was taken “in the light of continued Iranian intervention in the internal affairs of the Gulf and the Arab world” that has recently reached unprecedented levels, the statement said.
It said that the natural and positive relations among nations should be based on mutual respect for sovereignty and non-interference in internal affairs.
“The smaller Gulf states are worried they will get caught in the middle,” said Michael Stephens, a research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute in London. “It worries them greatly that things could go badly.”
Some countries, like Turkey, Egypt and Pakistan, are already battling their own domestic insurgencies. Others are keen to guard their strategic interests or to keep the door open to trade with Iran while there is a prospect of American sanctions being lifted.
Qatar, which shares with Iran access to the world’s largest natural gas field in the Persian Gulf, has yet to declare its hand. Oman has also been quiet, sticking to its longstanding position of neutrality on Saudi Arabia and Iran.
The Palestinian Authority issued a statement after the execution of al-Nimr saying that it stands alongside the Saudis in their fight against “terrorism.” The Saudis are the largest donor to the Palestinian Authority in the Arab world, providing them some $200 million annually. The PA, and the Fatah faction that leads it, has had a strained relationship with Iran because of its support of its rival, Hamas.
The western concerns
The European Union’s foreign-policy chief, Federica Mogherini, appealed Sunday for calm and told Iran’s foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, that the acrimony between Riyadh and Tehran risked derailing diplomacy on Syria.
“The international community and the main regional actors are actively working together to support a political solution for the crisis in Syria and to join forces against [terrorist] groups, and these efforts should not be jeopardized by new instability,” Mogherini said in a statement.
Western diplomats and analysts said the tensions would only bolster hardliners in both countries, feeding a mounting Sunni-Shiite conflict playing out in Syria, Iraq, and Yemen.
A senior U.S. administration official acknowledged that the heated rhetoric between Riyadh and Tehran represented yet another hurdle for diplomacy on Syria. The diplomatic rift between Saudi Arabia and Iran could complicate OPEC’s efforts to calm oil markets if Iran begins exporting up to one million barrels a day of extra crude once Western sanctions are lifted as expected early this year.
The impact on oil prices
Oil prices have fallen over the past year to levels not seen since the financial crisis because supplies have far outstripped demand.
Over that time, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries abandoned its traditional role of propping up prices with production cuts. But officials in December left open the possibility of an emergency meeting early this year when the impact of Iranian oil could be assessed. Now, with OPEC’s two most powerful members—Saudi Arabia and Iran—at odds, hopes for an agreement to regulate production appear to have dimmed even further, said an oil industry official in a Persian Gulf Arab country.
Response by Turkey and Pakistan
Turkey has asked Iran and Saudi Arabia to calm tensions in their diplomatic crisis, saying the hostility between the two key Muslim powers would only further escalate problems in an explosive region.
“We want both countries to immediately move away from the situation of tension that will obviously only add to the already severe tensions existing in the Middle East,” Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus said in Ankara’s first reaction to the crisis on Sunday.
“The region is already a powder keg,” Kurtulmus, who is also the government spokesman, said after a cabinet meeting, quoted by the Anatolia news agency. “Enough is enough. We need our peace in the region.”
As for Pakistani government’s response to the crisis,on Tuesday, the Pakistani prime minister’s foreign affairs adviser, Sartaj Aziz, warned Parliament that the crisis posed a “grave danger” to the Muslim world. He did not hint at any possible diplomatic moves against Iran, emphasizing instead that Pakistan would work toward “easing tensions.
The Saudi envoy statement in the UN
Saudi Arabia’s U.N. ambassador says his country backs efforts to bring peace to Syria and Yemen and its break in diplomatic relations with Iran should have no effect on upcoming talks.
Ambassador Abdallah al-Moualimi told reporters at U.N. headquarters in New York that Saudi Arabia, which supports Syria’s opposition, will attend the next round of talks on Syria, scheduled for Jan. 25 in Geneva.
Iran, which backs the Syrian government of President Bashar Assad, has not said whether it will attend.
To conclude
The world community on Monday urged Saudi Arabia and Iran to observe restraint after tension over the execution of a prominent cleric Nimr Al-Nimr along with 46 others by the Saudi government.
The UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, told the Saudi foreign minister on Monday that Riyadh’s decision to break off diplomatic ties with Iran was extremely troubling, a United Nations spokesman said.
“The secretary-general reiterated that the attack on the Saudi embassy in Tehran was deplorable, but added that the announcement of a break in Saudi diplomatic relations with Tehran was deeply worrying,” UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric told reporters
The Arab League, and the OIC must make a joint effort to de-escalate the tensions. Moscow “is willing to play, if necessary, a role as a mediator in the settlement of existing and emerging discords between these countries,” the unnamed diplomat added.
However, it was not clear from the report if Moscow had made the mediation proposal to either side.
Earlier on Monday, China, which relies on Saudi Arabia for oil supplies, also expressed concerns over the escalating conflict, calling for the two nations to “maintain calm and restraint.”
“We hope the relevant parties can … properly resolve their differences through dialogue and consultation and jointly safeguard regional peace and stability,” Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying reportedly said.
India can also play a significant role as a mediator between the two sides since it holds its sway in the GCC block; and also charges its influence in Iran. If not timely mediated, the ongoing rift between Tehran and Riyadh may escalate the proxy wars in the Middle eastern region. The growing rift may also cause great damage to the cause of unity of ‘great alliance’ to act as a bastion against the Daesh forces. Iran and Saudi Arab are two important arms of the Muslim community.The Muslim world cannot afford to divorce its relationship with any one of them.Therefore, to utilize the role of multilateral diplomacy via ‘ummah forum’, is the need of the hour.
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