A deal for now: US-Iran Nuclear Deal

Iran and the United States sign an interim accord with a June 30 deadline for a final agreement, but the U.S. keeps “all options open” if any aspect of the deal is ignored. By JOHN CHERIAN

IT was evident for some time now that a “nuclear deal” between the United States and Iran was imminent. Reports based on official briefings from both Washington and Tehran in the last couple of months had suggested that only a few differences remained to be ironed out. Finally, after hard bargaining over details in the eleventh hour, an interim deal was announced in the Swiss city of Lausanne on April 2. The deadline for the final agreement has been set for June 30. Neither the reelection of Benjamin Netanyahu as the Prime Minister of Israel in March nor the threat of Republicans in the U.S. Congress had any negative impact on the outcome of the nuclear talks.

The talks held by P5+1 (the five permanent members of the United Nations and Germany) with Iran were also in favour of a quick nuclear deal. Although the P5+1 is formally part of the negotiations, it is U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Iranian Foreign Minster Mohammad Javad Zarif who did most of the talking for more than two years. The technical aspects were dealt with by the U.S. Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz and Iran’s energy chief Ali Akbar Salehi. Both of them are trained nuclear physicists.

Under the draft nuclear accord, Iran has agreed to reduce by around 40 per cent of the centrifuges that it can operate to produce enriched uranium and to substantially cut its stockpile of low-enriched uranium. The U.S. claims that Iran has agreed to reduce the stockpile from 10,000 kilograms to 300 kg for the next 10 years. Iran has not yet confirmed that it has made such a commitment.

The duration of the nuclear deal will be for 15 years. The Barack Obama administration was pressing for a 20-year deal. Under the interim deal, Iran will not have to dismantle any of its existing nuclear facilities. The Obama administration had initially demanded the dismantling of a few. After 15 years, Iran will be allowed to produce as much enriched uranium as it wants to. Under the terms of the agreement, Iran will be allowed to conduct research and development on advanced centrifuges. Iran, being a signatory to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT), has the “inalienable right of all the parties to the treaty to develop, research, produce, and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes without discrimination”.

On March 20, Obama took the unprecedented step of issuing a video appeal to the Iranian people on the occasion of Navroz, the Iranian new year. He said a nuclear deal would open up a brighter future for the people of Iran. At the same time, he warned that Iranians would face more sanctions and isolation if their government did not agree to a deal. A “reasonable deal”, he promised, would open up hitherto closed vistas for Iranians in various fields. Obama once again cited the “fatwa against the development of nuclear weapons” issued by Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. After the signing of the nuclear deal, Zarif reiterated that the country’s nuclear programme “has always been and always will remain exclusively peaceful”.

When Hassan Rouhani assumed office as President of Iran in 2013, he pledged to “reconcile with the world”. The backing of Ayatollah Khamenei has been crucial to the success of the Iran-U.S. nuclear talks so far. As otherwise, hardliners in Iran would not have agreed to some of the conditions put forth in the preliminary deal. The Obama administration wanted Iran to curtail its missile programme. Iran, it seems, has stood its ground on this issue. In the face of emerging threats in the region, missile defence is crucial for Iran’s security.

The U.S. has promised to lift most of the draconian sanctions it has imposed on Iran after the framework agreement comes into force. Obama has the authority to lift some of the sanctions with immediate effect. The sanctions had a serious impact on Iran’s economy, affecting almost all the key sectors.

Zarif described the agreement as a victory and said it demonstrated that Iran “will never bow to pressure”. There were celebrations on the streets of Tehran when the agreement was announced. From the details emerging out of the U.S. interpretation of the interim agreement, it is possible that Iran has made quite a few concessions but as the U.S.-Iranian commentator Trita Parsi observed: “Small minds will obsess over what has been given. Great minds will celebrate over what has been gained. We are steering a clear path to a peaceful resolution to the nuclear dispute.” Before the final deal is clinched, Washington may try to squeeze Tehran even further. The “fact sheet” released by Washington states that “important implementation details are still subject to negotiations, and nothing is agreed upon until everything is agreed upon”.

Iran has already agreed to be subjected to intrusive International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspections. The “core” of Iran’s heavy water reactor in Arak will be removed and the facility will be redesigned so that it can produce only non-weapons- grade plutonium. The Fordow nuclear plant will be turned into a nuclear research centre without fissile material.

In 2010, Iran agreed to a proposal by Presidents Lula da Silva of Brazil and Recep Erdogan of Turkey for the despatch of 50 per cent of its low-enriched uranium to Turkey in exchange for higher enriched uranium for medical use and research. The Obama administration rejected that proposal out of hand and instead imposed additional sanctions on Iran.

Although the joint statement released at Lausanne by Zarif and the European Union (E.U.) foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini talks about the lifting of all sanctions, including those imposed by the U.N. Security Council and the E.U., following the implementation of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, there is no guarantee that the sanctions will be lifted in the immediate future. According to the fact sheet released by the U.S., the sanctions will only be “suspended” and if the U.S. and its allies conclude at any time that Iran has violated the terms of the deal, then the “sanctions will immediately snap into place”. Obama had earlier specified that the aim of the agreement was “to cut off every pathway that Iran could take to develop a nuclear weapon”. Any agreement with Iran, he said, “would not be based on trust” but instead on “unprecedented verification”.

At a conference in the White House soon after the deal was announced, Obama gloated that the deal was the result of “the toughest sanctions in history”. He issued a warning that if Iran failed to implement any aspect of the deal, then “all options” were on the table for him and future Presidents. “All options open” has been a favourite term for U.S. Presidents and politicians. It means the option to resort to war mainly against oil-rich countries in West Asia. Zarif has restated his government’s demand for immediate relief from U.N. sanctions and the urgent need to “terminate” and not just suspend E.U. sanctions. The P5+1 wants the IAEA to first certify that Iran’s nuclear programme is for peaceful purposes and does not have “possible military dimensions” . There is optimism in Iran that the bulk of the sanctions will be lifted within a year.

Obama was quick to telephone Netanyahu to assure him that Israel’s security will never be compromised and that he was still concerned about Iran’s “destabilising policies”. He also talked to Iran’s other rivals in the region, notably the rulers of the Gulf kingdoms, and assured them of the U.S.’ abiding security relations with them. Obama will be hosting a summit of all the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) leaders at the White House soon. Saudi Arabia, like Israel, is vehemently opposed to Iran. The Saudis have made veiled threats about seeking a nuclear deterrent of their own if the U.S. cosied up to Iran. Obama had no words of criticism for Israel’s growing nuclear arsenal and its aggressive

policies.

Even as the U.S. and Iran were finalising the draft agreement, Saudi Arabia launched an unprovoked aggression against Yemen citing Iran’s involvement in that country. Israel will be working overtime to stymie the nuclear deal with the help of its influential friends in the U.S. Congress and media. Netanyahu said the U.S.-Iran nuclear deal posed an “existential threat” to Israel’s security.

It may take some time for Iran to reap the economic benefits from the nuclear deal. But businessmen are already making a beeline to Tehran. Iran is already being viewed as the hottest emerging market. The country, besides having vast hydrocarbon resources, is also rich in human capital. Western Europe is looking for alternative gas supplies to lessen its dependence on Russia. Iran, already a key player in the region, is likely to emerge even stronger. Iran and the U.S. may even be getting ready to do a political tango. They are already fighting against the Islamic State (IS) in Iraq.
(Published in Frontline.in)

The welcome rehabilitation of Iran: A Look Back

If the nuclear deal and the lifting of sanctions go through, it will help India, strategically and

Economically Few developments have occupied international attention since the Iranian Revolution in 1979, as the hostility between Iran on the one hand and the US and Israel on the other. Tensions in US-Iran relations escalated when Iranian students supporting the Ayatollah

Khomeini-led revolution attacked the US embassy on November 4, 1979, taking hostage 52 US diplomats for 444 days. The students called their action “Conquest of the American Spy Den”.

The students who engineered the hostage crisis, painstakingly put together shredded documents, which revealed the extent of CIA interference in Iran’s domestic affairs. The US had turned a blind eye to and tacitly condoned the atrocities of the Shah’s intelligence services, Savak. The Khomeini dispensation viewed Israel’s role similarly. Relations continued to deteriorate, with the Iranians calling the US the “Great Satan” and vowing to eliminate Israel. The US, in turn labelled Iran as constituting an “axis of evil”. Covert operations fomenting violence were undertaken extensively, by all concerned.

Intensified operations

The intensity of these operations increased after Iran went about obtaining nuclear weapons capabilities, primarily through uranium enrichment, with crucial assistance from Pakistan’s AQ Khan. There are credible reports that President Barack Obama had expressed concern about Israeli involvement in the killing of five Iranian nuclear scientists. Iran responded with attacks on Israeli missions in countries ranging from Argentina and Azerbaijan to India and Thailand. The US contributed by actions like injecting a Stuxnet virus to disable Iran’s enrichment programme for months. Saudi Arabia and Iran have fought proxy battles across the Islamic world, most notably in Iraq, Syria, Bahrain and Yemen. “Cut off the head of the snake (Iran),” the Saudi monarch advised Gen David Petraeus.

The US has spared no effort to scuttle Iran’s nuclear programme. The UN Security Council passed 10 resolutions against Iran involving banking sanctions, freezing of financial assets, travel restrictions on sanctioned persons, freezing of assets of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, and banning all missile- and nuclear-related cooperation. These resolutions were accompanied by stringent banking, insurance, shipping and other sanctions imposed by the US and the European Union, crippling energy-related cooperation with Iran, especially for major partners such as China, Japan, South Korea and India. Within two years of tightening the global sanctions regime in 2011, Iranian oil exports fell from 2.2 million barrels per day (bpd) to a mere 7,00,000 bpd, with Iran’s economy actually shrinking by 5.5 per cent. This trend has continued. Despite these sanctions, Iran has expanded its influence across its neighbourhood, challenging Saudi-US policies effectively in Syria, while finding itself on the same side as the Americans in confronting the ISIL challenge in Iraq.

Practical perspectives

While the Obama administration recognised that an adversarial Iran will be a thorn in its flesh if things are not sorted out, the Iranians realised that their larger national interests are better served by accommodation on the nuclear issue, which is not seen as surrender. The broad parameters of the framework agreed upon recently in Lausanne meet these requirements. Iran has agreed to restrict its uranium enrichment 3.67 per cent — adequate for civilian use, but well below weapons grade. It has installed 19,000 centrifuges for enrichment, with around 10,000 currently in use. One of its underground facilities, located at Fordow, near the city of Qom, will stop all enrichment for 15 years. There will be similar restrictions on Iran’s only plutonium reactor. Iran will also have to limit its research and development activities in a manner that precludes quick weaponisation and grant access for comprehensive inspections of its nuclear activities by the IAEA.

In return for the restrictions that Iran has agreed to, the US and other permanent members of the Security Council, together with the members of the European Union, would lift nuclear-related sanctions on Iran. This would bring huge relief to Iran and lead to a restoration of its oil sales, and promote investments in its vital oil and gas sectors. While the framework for the nuclear deal has been agreed upon, the exact sequencing of the lifting of sanctions still remains to be finalized This is not going to be an easy task, but will have to be completed by June 30, if further sanctions proposed by the US Senate Banking Committee are to be pre-empted. President Obama is going to have a very difficult time getting these proposals endorsed by the US Senate, where the Republican majority and even quite a few in his own Democratic Party remain implacably hostile. On the other hand,, he would like to see the ending of sanctions on Cuba and Iran that he has wisely promoted, as a “legacy” of his presidency.

Israel’s objections

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has emerged as the most formidable opponent of the proposed nuclear deal, claiming that its adoption would set the stage for the destruction of Israel by a nuclear Iran. Netanyahu enjoys the support of not only powerful Jewish groups in the US, but also of Sunni Arab countries led by Saudi Arabia. Interestingly, what we are now witnessing is the strengthening of a Saudi-led, Egypt-backed grouping of Sunni Islamic countries, working in tandem with Israel, to curb Iranian influence. However, several members of the Israeli security establishment do not share Netanyahu’s dire forebodings about the Iran nuclear deal. Israel is estimated to possess an arsenal of around 200 nuclear weapons. It strains one’s credulity how a hypothetical Iranian arsenal of a few nuclear weapons, after three decades, can dare to pose a threat.

The end of sanctions against Iran will benefit India significantly. It will substantially boost

our exports of refined petroleum products and open the doors to investments in Iran’s oi and natural gas sector, with prospects for an undersea gas pipeline. A normalization of Iran-US relations will also clear the deck for dealing jointly with Taliban-style extremism and terrorism across our western borders.

(Published in thehindu.com/opinions)

Making Of A New World Order : Rise of China

If one needed any more proof of the new world order emerging, it was on full display in March-end.

With the deadline looming for founders’ membership of the China-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, Washington’s major European allies rushed in ignoring its warnings. The most telling action was that of the UK, once the co-architect with the US of the Bretton Woods system. It scrambled to join the Chinese bank, explicitly designed to challenge the World War II-era global financial architecture. Leaders in Washington were stunned that their transatlantic “cousins” did not even consult them before rushing to sign up with AIIB.

Ever since China announced the creation of AIIB with its $50 billion initial investment, the US has expressed concerns overs the absence of international standards of transparency, policies to support the creditworthiness of borrowers and environmental sustainability. It publicly worried that AIIB would weaken the institutions of the World Bank and the IMF. Despite such concerns, many friends and allies — including India, Singapore, the Philippines, Thailand — joined the bank. Britain, Germany, France and Italy also rushed to sign up. An embarrassed Washington publicly criticised London, expressing its misgivings “about a trend toward constant accommodation of China”. 

Washington should not have been surprised. Beijing’s growing economic clout has been on display ever since the 2008 financial crisis shook Western economies. The fact that China, along with fellow rising economies India and Brazil, has been denied its due share of voting rights in the IMF and leadership of the World Bank, has given it additional impetus to seek its own avenues of influence. Beijing has emerged as a serial founder of economic institutions as well as promoter of initiatives such as the $41-billion BRICS development bank, the Central Asian Silk Road Belt and the New Maritime Silk Road backed by a $40-billion fund. The launch of AIIB was generally welcomed by Asian neighbours, largely starved of the large-scale capital needed to build critical infrastructure.

In its early years, the Obama administration had expressed a desire to rectify the disconnect between new economic realities and the increasingly sclerotic system established at Bretton Woods. But its ability to pursue such over-the horizon initiatives has been snuffed out by stiff opposition from a Congress increasingly dominated by small-government, isolationist-leaning Republicans. The US has thus been left, without even its closest allies, to defend an outdated system that even it knows needs to radically reform. While the politics in Washington has only permitted one policy direction — namely, vetoing China — Beijing has steadily built its economic influence in Europe. In doing so, it has successfully driven a wedge between the US and the European Union as well as between European countries.

Even in Asia, where America’s allies have cause for concern over Chinese assertiveness over airspace and the high seas, there is limited faith in the US willingness to come to their aid. Many who would normally count on the reliability of the US military deterrent to keep China at bay have begun to hedge their bets. After initially staying away from the Chinese sponsored AIIB, major American allies like Australia and South Korea have hinted at changing their minds. Only Japan, which is facing direct Chinese territorial challenges, has been steadfast in refusing to join the bank.

The decision by the British and other European countries to join China’s new bank may one day be seen as the last straw on the back of the aging and beleaguered camel that is the post-war economic system. With the western alliance seemingly in disarray, and China consolidating its economic dominance with savvy new political maneuvering, a New World Order may truly be upon us. Mindless partisan politics in Washington and political opportunism in Europe have handed China the leadership crown on a platter.

The author is editor-in-chief of YaleGlobal Online, published by the MacMillan Center, Yale University (This story was published in BW | Businessworld Issue Dated 20-03-2015)

GREECE - EUROPE AND THE FUTURE FOR SYRIZA GOVERNMENT

Let us begin with some jottings from history. In our imagination Greece occupies the bedrock of key Western ideas with its first city states and the idea of democracy, but that was ancient Greece. Modern Greece, as we know, has had an important place in Europe after it emerged breaking free from the Ottoman empire in the 1820s with the intervention of France, Britain and Russia. A very poor and essentially rural country then with a limited state under the deep sway of corrupt elites. Located at the confluence of Southern Europe and the Balkans, it was deeply marked by wars with Turkey (also a traumatic transfer of populations agreement with Turkey), a far Right dictatorship in the mid 1930s, the German occupation, its own civil war till 1949. Post civil-war Greece of the 1950s and 1960s remained authoritarian and underdeveloped. The United States called the shots in these Cold War years and then came a spell of dictatorship from 1967 to 1974 to pre-empt the rise of the Left. Greeks have had it very hard and have a great tradition of resistance acknowledged in Europe.

Europe was marked by widespread anti-fascist resistance to overcome the wars that had destroyed and economically drained its people; peace was then seen as crucial for democracy. Communists were at the forefront of the struggle against the colonels’ regime in Greece, in particular the Athens Polytechnic uprising of 1973. Repression of the uprising led to mass mobilisation that resulted in the overthrow of the dictatorship. The 1974 democratic and peaceful transition in Greece was hailed across Europe. It had alternating governments of the Centre-Left PASOK and the New Democracy Conservatives as the two principal political actors.

In 1992 Greece (along with post-Franco Spain and Portugal) signed the Maastricht Treaty and in 2001 it joined the Eurozone—countries with a common currency. Greece has been in the thick of its most severe economic crisis since 2010. The backdrop for this crisis dates to the 2008 financial meltdown that affected the world economy and the Eurozone. Across Europe the economic crisis has fuelled the rise of quick fix, ‘anti-political’ and ‘anti-systemic’ movements and also of the far Right while taking the sheen of the old established mainstream political parties leading to loss of influence. The story of decline of the old Left parties of Europe is independent of this and that started in the 1980s and reached its zenith in the crisis years starting 2007 on.

There has been much excitement among Left circles in Europe and across the world ever since a coalition of the far Left Syriza formed a government in Greece. Syriza is a broad network of political activists from different currents of the far Left, the feminists, ecologists, anti corruptioniks and all of the resistance struggles against austerity of recent years as part of it.

The origins of Syriza go back to the period 2004-2008, the Coalition of the Radical Left, developed through the past years marked by crisis, but expanded its popularity in a somewhat alarming way in 2011. The open secret here is that during the long drawn 2011 Syntagma Square occupations in Athens, Leftwing anti-imperialists and ultra-nationalists rubbed shoulders on the same side in a toxic entente. This has created a short-term spill-over effect where the Right/Left, Left/Right axis appear in a blurred spectrum with a shifting base in crisis-marked Greece.

By the 2012 elections, the Coalition of the Radical Left, Syriza, went from having five per cent to 27 per cent of the votes and making it the second-biggest party in Greece. In the January 2015 elections Syriza won 36.3 per cent votes giving it 149 seats in the 300-seat Greek parliament. It had to tie up with sovereigntyist Right-wing ANEL party [Independent Greeks] to obtain the majority required to form the government; as a result the new government has a rabidly reactionary Defence Minister. Syriza’s own Foreign Minister is a nutty ideologue of the ‘patriotic Left’ (formerly with the still unadulterated Stalinist Communist Party of Greece, the KKE).

Europe’s old Left parties, which were mass parties, have sunk in popularity and ceded ground to the far Right parties that are quite popular with the labouring classes (an uncomfortable reality mostly unacknowledged by the Left). The two though share ‘national sovereignty’ as the common repertoire and a rejection of the Eurozone and espouse economic autarchy vis-a-vis the

European economic union as a solution. We have seen something similar in and around the world where the Left and Right came to share a common language with regard to globalisation.

The past few years has seen a number of governments in Greece collapse while trying to implement a slew of economic austerity measures imposed by the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund (the Troika). The scale of the crisis has been enormous leading to the collapse of the basic social infrastructure in Greece, to the denial of access to health care for three million people, quite dramatic for a European country with a population of 11 million.

According to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) figures of March 2014, 30 per cent of the Greek population live below the poverty line and 17 per cent of the people are unable to meet their daily food requirements. Umpteen media reports have described the huge increase in disease, suicide and preventable death. A large social crisis emerged, also providing fertile ground for the rise of the far Right and neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party; they went about distributing food to the needy while pushing ultra-nationalism. (Half a million people voted for it.)

The election of a pro-poor Left Government committed to oppose neo-liberal policies and adjustment measures resulting in mass unemploy-ment has the airs of a “Greek spring” with vast support of the population, larger than its real strength. Syriza’s opposition to externally imposed austerity policies is formulated in simple terms of defending national sovereignty against an outsider—the Troika. Syriza’s political campaign has relied a great deal on a patriotic and populist idiom, deploying a ‘saving-the-nation’ device and tapped into the vast reservoir of resentment within Greece. (It is a matter of history now that in 1979-80, the iconic founder and leader of PASOK, Andreas Papandreou, had opposed membership to both the EEC and NATO saying they were part of the same syndicate; but those were different times.)

However, it accepts that political action in and against the European Union is the route to take. In a bold and internationalist stance, the Syriza has broken with the anti-European rhetoric of the old Left and has opposed an exit from the Euro, saying it will be disastrous for the future of Europe. But they are caught in a vortex as they try to negotiate their way with bankers and EU

officialdom. The size of the Greek public debt is gigantic—323 billion Euros— and the hands of the Left Government are tied to prevailing economic agreements across Europe. Syriza is arguing for a bailout package with the EU that would create a new solidarity in Europe based on fair fiscal, and social and labour policies. Millions of people haven’t been paid wages, pensions and unemployment benefits. Discontent has chiselled space for acceptance of violence in daily

politics. Syriza, while it gets down to providing economic relief to citizens, must now to draw the line without fear of breaking its ties with the street, by not closing its eyes to banalisation of xenophobia and anti-outsider/immigrant sentiment. It is an explosive situation. In a time of economic and social unrest the European Union was awarded the 2012 Nobel Prize for keeping the Peace and Tolerance in Europe. Be that as it may, Europe cannot look away from the

serious social crisis in Greece; it has a special responsibility to come up with a social Marshall plan.

Tucked within the Greek turmoil has been another crisis that has been spinning out of control—xenophobic violence against migrants and asylumseekers, on Roma, on Gays and on Leftists, mob violence against migrants from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Pakistan, North and sub-Saharan Africa; these have been witnessed right through the years 2013 and 2014.

EU officials have agreed to extend the Greek economic bailout for four months at the end of February 2015, allowing the nation a little breathing space not to impose new austerity measures, but also requiring Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras and co. to continue paying back the European Union. The Syriza Government’s economists are framing—with the Troika breathing down their necks—proposals to expand the income generation of the Greek state and reduce its expenditure. At the same time, the new Greek Government is moving to raise pension and the minimum wage levels and ending the previous government’s privatisation programme. A very daunting task. Syriza has come up with its first proposed legislation to partly deal with the humanitarian crisis, but so far it has ducked the class question with regard to structural inequalities in Greece to craft practicable alternatives expected by the movements of the unemployed, poor and disenfranchised that brought Syriza to power. This can be counter-productive in the long run.

In Greece’s economic pyramid, the big untouchables have been the Greek Orthodox Church, always exempt from paying taxes on its vast properties, and The shipping oligarchs who wield immense power and evade taxes and influence political futures. Syriza plans to tax the rich and clamp down on tax evasion, as part of austerity measures; some of these may not pass with the EU. Moreover Greece’s immensely powerful shipping magnates, faced with a property tax dragnet, are likely to fund any forces that undermine and bring down Syriza. The beleaguered far Right Golden Dawn party is likely to see a rise in its funding from dubious sources to destabilise Greece and tie down Syriza.

Syriza’s Left project will certainly have mass popular support to stave off opposition from the wealthy oligarchs inside Greece, but it cannot use its popular support to challenge the unfair demands of the European monetarists in the driving seat at the EU. Syriza has the goodwill and support of a wide number of intellectuals from across Europe. It must therefore internationalise

the campaign across Europe to get support from social movements, trade unions etc. for organising giant protests against austerity in Brussels, Berlin or Paris.

But the prime responsibility for this will have to be shouldered by the European Left. The Spanish, French, Italian and German democrats, labour organisers and social justice campaigners should jointly organise mass actions to hold back the “Troika” from strangling the government in Greece. The common interest of Europe is at stake: today it is Greece, tomorrow it will be other countries. It is difficult to say how long the Syriza Government will survive in Greece and whether it will be successful; but if this is looked at only as a national problem and not taken to be an opportunity by the Left groups across Europe everyone will miss the bus. A failure of the Syriza Government will certainly open the floodgates in terms of rise in the social and electoral prospects of the far Right formations within Greece. Let us not forget that Golden Dawn had had 21 MPs in parliament and got some seven per cent of votes. Elsewhere in Europe too we are already seeing a phenomenal rise of ultra-nationalist extremist forces.

An intense cross-border European solidarity can help shift the question of national sovereignty into a call for democratisation and a Europeanised economic policy. The EU has to stop being a technocratic instrument of economic policing and become socially accountable to the people. A whole new model is needed to deal with the crisis across Europe, the public debt burden and a common poverty and social alleviation programme should be Europeanised without leaving it to national governments. A radical new Euro- Left strategic vision is the key here: A basic requirement would be to shelve the age-old baggage of Left nationalism. It should campaign for a Europe-wide common approach so that the EU doesn’t treat each affected country in a piecemeal manner by placing the burden of crisis separately. It should resist all calls for pre-Schengen closed borders within Europe. It must also actively mobilise to face head-on the growing mutation of nationalist sentiments into fascist hysteria—a grave danger to Europe.

Nurtured and educated by the groundswell of radical grassroots movements against austerity, a new Trans-European Left alliance can (re)emerge as a popular force among the precarious layers of the new labouring poor, not just its traditional forte—the proletariat; with enough bargaining power to refashion a Europe that isn’t just in the service of big elites and capital. Will they rise to the occasion? This isn’t about capture of state power but about capture of people’s imaginations, the Left’s own imagination and energies that connect the local, national struggles with common European (and international) ones. The continued economic crisis is undermining Europe’s

common political and economic future, it is time to take the bull by the horns before it is too late; or else nationalists, populists, and isolationists will have a field day.

The author is a Left-leaning activist who spent several decades in France and

runs the South Asia Citizens Web [http://sacw.net]

US - IRAN TALKS REACHING IDES OF MARCH

The US-Iran negotiations have successfully crossed the boulder that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu threw in the way via his outreach to the American lawmakers. The conclusion can be safely drawn after Netanyahu’s speech that neither do the US lawmakers feel emboldened to enact new legislation intended to complicate the US-Iran talks nor is President Barack Obama feeling browbeaten to backtrack on his policy toward Iran.

Surprisingly, after all the brouhaha in the recent weeks, Netanyahu failed to rally the political class in Washington behind his thesis that a deal with Iran is only going to punctuate Tehran’s inexorable march toward clandestinely developing nuclear weapons. On the other hand, his theatrical address before the US Congress has raised such political dust and has proved to be so divisive an intervention in American politics—and added, equally, to the reality that the majority public opinion in the US favours an Iran deal—that a question mark can be out on the sheer efficacy of the Senate even passing a bill requiring Obama to submit any agreement with Iran for congressional

approval.

All that the Republican-dominated Congress may end up having will be the reserve power (which it already wields) to delay by an year or two the permanent lifting of sanctions against Iran if a deal is reached which, of course, can also be circumvented through executive action by the President to

waive the sanctions temporarily.

To be sure, there was a discernible swagger in Secretary of State John Kerry’s remarks to the media following his latest round of talks with his Iranian counterpart Mohammad Zarif in Montreux, Switzerland. Kerry claimed “some progress” at the latest round but added the caveat that “there are still significant gaps and important choices to be made”. He seemed to hint at an “increased breakout time” as something that the US is seeking but is yet unsure of it finding acceptability in Tehran. Simply put, we will have to wait till March 15 to find out when the next round of talks is slated to take place. In this case, however, the Ides of March do not necessarily evoke the notoriously dark mood in William Shakespeare’s time, but instead from Kerry’s tone would seem to hark back to the late antiquity signifying the celebratory day it used to be for Romans marking the\ ceremonies of the new year and the expulsion of the old year.

Indeed, the fact that Kerry left for Riyadh to take the Saudi leadership into confidence and to brief his GCC counterparts (who are assembling in Riyadh to hear him out) as well as his travel plan thereafter to proceed to Europe to confabulate with his British, French and German counterparts in the weekend

would suggest that while it is “certainly possible” (as Kerry put it) that the talks may not ultimately yield any deal on time, the odds are possibly moving in favour of a deal being reached.

Ambassador M.K. Bhadrakumar was a career diplomat in the Indian Foreign

Service. His assignments included the Soviet Union, South Korea, Sri Lanka,

Germany, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Kuwait and Turkey. www.mainstreamweekly.net

The discreet silence on the NPT

The discreet silence on the NPT
A. Vinod Kumar
March 02, 2015

Roughly two months from now, over 190 member states will assemble in New York for the 9th Review Conference (RevCon) of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), and the fourth since its indefinite extension in 1995. As a quinquennial event, the RevCon is supposed to review the functional health of the Treaty, resolve its shortcomings and update it according to the times, in order to progress towards its objectives. However, unlike the previous RevCon in 2010, and many earlier versions, there is no hype or happening this time around – either in the non-proliferation circuit, prominent world capitals or among civil society groups – on the state of the Treaty, the prospective nature of debate at the RevCon, the future course of action that has to be agreed upon or other systemic issues that had traditionally confronted the Treaty’s functioning.

This is in sharp contrast to the cacophony witnessed during the months running up to the 2010 RevCon. What does this signal? Does this indicate that the Treaty is now in the pink of health? Or does it suggest the advent of a post-proliferation world? Assuming that many deficiencies of the Treaty continue to persist, will there be a fresh impetus for structural reforms? Or does the current lull indicate continuance of the status quo? Above all, will the coming RevCon slip into a ritualistic event with no concrete outcomes expected?

A vision gone astray
The 2010 RevCon came after a decade of tumultuous developments coinciding with or accentuated by the George W. Bush presidency. The non-proliferation regime was in a state of perpetual crisis with recurring cases of deviance by countries like Iran, which seemed to be on the verge of going nuclear, an ever-defiant North Korea, which exited the Treaty and tested nuclear weapons in 2006 and 2009, and the looming threat of terror groups accessing resources for weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Bush’s vision of tackling this spectrum through a new framework of proactive counterproliferation initiatives, with emphasis on coercive use of force, had put immense stress on the regime, with traditional mechanisms like the NPT being relegated to irrelevance.

Barack Obama took over the US presidency a year before the Revcon with the promise of reversing the muchcriticized Bush Doctrine and reinstating the centrality of the NPT-oriented order. In a landmark speech at Prague in April 2009, Obama rekindled hopes for the total elimination of nuclear weapons, though prevising its improbability in his lifetime, by promising to revive and strengthen all those means and measures that will lead towards this objective.1 He vowed to strengthen the NPT by garnering “more resources and authority for international inspections” and providing for “real and immediate consequences for countries caught breaking the rules or trying to leave the treaty without cause” – the apparent reference being to North Korea and Iran.2

The Prague moment symbolised the Obama administration’s impendent crusade on the NPT, though ending with a dismaying outcome at the 2010 RevCon. Months before the event, then US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had promised a 21st century version of the NPT, even indicating that India will be a full partner at the high table.3 Obama stretched this imagination further when he chaired a special session of the UN Security Council (UNSC) that passed Resolution 1887. Among other things, this resolution exhorted states to “pursue negotiations on effective measures relating to nuclear arms reduction and disarmament,” and for “a Treaty on general and complete disarmament.”4 Many construed this reaffirmation of Article VI as not just an indicator of Obama’s resolve to revive the NPT, but also probably propose a new standalone disarmament or elimination treaty at the 2010 RevCon.

No such revolution happened, however. Instead, the US delegation spearheaded efforts to dilute the
recommendations of the RevCon’s Main Committee for a new disarmament plan, which included “convening an international conference in 2014 to finalise a roadmap for the complete elimination of nuclear weapons within a specified timeframe by means of a universal, legal instrument.”5 The P-5 forced a Subsidiary Revision to remove all timelines and discard the conference plan, and instead confined the language on their commitments to “promptly engage” to “accelerate concrete progress on steps leading to nuclear disarmament.” The US action not just subverted the disarmament momentum at the RevCon but also punctured Obama’s grand vision. That no subsequent initiatives were made to redeem the Treaty, or for that matter the CTBT or FMCT, underlines the insurmountable gap between ideational posturing and actual policymaking. No wonder then that the US has no particular agenda or promising initiative to put forward on the eve of the 2015 RevCon.

The US Bureau of International Security and Non-Proliferation webpage lists three documents to highlight Washington’s contribution to the upcoming RevCon: the joint statement of the London P-5 Conference of February 2015,6 a Report of the USA Pursuant to Actions of the 2010 RevCon,7 and a speech by the Under Secretary for Arms Control and International Security, Rose Gottemoeller, at Prague in December 2014.8 All three have one common character – emphasising the commitment of the United States, and the Nuclear Weapon States, to the NPT. The P-5 document goes a step forward to underline their commitment to the 2010 RevCon’s Action Plan (a document which they diluted), the long-term disarmament measures enshrined in that document, as well as of earlier RevCons. The Report to the 2010 Action Plan largely acts as a face-saver by describing the reductions of America’s nuclear arsenal, shifting to a credible deterrent with the lowest number of nuclear weapons and reducing the role of nuclear weapons in the US defence posture. The Report lists the trimming of the stockpile to around 82 per cent since the NPT’s entry into force; capping the stockpile to no more than 1550 warheads deployed (in sync with the New START); restricting the arsenal to 400 deployed
ICBMs, 240 SLBMs and 60 nuclear bombers; de-MiRVing (ICBMs carrying only single war-heads), and so on.

Gottemoeller’s speech is, however, a testimony to why the US approach is the most practical way towards disarmament. Affirming that only “multiple concurrent paths” could lead to the goal of total elimination, Gottemoeller insisted that the US reliance on calibrated steps, including NPT, CTBT and FMCT, is the most realistic route, instead of “amorphous” efforts like the Nuclear Weapons Convention (NWC) or a “fixed timeline for elimination.” Though given as a message to the Vienna Conference on the Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons, this was a rare articulation of the US rejection of the NWC and other alternative routes suggested by countries like India. Gottemoeller also announced a new initiative – the International Partnership for Nuclear Disarmament Verification – probably the only significant US intervention in the run-up to the RevCon, but without expounding upon its utility.

Ukraine on the edge again

Ukraine on the edge again

With the failure of the two warring sides to honour the Minsk ceasefire agreements, the civil war in Ukraine is threatening to escalate into a bigger conflict involving Russia and the U.S. By JOHN CHERIAN

WITHIN DAYS AFTER THE MINSK II CEASEFIRE agreement was signed, it was clear that the guns were not likely to go silent in Ukraine in the immediate future. Both sides in the raging civil war, which has been going on for almost a year now, are blaming each other for breaking a short-lived truce, which had raised hopes of a more durable peace in a conflict that has claimed 5,600 lives and rendered more than a million people homeless. According to the agreement signed on February 12 in Minsk, the capital of Belarus, the two sides were to end hostilities within 72 hours. The agreement, signed after many hours of intensive talks involving the leaders of Russia, France, Germany and Ukraine, was similar to the one signed in September 2014 in Minsk.

  

   German Chancellor Angela Merkel played a key role in the latest negotiations, having come to believe that the situation in Ukraine can only be solved diplomatically and not militarily as some in the United States administration feel. She shuttled between Washington, Moscow and Kiev in her bid to get the two sides in Ukraine to agree to a ceasefire. Although Germany

supported the Barack Obama administration in its efforts to effect an illegal regime change in Ukraine in 2014, Angela Merkel has resisted U.S. moves to further militarise the conflict. She also saw to it that western Europe remained united behind Germany on the issue. Many European Union (E.U.) states had unwillingly supported the tough U.S.-led sanctions on Russia. Germany and Italy, among other countries, are dependent on Russian gas to power their economies. A war at their doorstep is the last thing they want in recession-hit Europe.

    The key point in the ceasefire agreement was the withdrawal of the opposing forces from their current positions and the creation of a buffer zone. In recent weeks, civilians, as has been the case throughout the conflict, bore the brunt of the war. Both sides targeted heavily populated urban areas. The attack on a trolley bus carrying passengers in Donetsk in the third week of January, which claimed 13 lives, triggered intensive fighting and sounded the death knell for the Minsk I agreement. The cities of Donetsk and Luhansk have been subjected to artillery shelling by the Ukrainian Army since early January. The military assault started after the U.S. Congress passed the “Ukraine Freedom Support Act” and soon after the visit of the head of the U.S. Armed Forces to Europe, Lieutenant General Ben Hodges, in January. By early February, the Ukrainian Army started retreating after the rebels started gaining ground steadily following the capture of the airport in Donetsk.

      Many Ukraine watchers believe that another ceasefire was in the interest of the central government in Kiev. A prolonged ceasefire would give the Ukrainian Army the much-needed respite and time to rearm. President Petro Poroshenko told a Ukrainian television station that he had used the first ceasefire situation to rearm and bolster the Army. Under the terms of the latest agreement, a 30-kilometre buffer zone should have been in place by now and all heavy weapons should have been relocated outside this zone. Both sides were mandated to start talks about meaningful decentralisation of power, a long-standing demand of the Russian-speaking people of eastern Ukraine. The rebels, on their part, reiterated their commitment to the unity of Ukraine as a federal state. It was agreed that rebel leaders would not be prosecuted by the central government and that there would be an exchange of hostages and illegally held prisoners. Both sides also agreed that international humanitarian aid would be allowed to flow unimpeded into areas devastated by the conflict. The two sides also agreed to adopt in 2015 a new Constitution that would guarantee federalism.

   The ongoing conflict has destroyed Ukraine’s industrial base. The country’s economy, which was never on a strong footing, has shrunk by 8 per cent and is floundering. The rebels in the east conceded the government’s right to control and police the country’s borders, even in the conflict zones. The Russian side conveyed to the Western leaders in Minsk that Moscow had “full respect for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine”. When the latest agreement was signed, Debaltseve in the Donetsk province was already surrounded by the eastern rebel forces. The control of the city is of tactical importance for the rebel forces as it is a transportation hub connecting the eastern cities of Luhansk and Donetsk. Poroshenko evidently hoped that the agreement would allow his beleaguered troops in the city to hold on. The representatives of eastern Ukrainians offered safe passage for the Ukrainian troops out of the city. Aleksander Zakarchenko, a rebel leader, warned that the terms of the ceasefire agreement did not cover Debaltseve. “Any attempt by Ukrainian armed forces to unblock Debaltseve will be regarded as a violation of the Minsk agreements,” he said. But Poroshenko had insisted that the Army was in control of the city and ordered the troops to keep on fighting. Barely a week later, the Ukrainian Army had to beat a hasty and blood-soaked retreat. Poroshenko now claims that he ordered a “planned and orderly” retreat of the 8,000 Ukrainian troops from the city. The Defence Ministry is claiming that 80 per cent

of the troops have returned safely.

    The Ukrainian military seems to have suffered a huge setback. Poroshenko claims that the casualties number only in double digits. He reacted to the military setback by calling for the deployment of E.U. and United Nations peacekeepers along Ukraine’s border with Russia. Moscow protested against the demand immediately. Deployment of E.U. troops on the border would bring them in direct confrontation with Russian forces. The Organisation of Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) has been given the task of supervising the ceasefire. OSCE observers are already on the ground monitoring the ceasefire. Earlier, Russian President Vladimir Putin issued a call to the Ukrainian Army to stop firing. He asked the pro- Russian militias separately to allow Ukrainian soldiers to leave the town peacefully. Putin has downplayed the fall of Debaltseve and has urged the two sides in the conflict to “fully” implement the ceasefire agreement he negotiated with the leaders of Germany and France.

    The Donetsk People’s Republic Forces, which has captured Debaltseve, claim that more than a thousand Ukrainian forces lost their lives in the fighting. Poroshenko is already facing difficult questions about his decision not to pull out troops immediately after the agreement was signed. In western Ukraine, young people are refusing to be conscripted into the Army. The disenchantment with politicians, who took over Kiev after the Maidan (independence square in Kiev) putsch in 2014, seems to be growing. Poroshenko’s approval ratings have taken a beating, with opinion polls showing that 46 per cent of the people feel he is not doing a good job. Unemployment and inflation are at an all-time high and the gross domestic product has shrunk by 6.5 per cent.

     Many of those fighting alongside the Ukrainian Army are extreme right-wing nationalists belonging to neo-Nazi groups such as the Right Sector. A militia known as the Azov Battalion wears Nazi insignia on the uniforms and helmets. Putin, while on a state visit to Hungary in the third week of February, said he had credible information that Western powers had started supplying lethal weapons to Ukraine. He said the flow of weapons would increase the casualty rates “but the outcome will not change”. The Obama administration has tried to pin the blame on Russia and the eastern Ukrainian rebels for the events that have occurred since the signing of the Minsk II agreement. Ashton Carter, who recently took over as the U.S. Defence Secretary, said he was inclined to endorse the plan for dispatching more lethal weapons to the Ukrainian Army. The European leaders argued against such a move, fearing that the conflict might spiral out of control.

   There are genuine fears in the international community that the conflict in Ukraine could escalate into a bigger conflict involving Moscow and Washington. Obama said he was seriously considering the option of sending more sophisticated weapons to Ukraine. He has been warning Russia of adverse consequences if it supported the mainly Russian-speaking rebels in eastern Ukraine. Russia has denied that it has sent troops or heavy weaponry into Ukraine. Putin insists that only Russian 

volunteers are fighting in eastern Ukraine. But if the U.S. and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) go ahead and send lethal weapons to Ukraine, Russia will not stand aside. The war of words between the U.S. and Russia is escalating although the fighting in Ukraine has subsided following the rebels’ capture of Debaltseve. A long-term solution to the Ukraine crisis is possible if the West distances itself from the goal of incorporating Ukraine into the E.U. and the NATO. Ukraine has to revert to its “non-aligned” status. Otherwise, the civil war will turn into a “frozen conflict”, like the ones in Georgia, Azerbaijan and Moldova, to name a few.

(Published in Frontline.in)

Tough transition for Saudi Kingdom

Tough transition for Saudi Kingdom

The new succession order, announced with unusual speed after King Abdullah’s passing away, prepares the ground for a generational shift in the Gulf kingdom. By JOHN CHERIAN

The death of Saudi Arabia's absolute ruler, Abdullah bin Abdulaziz, on January 23 brings to an end an era in which the richest Gulf country played a pivotal role in regional politics. Although King Abdullah formally assumed the throne only in 2005, he was the de facto ruler after his half-brother King Fahd was laid low by a debilitating stroke in the mid-1990s. Since the death of Ibn Saud, the country’s founder, in 1953, the throne has alternated between his 53 sons. Abdullah has been

succeeded by another brother of his, Crown Prince Salman bin Abdulaziz al Saud. King Salman is said to be around 70 years old. The new Crown Prince, chosen by the “allegiance council” comprising members of the royal family, is the 68-year-old Prince Muqrin, the youngest son of King Saud. For the first time, however, a Deputy Crown Prince has been appointed.

The new succession order, announced with unusual speed, prepares the ground for a generational shift. The Deputy Crown Prince is the influential Interior Minister, Mohammed bin Nayyef. He is a grandson of King Saud. Nayyef spearheaded the fight against Al Qaeda, which launched many high-profile terror attacks in the kingdom in the past decade. The terrorist threat to the kingdom is likely to increase with the spectacular rise of the Islamic State (I.S.) in the region. A top Army general was among those killed in an I.S. attack on a Saudi border post in early January.

Saudi Arabia is part of the military alliance cobbled up by the United States to take on the I.S. King Abdullah wanted a similar alliance to take on the Syrian government. According to reports in the U.S. media, the late monarch was disappointed with President Barack Obama’s eleventh-hour decision to refrain from ordering military strikes against Syria in 2013. Senator John McCain, speaking to the U.S. media after the death of the Saudi King, said the Saudi Air Force was all set to launch raids on Syria in alliance with U.S. and French forces. Air strikes involving U.S. and Saudi war planes did

finally happen in Syria, but with the tacit agreement of the Syrian government as the targets were I.S.-held areas.

There was no love lost between the Saudi King and another Arab leader, Muammar Qaddafi of Libya. The two had famously got into a slanging match at an Arab League summit, with King Abdullah hurling the choicest epithets in chaste Arabic. The only republican leader in the region, King Abdullah apparently had a soft corner for former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. He blamed the U.S. for standing aside and letting street opinion prevail in Egypt. Saudi officials told the media that the King was so upset when Obama told him on the phone about the decision to distance the U.S. government from Mubarak that he abruptly ended the conversation. The ouster of Mubarak was even more unpalatable to the Saudi royalty as it led to democratic elections and the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood to power in the most influential and populous Arab country. The Saudis and their allies in the region then worked overtime to ensure that the mandate of the people was compromised.

The King ensured that the Saudi government provided the military government in Cairo the funds and aid necessary to keep the Egyptian economy afloat. He no doubt played a big role in persuading other Gulf monarchies to follow suit and take a tough line on the pro-democracy movements in the region.

Before the Egyptian revolution was crushed, the Saudis under the leadership of King Abdullah helped shore up the monarchy in neighbouring Bahrain. The predominantly Shia population of the small kingdom had been demanding free elections and more representation. There were widespread protests in the capital Manama in 2012 and 2013. The protests were put down with force. To ensure the continuance of the monarchy, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) sent in a “peacekeeping” force, which remains in place there even today. King Abdullah, as the WikiLeaks documents showed, viewed another neighbouring country, Iran, as an existential threat.

“Cut off the head of the snake” in Tehran, he urges the U.S. in one of the leaked texts. The late King wanted the U.S. to take military action against Iran. He saw an Iranian hand everywhere in the region, be it in Yemen, Lebanon or Bahrain. But for Iranian and Russian assistance to the government in Damascus in crucial military and diplomatic fronts, King Abdullah’s dream of effecting regime change in Syria would have materialised.

Despite Iran going out of its way to repair relations with the Saudi kingdom, the King never seemed to have overcome his hostility. For all practical purposes, the Saudi monarchy and the Israeli political establishment were united in their goal of keeping Iran isolated. Saudi Arabia and Israel are vehemently opposed to a nuclear deal between the U.S. and Iran. The religious hierarchy in Saudi Arabia, from which the monarchy draws much of its legitimacy to rule, views Shias as apostates. The sectarian divide, which has fuelled the wars in Iraq, Syria and other parts of the region, was widened by the sermons and public lectures of Saudi clerics operating under the benign eye of the monarchy.

The fundamentalist beliefs of the I.S. and other jehadist groups are deeply influenced by the Wahhabi ideology, which remains the cornerstone of the Saudi state. The House of Saud had formed an alliance with a cleric, Hassan Wahab, in the late 19th century. King Saud had in fact married one of his daughters. The I.S. uses Saudi-style textbooks in schools in the areas they control. The group’s penchant for beheading seems to be inspired by similar practices in Saudi Arabia. Thieves and drug dealers are routinely beheaded in Saudi Arabia. The Shia minority, which is around 15 per cent of the population of the kingdom, has for long felt discriminated. The Saudi establishment is fearful that a strong Iran could encourage legitimate Shia political aspirations in the kingdom.

Under King Abdullah, the Saudis did not give up their propensity to use “oil” as a weapon in geopolitics. The kingdom is the biggest producer of crude oil. One of the most important decisions taken by the Saudi monarch was to keep on pumping oil at the same levels despite gas prices slumping to record lows since the middle of last year. Many factors seem to have dictated the Saudi decision. The Saudis had tried to influence Russia in 2014 by offering to sign multibillion arms contracts. But Moscow has remained committed to the Syrian government. The continuing Saudi inaction as oil prices plummeted has adversely hit the Russian economy. Also hit is the struggling Iranian economy. Prices have slumped below $50 a barrel from $100 a barrel last year. The U.S.’ shale oil industry has no doubt taken a blow as a result of plummeting oil prices, but its nemesis in the region, the left-wing government in Venezuela, which depends on oil exports to subsidise its economy, is reeling from the impact.

The drop in oil prices has led to a $38.6-billion deficit in the kingdom’s 2015 budget. The new rulers will not have to worry in the short run as the country has $750 billion in reserve. King Salman has not given any indication that he will be reversing the current Saudi oil policy in a hurry. There are reports that the younger members of the royal family, who number in their thousands today, are not too happy with the former King’s policy of allowing oil prices to fall. As it is, oil experts have predicted that prices will never reach the three-figure mark anytime in the near future. Under King Abdullah, the Saudi government had introduced a $400-billion stimulus package in 2008. The crisis in the North American economy adversely affected the Saudi economy. In 2010, with the unemployment rate among Saudi nationals rising, the government introduced a $384-billion five-year development package. Public sector salaries were increased. But unemployment continues to be an issue in a country where half the population is below 25 years of age. In 2011, after the Arab Spring uprisings shook the foundations of many governments in the region, the Saudi government spent billions of

dollars to improve the living conditions and pay allowances to unemployed Saudi graduates.

Under King Abdullah, there were some incremental attempts at political reforms. Women, while still being prohibited from driving, were allowed to vote in closely supervised municipal elections. The media were allowed some latitude in criticising government and social policies. But during his reign, many political and human rights activists were jailed. In November last year, the King’s Advisory Council recommended that the government ease its curbs on women driving. But in the very

next month, two Saudi women were arrested for driving and were tried and sentenced in a court designated to try terrorists. Raif Badawi, a Saudi citizen, whose case has now become a cause célèbre, has been given a lengthy jail sentence along with a thousand lashes for running a website which dared to question the archaic religious laws governing the country. Last October, a special court sentenced a prominent Shia activist, Sheikh Nimr Bakr al-Nimr, to death for “disobeying the King”. His supporters claim that his only crime was demanding more rights for women and his compatriots along with democratic rights in the kingdom. The sentence has not been carried out so far following widespread international criticism.

Yemen in ferment

The new King will be facing many challenges. Yemen, with which Saudi Arabia shares a 1,700-kilometre-long border, is in ferment. The Saudis are busy constructing a border fence to keep poor Yemenis and infiltrators out of their kingdom. The rise of Houthis in Yemen is a matter of serious concern for Saudis. Houthis belong to a sect that is closer to Shias than to Sunnis. The Saudi Army engaged them on various occasions in the past, siding with the central government. But now the

tables have been turned, with Houthis controlling the capital and much of the country. In desperation, the Saudis are said to be funding and supplying arms to Sunni militant groups, which are sworn enemies of Houthis. The $4 billion in Saudi aid to

the impoverished country has been suspended. Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), which has its base in Yemen, is doing most of the fighting against Houthis. King Salman, according to a 2007 U.S. diplomatic cable released by WikiLeaks, is not in favour of the mild political reforms

in the kingdom and thinks they are ill-suited for a conservative country such as Saudi Arabia. He told the U.S. Ambassador that a solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict was a prerequisite for regional peace and stability. Obama cut short his tour to India to visit Saudi Arabia to offer his condolences. 

Despite differences on the approaches to be taken on Syria, Iran and other issues, U.S. and Saudi Arabia remain “staunch allies” in the “war against terrorism”. The U.S. is training Syrians in Saudi Arabia to take on the government in Damascus and the I.S. simultaneously. The Saudi government is insisting that both the I.S. and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad have to be defeated militarily. Washington is playing along with Riyadh even as it realises that the Assad government will be around over the long haul.

(Published in Frontline.in)

Responding with terror

Responding with terror

AIJAZ AHMAD

THE date of September 11 has a powerful resonance in the annals of modern history. 

Twenty-eight years ago on this date, the Central Intelligence Agency-sponsored coup of General Augusto Pinochet overthrew the democratically elected socialist government of

President Salvadore Allende in Chile and established a regime of terror which killed an estimated 35,000 people in the first few weeks and continued to brutalise Chilean society for some two decades. September 11 was also the date of the Camp David Accords which

signalled Egypt’s final surrender to American imperialism and Israeli Zionism, leaving the Palestinians at the mercy of the latter. And, September 11 was the day when George H. Bush, father of the current President of the United States, made his fateful speech to Congress announcing the war against Iraq—that supreme act of terror which killed an estimated 200,000 people in the course of that brief assault and which has led to the death of at least half a million Iraqi children over the next decade, thanks to the U.S.-dictated blockade of their country.

Betrayal of the Palestinians, the destruction of Iraq! One can reasonably assume that these two great devastations of the Arabo- Muslim world were vivid in the memory of those 19 hijackers on September 11 this year, when they commandeered four civilian aircraft owned by two major U.S. airlines, and smashed three of them into the World Trade Centre (WTC) and the Pentagon—nerve centres of U.S. financial and military power—while committing collective suicide in the process. The White House was probably to be struck by the fourth aircraft but something in the hijackers’ plan went awry. Over 6,000 innocent civilians from 60 countries—some 500 of them from South Asia alone, including the son of a close friend of this writer—died within a couple of hours in a calculated and hideous act of terrorism carried out with stunning technical precision.

This hijacking operation, carried out by less than two dozen individuals, was the largest attack on mainland United States in its history, larger than Pearl Harbour, while American armies, assassins and covert operators of all kinds have been active around the globe for

well over a century. And, because being at the receiving end of violence on their own soil was such a novel experience for the U.S. centres of power, this attack on a couple of buildings at the heart of the imperial centre produced effects that no amount of terror and destruction in the outposts—or even the secondary and tertiary centres—of the empire could have produced. An economy that was already slowing down went into a full-fledged downturn, and the week following the hijackers’ attack proved to be the worst in the history of U.S. finance

since July 1933, with the Dow Jones and the Nasdaq posting two-digit losses virtually every day and liquid assets losing $1.4 trillion of their value over the week. What happened was unspeakably hideous, cruel, senseless. The loss of thousands of precious lives, many of

them cut down in the flower of their youth, has neither a moral nor a political justification.

Taking advantage of the anger and the human anguish arising from the tragedy, and exploiting the fears and frustrations arising from the prospect of a massive economic recession, the U.S. administration moved quickly to plan a new, globalised, permanent war; to expound what amounts to a new doctrine of America’s right to use its might as it pleases; to expand the war-making powers of the presidency; to put in place a new regime of infinite surveillance; and to demolish whatever restraints had been introduced after the Vietnam War on America’s right to undertake assassinations and covert actions across the globe.

Congress swiftly passed a resolution authorising Bush to use wide powers in pursuit of this war on terrorism, asserting that “all necessary and appropriate force” could be used against nations, organisations and individuals. No nations or organisations were named, let alone individuals; the President could determine which one was to be attacked as he went along. Nor was there a time limit; he was authorised to act against present danger as well in anticipation of “future attacks”. The powers were in some ways wider than a mere

declaration of war could have bestowed, since such a declaration would name the country against which the war was to be waged.

Meanwhile, the Justice Department started putting together a package of proposed legislation giving the U.S. intelligence agencies much wider powers to wiretap telephones, enter into people’s Internet accounts, deport suspected immigrants, seize evidence from

suspects, including DNA samples, and obtain information from educational institutions, taxation records and a whole range of public and private agencies without a prior court order or a subsequent court review of the evidence. Attorney-General John Ashcroft is said to be actively considering permanent video surveillance in public places and issuing “smart cards” to all Americans, which the surveillance devices can read electronically so as to distinguish citizen from non-citizen, keep a record of the movements of citizens themselves in public places and to have quick access to personal data linked to each of the “smart cards”.

It is also being contemplated that certain immigrants, chosen by intelligence at will, be required to report their activities regularly, like ordinary criminals on bail, and that airport security personnel be authorised to interrogate passengers at will and do on-the-spot check

of their private baggage without having to explain why and what they are being suspected of.

Bush was blunt. The war is against a network of hundreds of thousands of people spread across some 60 countries, he said, and this war was, in his considered phrase, “a task that never ends”. Echoing John Foster Dulles, the rabid Foreign Secretary of the Eisenhower

years, who said that non-alignment was “immoral”, Bush too has put the whole world on notice: if you do not explicitly join us in this global crusade, we shall treat you as a hostile country! Enemies are lurking in thousands of little corners, in dozens of countries across

the globe, and America will choose its targets as well as its methods and timing of dealing with them as it goes along, according to its own convenience; every country must join up each time, or else it too becomes an enemy and perhaps the next target. This war —“unlike any we have ever seen,” he said—shall be perpetual but largely secret. Some of it shall be seen on television, he said, but much shall go unrevealed—even in success, he emphasised. Congressional leaders in Washington are now talking of putting the CIA “on a war footing” and cite with admiration the Israeli example of an open policy of assassinations without regard to legal niceties. Soon after the hijacked civilian planes smashed into the World Trade Centre, the dominant electronic media set out to identify all sorts of people as the culprits. 

The PLO and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine were the early favourites. By noon, the focus shifted to Osama bin Laden. By afternoon the channels were abuzz with the idea that bin Laden could not have done it without the diabolical expertise of Saddam Hussein. The focus on Iraq soon became so alarming that Secretary of State Colin Powell as well as Vice-President Dick Cheney and others were eventually forced to say on record that Iraq had nothing to do with it. Indeed, Powell has been the cool head in Washington, arguing that the U.S. ought not to go around shooting all over West Asia and should judiciously concentrate on one major target at a time, and that Afghanistan should be the first. He is also the one arguing that too much of an escalation against Iraq at this time, when the U.S. wants Arab governments to join it in a coalition against the Taliban, would be counterproductive.

Senior Pakistani statesman Niaz Naik revealed on the BBC a personal conversation he had had with Colin Powell well before the recent events, in which Powell had spelled out the set of U.S. demands which have now been presented to the spellbound television-watching

world as non-negotiable and a retaliation against the “attack on America”. These included that the Taliban hand over Osama bin Laden and, in Bush’s words “deliver to the U.S. authorities all the leaders of Al Qaeda.... Give to the U.S. full access to terrorist training

camps” — demands which the Taliban would find impossible to accede to even if it wanted to. The emphasis is significant: it is the United States, not some international tribunal or United Nations forces, which shall take custody of these people and places. The tactic

too is obvious: present non-negotiable and impossible demands, issue a short notice, and invade. That there shall be an invasion is clear, but there is still a far-reaching debate within the U.S. government as to what kind of invasion it would be.

Bush was careful enough to say that America’s enemy was that particular “terrorism” which “has global reach”. In other words, he is not particularly concerned with the great many varieties, which include the Irish Republican Army (IRA) in Ireland, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in Sri Lanka, and the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS) fraternity in India.

Nor is “fundamentalism” the issue: Taliban fundamentalism is bad but Saudi fundamentalism is good, and Bush himself of course speaks the language of that Christian fundamentalism which defines the Far Right in contemporary U.S. “Terrorism with global reach”, the designated enemy, is the one that challenges American power. Briefly put, “terrorism” is what comes when the communist Left and anti-colonial nationalism have both been defeated while the issue of imperialism remains unresolved and more important than ever. Hatred takes the place of revolutionary ideology. Privatised, retail

violence takes the place of revolutionary warfare and national liberation struggles. Millenarian and freelance seekers of religious martyrdom replace the defeated phalanx of disciplined revolutionaries. Un-reason arises where Reason is appropriated by imperialism

and is eliminated in its revolutionary form. There were no Islamic terrorists in Afghanistan before the Americans created them as a counterweight against the secular Left.

Islamism arose in Iran to fill that space which had been left vacant with the elimination of the secular, revolutionary Left by the CIAsponsored regime of the Shah. Islamic secret societies arose in Egypt after imperialism and Zionism combined to defeat Gamal Abdel Nasser’s secular nationalist project. The Hamas arose in Palestine because the cosmopolitan Palestinian nationalism was denied its dream of a secular state in the historic land of Palestine where Jew and Arab could live as equals. What gets called “terrorism with global reach” today is a mirror of defeat but also the monster that imperialism’s Faustian success made possible and which now haunts its own creator.

America can never defeat “terrorism with a global reach” because for all its barbarity and irrationality, religiously motivated “terrorism” is also a “sigh of the oppressed”, and if some Palestinians cheered it, that too was owed to the fact that even an “opiate of the people” is sometimes mistaken for the medicine itself. The only way to end this “terrorism” is to rebuild that revolutionary

movement of the Left whose place it occupies and with whose mantle it masquerades.

(The author wishes to register that he has written this essay with the memory of Taimur in his heart, a lovely boy who was last seen on the 94th floor of the World Trade Centre.)

(Published in Frontline.in)