Diplomacy & Crisis News

To mark the 20th anniversary of International Crisis Group, we are publishing a series of 20 essays by foreign policy leaders forecasting the “Future of Conflict”.

(Own report) - Disputes over US military provocations are accompanying the German chancellor's current visit to China. After a US Navy destroyer transited through the maritime waters claimed by Beijing near the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea, the Chinese government summoned the US ambassador. German government sources have confirmed that this conflict will play a role in the talks, Angela Merkel will hold today in Beijing, and expect discord. Berlin is already in a difficult position. The transformation of China's economy from an investment-driven to a consumer- and service-driven growth model will be of disadvantage to the German industry. "German capital goods and automobiles" will most likely "no longer enjoy the same levels of demand growth in China as previously," according to Sebastian Heilmann, Director of the Mercator Institute for China Studies (MERICS) in Berlin. Because of the structural transformation of China's economy, the "country’s demand for access to finance and currency markets, as well as general demand for service-related know-how" has increased massively. In this respect, Great Britain "is much better positioned than Germany." A "strategic shift is taking place in European-Chinese relations" - away from Berlin and towards London.

via Wall Street Daily

In the last fifteen years, the United States has spent a total of between $4–6 trillion on its wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, all the while running up its national debt, and damaging its international prestige. The root cause of these foreign entanglements, and America’s costly position as Middle Eastern hegemon, stems directly from the perceived need, since the 20th century, for any great power to control oil-rich areas of the planet. Meanwhile China may be on its way to being a hybrid leader that can avoid this type of overseas adventurism as it tries to rapidly abandon fossil fuels and modernize its unstable neighbors’ economies.

Internally, despite the serious drawbacks of corruption, massive pollution and uneven social benefits, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) strategy of buying off political discontent at home with economic development has broadly worked since the first pro-market reforms were initiated back in 1978. By any reasonable measure of human timeframes it has succeeded. GDP per capita in China stood at approximately $12,000 per person in 2015, when adjusted by purchasing power parity. While this conceals big disparities between provinces—and China’s growth has slowed significantly recently, to ‘only’ 7.4% in 2014—the CCP is still China’s undisputed ruling party. While rates of growth may be the lowest since 1990, personal incomes in China’s nine coastal provinces and cities have now roughly caught up with developed countries.

But to achieve all this economic growth, and to satisfy the consumer demand that has come with it, the CCP has overseen a huge increase China’s energy consumption. Coal consumption from domestic and foreign sources like Mongolia used to generate electricity skyrocketed from 1,500 million tons in 2000 to 4,500 million in 2014. Meanwhile oil imports for its booming transportation sector turned China into a net importer of fossil fuels by the early 1990s. In 2009, the country became the world’s second largest importer of petroleum products. It became the largest global energy consumer in 2011, and then passed the United States as the largest net importer of petroleum at the end of 2013.

The major danger for China is that as its thirst for energy grows it risks getting dragged into the same poisonous political conflicts that have dogged America since it allowed itself to be drawn into the Middle East under the Carter doctrine, and later Central Asia. Already over half of China’s total oil imports came from the Middle East and the country is finding its firms responding to the same market incentives as previous customers did before them. The Chinese market’s central importance to competing Middle Eastern producers will also incentivize them to maintain or expand their current export levels to the People’s Republic. China’s oil consumption growth accounted for about 43% of the world’s oil consumption growth in 2014 and was projected to account for more than one-fourth of the global oil consumption growth in 2015.

Even as the various threats to that supply attract the worried gaze of Chinese diplomats and security chiefs, finding the energy supplies to meet consumer and industrial demand has forced the wary CCP to raise its profile overseas as Chinese oil companies have ventured into countries where the Chinese state has been compelled to follow. Admirers have noted its grand strategy as well as plans to invest in developing troubled states like Pakistan. The latest example of this has been China’s contribution of peacekeeping troops to South Sudan, a template for a foreign policy in service to a business-driven diplomatic strategy. China has also been active in seeking to calm tensions in Central Asia, where pipelines crossing the region linking China to local suppliers, as well as Russia’s Siberian gas fields, are being mooted.

However the Chinese are also arriving as a superpower when efforts to wean consumers and industry off fossil fuels are bearing some potentially interesting fruit. When America was becoming a superpower, oil was the strategic resource par excellence. China’s rise coincides with a much wider array of energy resources and power generating options, if her leaders choose to take advantage of them. Wary of entanglements abroad, and watching with increasing concern the price tag that fossil fuel economic development has brought with it at home, there is reason to believe that Beijing is hedging its bets with its future energy polices.

China has already elaborated on targets it struck with the U.S. in November 2014 to cut its greenhouse gas emissions per unit of GDP by 60-65% from 2005 levels under a plan submitted to the United Nations ahead of the Paris climate change. China also said it would increase the share of non-fossil fuels as part of its primary energy consumption to about 20% by 2030. According to estimates by E3G, an environmental NGO, if successful this plan will see China install as much low-carbon energy as the whole of America’s electricity system capacity to date. A key test of its ability to meet these ambitious targets will be how effective its introduction of a national cap-and-trade system by 2017 is. Trials since 2013 have produced mixed results and even China’s authoritarian one party-state may struggle with the scale and complexity of the challenge.

While critics may be justified in voicing some skepticism towards a country with a track record for producing woefully inaccurate data, Beijing’s announcement stands in stark contrast to the political gridlock in the U.S. at the federal level over producing a national program for pricing carbon. There, fracking has driven a revival of the domestic U.S. oil industry and subsequently a lowering of the international market price as America’s Middle Eastern allies cut prices in response. Yet the U.S. remains militarily embedded in an unstable region, whose oil supplies it may no longer need to rely upon so heavily, and whose fossil fuel resources may be gradually on their way out in the coming decades. As rapidly developing renewable technologies provide the power to new devices designed to run off electric battery power, China seems to be the country with one eye on the future.

Economic modernization can go hand in hand with security—if Beijing moves away from a carbon-heavy model of energy generation and moves as far as possible towards meeting its energy needs from solar, wind and nuclear sources. Solar energy in particular is becoming a real affordable alternative for many (still) developing countries like China. Switching away from coal burning power plants to greener ways to generate power has long been a Chinese aim, as well as a stumbling block (with the Chinese version of the oil lobby leading the opposition). If it invests in green electricity now it can also be a key early beneficiary of a global move towards electric powered vehicles, which are already beginning to appear on the market. A decade or more long term project to map out and build a network of charging stations for electric cars and trucks would do a lot more good to boost China’s flagging economy then building more empty apartment blocks. It would also give China a valuable industry to export around the world.

By some measures China has already achieved the world’s largest economy and overtaken the U.S. as the world’s economic engine. Politically, it is far better placed to concentrate its resources and attention in the countries along its periphery whilst America spreads itself thinly, trying to pivot to Asia, contain Russia, and support its allies in Europe and the Middle East all at the same time. But the process of moving to a Sino-centric world order will take many decades and is not based on economic progress alone. A rising China still faces many internal and external challenges it must overcome before it can supplant the U.S. as the pre-eminent global power. Modern China’s leaders would continue to profit today if they managed to refrain from the type of aggressive foreign interventions that powers like France and Russia have lately joined the U.S. in making and spent more time thinking about how to charge and power their planes, ships, trains, cars and trucks with clean energy.

An earlier version of this article appeared here at Juan Cole’s Informed Comment website.

At the epicenter of the new escalation of Israeli-Palestinian violence is a deep dispute over Jerusalem's Holy Esplanade -- known to Jews as the Temple Mount, and to Muslims as the Haram al-Sharif, site of the Al-Aqsa Mosque.

via flickr kakhunwart

French television viewers were treated to high drama last Thursday night, as National Front leader Marine Le Pen bailed on France 2’s Des paroles et des actes (“Words and Deeds”) only a few hours before airing. The political debate show, which has already hosted her six times over the past four years, became a lightning rod for criticism from France’s mainstream parties before the broadcast. Resurgent Republicans leader Nicolas Sarkozy and Socialist Party head Jean-Christophe Cambadélis joined forces to protest the “excessive” airtime being allotted to Le Pen on French television. An impressive show of solidarity, given that not even the Charlie Hebdo attacks had been enough for Sarkozy to take Cambadélis’ calls in January.

While the France 2 fiasco capped a week of headlines for Marine Le Pen, whose trial for racist remarks in 2010 had been front-page news just two days prior, her National Front continues to gain ground in December’s regional elections (and in the 2017 presidential elections, where a third of French voters plan to vote for her). Marine, who herself leads the National Front’s candidates in the région of Nord-Pas-de-Calais, rejected the primetime invitation after her regional rivals (representing Sarkozy’s Republicans and François Hollande’s Socialist Party) were tacked onto the program. The concession to strict rules on equal airtime prompted Le Pen to rebuff France 2 and presenter David Pujadas with her trademark acerbic flair, asking on Twitter: “Do they take me for their dog?”

Given her “slightly Stalinesque” role within the National Front and the dearth of other high-profile leaders, Marine Le Pen’s steady stream of controversies (and the resulting media coverage she uses to great effect) masks surprising strides made by her lieutenants across France. One standout example, watched closely by the French political elite but little noted by outside observers, is the race currently being run by Marion Maréchal-Le Pen, Marine’s niece and the youngest member of the National Assembly since the French Revolution. As head of the National Front candidates in Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur (known as PACA and including Marseille and Nice), the youngest Le Pen is projected to come first in the first round of voting in December, a disconcerting setback for Republicans candidate and Nice mayor Christian Estrosi.

The PACA race is making waves that reach as far as Paris. Estrosi, hard-pressed to generate momentum in the campaign, is a titan in the region and a fixture on the national political scene. A textbook example of “accumulating mandates,” he is not only the long-serving mayor of Nice but also a sitting member of the National Assembly and a Sarkozy-era minister. Ironically, the long resume has proven a stumbling block in the 60-year-old’s efforts to keep up with his young challenger. Even after he qualified the National Front as an “operation to ‘recycle’ local neo-Nazis,” Maréchal-Le Pen’s campaign has preserved its first-round lead. Throwing his multiple mandates back at him, she forced him to admit he would remain leader of Nice in a televised debate last week: “You are going to remain a Niçois, which the people of Marseille will certainly appreciate.”

In many ways, the race has become a microcosm for political battles to be waged in 2017 and beyond. When François Hollande’s term ends, France’s mainstream parties will face intense scrutiny from voters angry with economic stagnation. They will do so with leaders tainted by scandals and unpopularity. Hollande’s historically low approval ratings have gotten no better, standing at only 19% in September. Nicolas Sarkozy, meanwhile, has managed to regain the leadership of France’s center-right while battling allegations of corruption and illegal fundraising. Just last year, the former head of state found himself answering questions in police custody. In PACA, Estrosi has portrayed himself as the candidate “best positioned to keep the National Front out of power,” but he will need the help of the Socialists to do so. With Marine Le Pen projected to outdo both Hollande and Sarkozy in the first round of presidential voting, the two parties may well have to repeat their joint effort against her father in 2002. A turn of events that may, ironically, reinforce Le Pen’s message that the Socialist Party and the Republicans are two sides of the same coin.

A strong performance in December would prove an important milestone in the Front’s quest for “de-demonization“, but neither French voters nor the rest of Europe should take electoral success as a sign of moderation. Marine Le Pen is a savvier speaker than her firebrand father, but the National Front still embodies a xenophobic, racist, and anti-Semitic movement that seeks to lead France out of Europe and back down the road of narrow-minded populism. Behind Marine’s theatrics at the European Parliament (referring to President Hollande as “vice-chancellor of the province France“), the National Front still earns its keep by playing on fears of Islam, immigrants, joblessness, and multiculturalism. Like Donald Trump and Ben Carson in the U.S. and Viktor Orban in Hungary, the siege mentality France’s far right actively perpetuates offers no substantial solutions to the country’s real economic struggles. Unfortunately, as Messieurs Estrosi, Sarkozy, and Hollande well know, France’s political elite has failed to come up with any breakthroughs either. Keeping Marine Le Pen off television can only work for so long.

« L’Algérie, puissance émergente ? », telle est la question posée par la journaliste Charlotte Bozonnet dans son article publié vendredi 23 octobre 2015 dans Le Monde et consacré au dossier sur l’Algérie paru dans le numéro d’automne de Politique étrangère (3/2015).

« De l’Algérie, on souligne souvent la paralysie : celle de son président, affaibli par un accident vasculaire cérébral depuis 2013 ; celle de son système politique, où les clans au pouvoir refusent toute transition. Plus rarement ce qui bouge pour ce pays. Dans son dernier numéro, Politique étrangère consacre un dossier éclairant sur l’Algérie, analysant comment ce système, « miné de toutes parts », se voit contesté par son environnement international.

L’économie, d’abord, ou « la chronique d’une crise permanente » dans un pays qui, en quinze ans de manne pétrolière, aura, certes, amélioré le quotidien de ses habitants mais sans parvenir à construire une économie productive. « Au moment où l’Algérie doit faire face à une nouvelle crise pétrolière, l’hyperdépendance de son économie aux hydrocarbures fait craindre un risque systémique », prévient l’économiste Mihoub Mezouaghi. Avec un baril tombé à moins de 50 dollars (44 euros), le modèle de croissance n’est plus viable, faisant craindre une crise aux répercussions politiques.

Immobilisme mortifère

Les mutations de la politique étrangère de l’Algérie, ensuite. « La diplomatie algérienne va devoir se redéfinir face à un monde qui change », souligne Jean-François Daguzan, directeur adjoint de la Fondation pour la recherche stratégique, qui revient sur « l’âge d’or » de cette diplomatie, dont les principes restent les mêmes depuis l’indépendance : soutien à la décolonisation, non-intervention au-delà des frontières, coopération et multilatéralisme. Sauf que la survenue des « printemps arabes » et les menaces à ses frontières bousculent l’édifice.

Le principe de non-ingérence est remis en question, souligne Geoff D. Porter, de la New York University, rappelant que l’attaque contre le site gazier de Tiguentourine, en janvier 2013, a été lancée depuis le territoire libyen. Si l’Algérie reste fidèle à son approche non interventionniste, certains signes traduisent une inflexion.

En 2013, Alger a autorisé Paris à utiliser son espace aérien dans le cadre de l’opération Serval. En mai 2014, un accord de coopération militaire a été signé avec la Tunisie. Et en février, l’Algérie s’est abstenue de condamner les frappes égyptiennes en Libye. « Face à des menaces externes sans précédent, l’Algérie sera peut-être contrainte de se demander, pour la première fois, si les avantages de sa politique de non-ingérence ne vont pas finir par se révéler moindres que les inconvénients », note M. Porter.

Ce dossier de Politique étrangère raconte l’immobilisme mortifère du régime algérien, tout en analysant les défis majeurs auxquels il est confronté. Ses capacités militaires – les plus importantes du Maghreb –, sa situation géographique aux portes du Sahel en font un acteur-clé de la région. Que l’Algérie le veuille ou non. »

Article écrit par Charlotte Bozonnet dans Le Monde, le 23 octobre 2015. © Le Monde, 2015.

(Own report) - Berlin has announced a "German-Russian Youth Year" for 2016/2017. As former Head of the Federal Chancellery Ronald Pofalla (CDU) declared last week at the conclusion of a German-Russian Cooperation Meeting ("Petersburg Dialogue"), cooperation between German and Russian civil societies are "more important than ever." Therefore, the German government's efforts to intensify the German-Russian student exchange program must be supported. Already at the beginning of the Petersburg Dialogue, which has restarted, following a year's interruption, Chancellor Merkel explained that Germany is "interested in a reliable partnership with Russia." Business functionaries are concluding that willingness to cooperate, which had waned due to the Ukraine conflict, is again growing "on both sides." Wolfgang Ischinger, Chairman of the Munich Security Conference, foresees a "diplomatic process" under Berlin's leadership that will lead to a further rapprochement during Germany's OSCE chair - beginning January 1, 2016. Ischinger explicitly points to similarities to the cold war's so-called détente policy, from which the West emerged the winner.

 

A group of Uighurs in Urumqi. Picture: AP

When will the unrest in Xinjiang cease?  The latest attack in a long series of aggressions was recently reported by Radio Free Asia, when at least 17 assailants, armed with knives, set upon innocent Han Chinese coal miners sleeping in their dormitory beds in Baicheng on September 18.  Before the morning came, more than 50 people had been killed and dozens wounded.  The attackers, which Xinjiang authorities suspect to be ethnic Uighurs, all escaped into Tianshan Mountains near the borders of Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan.

Radio Free Asia cited a Baicheng official as suggesting the attackers were seeking vengeance for their families having been punished for violating strict regulations on the practice of Islam.  The regulations, such as barring women from veiling their faces or barring men from sporting long beards, were implemented by local authorities in an effort to combat religious extremism in a region with a significant Muslim population.

The Turkic-speaking Muslim Uighur population, which at one point represented 85% of Xinjiang’s population some 65 years ago to less than 50% today, have been blamed for recent violence throughout the region and in other areas of China. Beijing argues the attacks by Uighurs are being orchestrated by foreigners who seek to establish an independent state in Xinjiang called “East Turkestan,” or a replica of “Uyghuristan” (932–1450) modeled after neighboring Central Asian nations.  Previously, two “Eastern Turkestan Republics” survived between 1931–34 and 1944–49, and Chairman Mao Zedong at one point promised “self-determination” and the right to secede from the Communist state, before eventually withdrawing the full offer of independence and instead conceding the title “Xinjiang Autonomous Region” in 1955.

Despite living in a so-called “autonomous region”, the Muslim Uighurs of Xinjiang have long been persecuted.  Back in May, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, a bipartisan U.S. federal government body, reported “unprecedented violations” against Muslims in China—urging the U.S. Department of State to re-designate China’s government as a top-tier violator, along with 16 other countries, including Myanmar, Iran, North Korea and Saudi Arabia.

China denies the allegations, maintaining it guarantees religious freedom while recognizing five official religions—Islam, Buddhism, Taoism, Catholicism and Protestantism.  Yet those who worship must do so under the watchful eye of patriotic religious associations, who impose strict government controls on the practice of their faith, to include the removal of crosses and the crackdown on underground churches.  It is these strict government controls on Islam, along with dwindling economic opportunities for Uighurs, which are put forth by analysts, exiles and activists for the increase in social unrest and violence.  

While other factors are certainly in play, the strict regulation of Islam is only exacerbating social unrest and contributing to more violence and is contrary to Beijing’s edicts on religious freedom.  In a speech in May 2014, President Xi Jinping stated that while teachings by religious leaders need to be grounded in patriotism, “law-abiding” worshippers must be protected as the ruling Communist Party cracks down on extremists. But these law-abiding worshipers deserve not only protection, but freedom to practice their religion, including the right as Muslims to wear veils, head scarves, jilbabs, clothing with the crescent moon and star, and to wear long beards.

Following Xi’s speech in May, China’s highest court, highest prosecution office and the Ministry of Public Security issued instructions in September 2014 urging court officials, prosecutors and police to distinguish between the illegal acts of religious extremists and ordinary religious activities.  According to the instructions, officials should avoid discriminating against any religion or ethnic minority, and should not interfere with citizens’ freedom to practice their religion.

Yet with reporting out of Xinjiang restricted and shoddy,outside observers have difficulty ascertaining the scope and scale of discrimination taking place.  We may also never know whether or not these latest terrorists were radicalized by inhumane treatment, trained abroad or motivated by economic factors.  If Beijing really wants to garnish international support for its crackdown on Islamic extremism (and truly has nothing to hide), allowing foreign journalists to operate freely in the region would go along way toward courting international condemnation and support for its efforts.  The alternative course of further restrictions will only result in more attacks, greater radicalization, and further criticism by international human rights groups.  With this latest failure, a new approach is clearly needed.

 

David Cameron’s announcement that the UK will be sending troops to support UN blue helmets in Africa was welcome news. The UN has long struggled to secure enough of the right forces for its missions, since few countries with elite trained and equipped forces commit them to peacekeeping operations.

Boko Haram is evolving under the pressure of combined military operations by the Lake Chad Basin states, Cameroon, Chad, Niger and Nigeria. It has suffered significant conventional military defeats and lost most of the territory it loosely controlled in late 2014, but, despite this, it is not a spent force and continues to exact an unacceptable humanitarian toll.

Among the three principal politicians who have struggled for power in Côte d’Ivoire since 1995, President Alassane Ouattara, 73, is the only one still in the game and is most likely to win the presidential election on 25 October.

 

Palestinian protesters hurl rocks at Israeli soldiers during clashes in Betunia, near the West Bank city of Ramallah October 11, 2013. REUTERS/Mohamad Torokman

The growing insecurity in Jerusalem and other parts of Israel proper and the occupied territories are simply the symptoms of a more complex political issue that has been neglected and exploited.

The real historical context of the Israel-Palestine conflict is routinely muffled; only that all too familiar distorted narrative gets a pass, especially in the U.S. commercial media. Throughout history, countering the dominant narrative has never proven easy.

Make no mistake—with this latest violent uprising and draconian policies imposed to crush it—at stake is not only peace in Israel and Palestine or Middle East, but peace around the world.

Lost Opportunity

As soon as Barack Obama was elected  president of the United States, a bipartisan group of ten former senior government officials that included the likes of Chuck Hagel, Zbigniew Brzezinski, and chaired by Brent Scowcroft, approached him with a document entitled The Last Chance for a Two-State Israel-Palestine Agreement. Their main concern was that “unless the president tackles this problem early it is unlikely to be done at all.  Political capital will erode; domestic obstacles will grow; other issues will dominate; and the warring parties will play for time and run the clock.” The old “peace process” model has resulted in  nothing more than a 22 years of spiraling apartheid-like repression, brutal violence, and systematic oppression.  Among other things, the group recommended the city of “Jerusalem as home to both capitals.”  That, needless to say fell onto deaf ears.

Today, the Palestinians demand the cancellation of the Oslo Accords that proved nothing more than “an endless process which has delivered neither an end to hostilities nor a coherent framework for peace.” The latter was impossible to achieve since Israel has been and continues to swallow the 1967 occupied territory—where the Palestinian state was to be founded—one settlement expansion at a time.

Anatomy of a Violent Intifada

Before readers delve into the argument made in this article, he or she must ask oneself:

Would 67 years of systematic oppression that includes mass expulsion, arbitrary arrests, brutal military incursions, checkpoint involving psychological subjugation, denial of basic human rights, and economic strangulation be long enough to motivate anyone to defend him or herself by any means or snap and transgress beyond self-defense?

How long would it take the average person under similar circumstances to consider the violent option for self-preservation, and when he or she cannot find a suicide belt, a hand grenade, or an automatic weapon, take up on a slingshot or a kitchen knife to randomly stab those whom he or she considers the sustainers of his misery? Especially when settler extremists protected by the Israeli Special Forces periodically invade one’s holy site chanting this provocative chant “the mosque will burn and the temple rebuilt.”

 Demonization Run Amok

In an attempt to sustain the old anti-Palestinian narrative and deflect the role of his policies in inciting this latest outburst of violence, the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has resorted to dumbing down history by making an outlandish public claim that is on par with Colonel Gaddafi’s “al-Qaida drugged up the Libyan people’s coffee”.

Speaking to the World Zionist Congress before his trip to Germany, Netanyahu makes this bizarre assertion that in 1941: “Hitler didn’t want to exterminate the Jews at the time, he wanted to expel the Jews…And mufti of Jerusalem Haj Amin al-Husseini went to Hitler and said, ‘If you expel them, they’ll all come here.’” It gets eerily comical when he quotes Hitler meekly consulting the mufti “So what should I do with them?” and the mufti promptly responding with this holocaust epiphany “Burn them.”

There was a worldwide diplomatic censure, ridicule, and condemnation. “All Germans know the history of the murderous race mania of the Nazis that led to the break with civilization that was the Holocaust… We know that responsibility for this crime against humanity is German and very much our own,” said Chancellor Angela Merkel’s spokesman.

The harshest criticism of Netanyahu’s remarks came from the Jewish scholars, historians and politicians in Israel. Dina Porat, chief historian of Yad Vashem, called his wild remarks “completely erroneous, on all counts.”

Could This Turn Into a Religious War?

The simple answer is absolutely, yes; if it hasn’t already. That said, it is time to reassess the Palestine-Israel issue through the faith prism. Jerusalem and the entire Holy Land is a sacred geographical area for all the Abrahamic faiths—Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Yet, there has never been a single interfaith conference lead by high profile clerics from all these three religious groups to deescalate religious tensions and have serious dialogue on how to share these sites.

Traditionally, the round tables of peace were always crowded by secularist politicians from both sides who often use religion for political expedience.

Now that the two-state solution is out of the question; that leaves only two plausible scenarios: The one-state solution or self-annihilation. Contrary to the naysayers, the one-state solution is a viable alternative for coexistence and sustainable peace.

If such option could work between blacks and Afrikaners of Apartheid South Africa, why could it not between two Semitic ethnic peoples of Abrahamic roots? All that is needed is objective political will and broad-minded religious vision. We have no choice but to give it our collective best shot. It is our only hope.

 

The Taliban takeover of Kunduz in Northern Afghanistan this week is the visible part of an insurgency iceberg that has grown larger, more destructive, and more threatening to the Afghan coalition government and to the Obama administration’s Titanic-like exit strategy.

As the world marks Polio Day today, Pakistan remains the greatest impediment to a polio-free world. The country has more polio cases than any other, reflecting a double policy failure: to prioritise the health of its citizens, and to curb violent extremism. Pakistan's deadly conflicts increase the likelihood the disease could spread to other countries.