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There has been some discussion comparing modern times to that of the pre-First World War period. While that era was characterized by the social and economic effects of industrialization with little labour protections and the struggle of people living under colonial rule, the comparisons could likely be made to any era that suffered from conflict. What characterizes today’s era in relation to that period is how actions against minority groups were often ignored, even if they were done en masse and in a brutal fashion. The most stark example from that period in human history is the human rights atrocities taken against the Armenian people, actions that are often still ignored to this day and that have scarred their community indefinitely.

When looking back on our generation, it will likely be the case that those in the future will see that a lot of symbolic acts were committed to, while actual torture and human rights atrocities were almost wholly ignored. People that have suffered some of the worst treatment in modern human history, especially against women, has occurred under our watch. Minorities like the Yazidi women and girls have been brutalized to such a degree that it rivals tortures done during the Holocaust. Movements to acknowledge and help them have been more or less muted with the exception of a few small aid groups and those who are aware, committed to, and have sacrificed to save Yazidis, especially to help those women and girls who are the targets of sexual violence and torture. Many groups in the same region are some of the oldest living communities in human history, and many of those are in the process of being wiped out because they are a minority group. Human rights need to apply to everyone, even if it is not politically expedient. Consciously not doing so could be considered a criminal act.

The manner in which media and some governments have muted the actions taking place in Hong Kong is also quite surprising. For many countries there is a significant community of people from Hong Kong living there, along with historic ties to the British Commonwealth where a similar system of government and democracy exists. For those that are democratic cousins with the people of Hong Kong it might be the case in the future that we will look back at our era and ask why so little was done to assist people who share our values and commitment to a democratic system. While some countries have opened up their immigration and refugee systems to those who wish to leave Hong Kong, there is little discussion and understanding as to why the dismantling of a democratic country is so troubling, and how the value of such a society and culture would be an eternal loss to the world community. The acceptance of the loss of Hong Kong’s democracy is a reflection on how those who live in democracies view their own freedoms and rights. When democracy is devalued by those that oppose it, it is common place, when it is discarded by those who are free under it, it will be seen as absurdity by future generations.

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Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Health Organization (right), with Houlin Zhao (Zhao Houlin), secretary-general of the International Telecommunications Union, in 2017. (Photo: M. Jacobson-Gonzalez, ITU Pictures)

President Trump has clearly decided to deflect blame for the disastrous impact of the COVID-19* pandemic in the United States by attacking China and the World Health Organization (WHO). Of the two, the one that is likely to suffer more, with more consequences for the United States and the rest of the world, is WHO.

Trump has ratcheted up his attacks at an accelerating pace. He first teased at withholding funds from the organization on April 7 but then backtracked only minutes later. Then a week after that, on April 15, he announced that he was suspending U.S. funding for WHO “until its mismanagement, cover-ups, and failures can be investigated.” By the end of April, he had ordered the intelligence community to investigate whether China and WHO had conspired to conceal information about the virus and its origins.

On May 18 Trump sent a letter to, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the WHO director-general, giving him 30 days to commit to “major substantive improvements” (otherwise unspecified) or the United States would end its funding permanently and reconsider its membership in the organization. Other members, including U.S. allies, voiced their opposition to this and support for the agency. Then, on May 29—just 11 days after his 30-day ultimatum and apparently without consulting his advisers or other relevant officials—Trump inserted into a policy statement on China that he was “terminating our relationship with the World Health Organization” and redirecting funds to other global health needs.

Despite the dramatic charges of mismanagement, cover-ups, and failures, an official fact sheet made only two specific complaints. The first is what David Fidler, a former legal consultant to WHO, interprets as a “failure to provide urgent information.” The charge required interpretation because the official White House document buries it in anti-Chinese rhetoric, such as “the WHO has shown a dangerous bias towards the Chinese government,” and assertions that “the WHO repeatedly parroted the Chinese government’s claims” about the disease and its characteristics. The wording would suggest that Trump is most bothered by the fact that WHO to deferring to China rather than to him. The second specific complaint is that WHO disagreed with the administration regarding the value of travel restrictions, or, as the fact sheet put it, “put political correctness over life-saving measures by opposing travel restrictions.”

These are not justifications for cutting off funding for WHO. As Fidler points out, the administration did not have to struggle with WHO to impose its travel restrictions. WHO is required to make recommendations; it generally makes the same one when it comes to travel restrictions in a health emergency; and the administration is not obliged to comply with it. As for information, the administration has multiple sources, including its own intelligence services. (At one time it actually had specialists on this very issue stationed in Wuhan, China, but it closed that program down.) If the administration had information from an alternative source telling it that China was misinforming WHO about what was happening, then it should have shared that information with WHO. In any event, if WHO was delayed in distributing important information, it was not as delayed as the Trump administration’s responses.

Let us quickly review the sequence of events. WHO received word of an outbreak of an “atypical pneumonia” on December 31, 2019, apparently from sources other than China, and then solicited a confirmation from the Chinese government. China verified the report via Twitter on January 4. (Presumably as a favor to China, WHO used the passive voice in reporting its first information, allowing people to assume that China had officially notified it as it was required to do under the International Health Regulations.) Chinese scientists published the coronavirus genome on January 12. On January 13 a COVID-19 case appeared in Thailand; at this point COVD-19 became a potential matter of international concern rather than a matter solely internal to China and its jurisdiction. WHO tasked a German group to develop a test for it, which was made available to countries on January 16. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) declined to adopt it and then botched its own test, delaying the onset of testing in the United States. China announced on January 20 that the coronavirus was a serious threat and that local authorities had suppressed the information. (Whether true or not in this instance, that is actually a major problem in countries like China, where local authorities face multiple, conflicting demands from the capital and are held responsible for anything that goes wrong, often without regard to actual responsibility.) A WHO delegation visited Wuhan briefly for the first time, on January 20–21, and stated that there was evidence of human-to-human transmission but that more analysis was needed. On January 22, Dr. Tedros, WHO’s director-general, began giving daily press briefings, encouraging countries to engage in testing, contact tracing, and the isolation of infected persons. WHO declared COVID-19 a “public health emergency of international concern” (PHEIC) on January 30. On that day Trump announced the formation of a coronavirus task force under Secretary Alex Azar of the Department of Health and Human Services, and he imposed partial restrictions on travel from China the following day, January 31. In mid-February, Dr. Anthony Fauci of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases said that it could have the makings of a global pandemic. A more substantial WHO visit to Beijing and Wuhan came on February 16–24. On February 25, Dr. Nancy Messonnier, director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, said, “Ultimately, we expect we will see community spread in the United States. It’s not a question of if this will happen, but when this will happen, and how many people in this country will have severe illnesses.” She added, “Disruptions to everyday life may be severe, but people might want to start thinking about that now.” Rather than heed the warning, Trump put Vice President Mike Pence in charge of the coronavirus task force on February 26 and instructed him to tamp down the alarmist talk before it spooked the stock market. Following the lead of his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, Trump’s primary concern was that any acknowledgment of a potential crisis—or any overt effort to counter it—might roil the markets and hurt his reelection chances. It was March 15, after the markets had already begun to tank, when the Trump administration recommended social distancing and locking down the economy in the United States.

Some have complained that after its January 30 PHEIC declaration, it took WHO until March 11 to declare a pandemic. But officially, a PHEIC declaration is all there is, and the authority to declare a PHEIC has existed only since 2005; there is no such thing as an official WHO pandemic declaration. It seems that Tedros started using the scarier term pandemic to attract the attention of countries that were still not taking the issue seriously enough. (As an official WHO timeline describes the March 11 statement, “Deeply concerned both by the alarming levels of spread and severity, and by the alarming levels of inaction, WHO made the assessment that COVID-19 can be characterized as a pandemic.” [Emphasis added.]) Trump’s social-distancing decision came six weeks after the PHEIC declaration and weeks after warnings from his own public-health officials. How much did the delay matter? Researchers at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health looked into that question and came up with the following estimates:

In a retrospective analysis, the researchers find that, nationwide, 703,975 confirmed cases (62%) and 35,927 deaths (55%) of reported deaths up to May 3 would have been avoided if observed control measures had been adopted one week earlier—on March 8 instead of March 15. In the New York metropolitan area, 209,987 (80%) of confirmed cases and 17,514 (80%) of deaths would have been avoided if the same sequence of interventions had been applied one week earlier. Had the sequence of control measures occurred two weeks earlier, the nation would have seen a reduction of 960,937 (84%) cases and 53,990 (83%) deaths, and a reduction of 246,082 cases (94%) and 20,427 deaths (94%) in the New York metropolitan area.

Are Travel Restrictions “Life-Saving Measures”?

A major shortcoming in the administration’s argument is a fundamental failure to understand—or even to try to understand—the issues at hand. Take, for example, this statement: “The WHO put political correctness over life-saving measures by opposing travel restrictions.” Trump, it appears, simply assumes that travel restrictions are life-saving measures. It is indeed possible for travel restrictions to slow the spread of contagions. WHO itself said that restrictions, when imposed early and of limited duration, can give countries time to prepare for the arrival of the contagion (which Trump failed to do, evidently believing that the travel restrictions were sufficient in and of themselves). On the other hand, travel restrictions do not stop the spread of contagions and they cause problems of their own. Apart from the general social and economic disruption, travel restrictions make it harder to get emergency personnel into the affected area in order to combat the outbreak or slow or prevent the spread of the disease to other areas. Additionally, fear of eliciting travel and trade restrictions can lead some countries to cover up their disease outbreaks, producing worse outcomes overall. Also the announcement of imminent travel restrictions can cause panic-driven movement by people who fear being caught in a containment area. Trump did this three times in announcing restrictions related to China, then Iran, then Europe. The Europe-related announcement, in particular, led to a flood of people overwhelming airports—creating large, packed crowds, mixing virus carriers with susceptible subjects—and may well have contributed to the massive outbreak in metropolitan New York. WHO has also stated that travel restrictions can produce a “stigma,” which may be the root of Trump’s reference to “political correctness,” but that is hardly the core of the argument. For these reasons WHO generally advises against restrictions, as do other public-health authorities.

That’s Not How Any of This Works!

More generally, the administration’s arguments betray a basic misunderstanding of the nature of international organizations. They are rarely independent actors on the global stage. Rather, they are membership associations. WHO serves as a forum for debate among its members—that is, 194 separate countries that are represented in its governing body, the World Health Assembly—on issues of global health, as a vehicle for sharing information, as a pool of technical expertise, as a helper in policy coordination, and as an agent for its members in seeking to achieve common goals related to global health. In doing so, it performs an extremely useful function. But, to put it bluntly, WHO is not in a position to boss China around. It is not a supranational authority (nor, for that matter, is it an instrument of U.S. policy). The only international organization with the capacity to boss member states around is the UN Security Council, which can do so when passing resolutions under Chapter VII of the UN Charter (“Action with Respect to Threats to the Peace, Breaches of the Peace, and Acts of Aggression”). And even in that case—if this had involved a threat to the peace and were being decided by the UN Security Council—China, as a permanent member of the Security Council, could veto any action directed against it. In any event, China, which held the rotating Security Council chairmanship in March, managed to keep the pandemic entirely off the agenda throughout that month. In April, when the Security Council finally did attempt to address the issue, it was stymied both by China’s singular focus on avoiding blame and by the United States’ singular focus on blaming China (and WHO). Thus, nothing of significance was achieved.

Of course, not all of WHO’s 194 bosses have an equal say in what it does, but enough of them do to complicate any controversial decision it has to make. That is especially true when members disagree or fight each other. In this case, the repeated efforts of U.S. representatives to condemn WHO’s pro-Chinese rhetoric, highlight the Chinese origins of the pandemic, and press for Taiwan’s last-minute addition to the World Health Assembly have served no purpose but to rile the Chinese leadership and obstruct progress in dealing with the disease. WHO is a repository for information filed by member states, and thus it is highly dependent on the member states’ willingness to issue reports. It was not in a position to force China to allow its inspectors into Wuhan, and China did not allow it to do so for several weeks. If WHO was unseemly in its praise of China, then presumably Tedros believed, rightly or wrongly, that doing so was necessary to elicit China’s cooperation. Naming-and-shaming, WHO’s one other alternative, can be counterproductive when dealing with thin-skinned governments. (An administration in which cabinet meetings begin with secretaries singing the praises of the president ought to understand this.) The political situation in the United States being what it is, we have grown accustomed to focusing on the rhetoric instead of the substance—such as Tedros’s admonitions to engage in testing, contact tracing, and quarantines—and have come to view the expression of outrage as an end in itself. We thus denounce Tedros for not wasting his time in counterproductive denunciations. In any event, it was WHO that successfully solicited China’s acknowledgment of the outbreak in the first place, provided the first COVID-19 tests, and declared the PHEIC. It does not deserve to be treated so harshly.

Deflecting Blame, Undermining the U.S. and Health

Trump’s response to the pandemic—which he seems to view primarily as a political problem—was twofold: (1) Hope the pandemic works itself out, and (2) Deflect the blame onto someone else. With regard to the domestic response to the pandemic, he has shifted the blame to the state governors, who he insists are responsible for such things. With regard to the causes of the pandemic, he has shifted the blame to China and WHO. The information failures for which Trump holds WHO responsible are primarily the fault of Chinese leaders who delayed and deceived, and even that was valid for only a few weeks.

Trump’s answer to this situation—rather than cooperate to deal with the pandemic—was to punish and defund WHO in the midst of the ongoing crisis. This does not further any positive goal. The possible consequences of this are also twofold. First, the real target of the punishment will be world health. Many countries do not have the wherewithal to fight a pandemic (and innumerable other health issues) on their own and rely on assistance from WHO. They will suffer and also serve as sources of disease for others. Americans will also suffer if the world’s unified response to infectious disease is undermined. Moreover, the United States will lose WHO’s vantage point with regard to looming health threats, which ironically is especially important in China. China’s combination of diverse live animals in close proximity to large numbers of people along with modern transportation infrastructure makes it a prolific source of infectious disease. (Ironically, China’s role as a source of disease increases the importance to WHO of its cooperation.)

Second, it could result in the United States ceding its place of leadership to China, a process already under way. The fact that China has recently pledged an additional $2 billion to WHO—nearly equivalent to the agency’s entire budget in a normal year—suggests that this is likely. If Trump was serious about his complaint that China had too much influence in the organization, this is hardly the way to resolve the issue.

Of course, WHO and international organizations in general are of secondary interest to Trump, well behind his interest in personal loyalty and his own political future, as indicated by some of his personnel decisions. His first Assistant Secretary of State for International Organization Affairs and a senior adviser in that bureau were the subjects of a devastating inspector general’s report in August 2019 in which they were accused of mistreatment and harassment of staffers and retaliation against those deemed insufficiently loyal to President Trump. (The adviser had already left the department; the assistant secretary retired on his own terms in November; the inspector general who wrote the report was fired in May 2020.) As acting assistant secretary, Trump then appointed a former Sarah Palin associate known primarily for her ties to evangelical Christians and opposition to abortion. A Trump loyalist from the Presidential Personnel Office, with a reputation for assessing the loyalties of applicants for apolitical government positions, was then named Deputy Assistant Secretary for Management Issues with responsibilities for budgets, senior appointments to international organizations, and UN elections. As for WHO, the United States did not even have a representative on the agency’s rotating executive board until May 7, 2020, although the U.S. term on the board had begun in 2018 and expires in 2021. The administration nominated an Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services, a Trump appointee who was previously best known for being fired as the head of vaccine development at Texas A&M University in 2015. In fact, the administration nominated him three times—in November 2018, January 2019, and March 2020—before the Republican-led Senate took any action toward confirmation, suggesting a lack of confidence in the choice. With regard to the WHO budget, the United States was already in arrears on its dues for 2019, and Trump’s budget proposal for Fiscal Year 2021 had called for cutting the contribution to WHO by 53 percent even before the COVID-19 issue had arisen. 

In the meantime, China has taken advantage of U.S. disinterest in international organizations and increased its influence within the UN and its allied agencies. Chinese officials now run four UN agencies, and Tedros, an Ethiopian, was promoted for the WHO position by China as well as the African bloc. In response to China’s growing influence, instead of showing leadership and engaging more energetically in multilateral diplomacy, the Trump administration has taken the adversarial approach of naming a special envoy for countering Chinese influence at the UN (formally, special envoy for multilateral integrity). This approach is likely to divert attention from the actual tasks of the UN’s specialized agencies and alienate other countries. If the United States wants to keep WHO “honest” and balance the influence of China, then it must be active within the agency, act as a counterweight, and stop emulating China’s practice of prioritizing the protection of its own image. What Trump is doing merely cedes further influence to China.

As for the fate of WHO, much will depend on whether the United States actually leaves. Under U.S. law, withdrawal from WHO requires a year’s notice and full payment of all arrears, so things could still change. There will be calls for reforms either way, and there will certainly be room for reform. But we should keep in mind that even after reforms, WHO will not boss China around. That’s just not how it works.

*Multiple terms have been used to identify the category of virus, the specific virus, and the disease it causes. The category is coronavirus. The specific coronavirus, first encountered in Wuhan, China, in 2019, was temporarily labeled Novel Coronavirus 2019, or nCoV-19; then it was officially named Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2, or SARS-CoV-2. The disease it causes is Coronavirus Disease 2019, or COVID-19.

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After the skirmish along the Indian-Chinese border that killed 20 Indian soldiers, many Indian commentators are presently concerned that China is increasingly trying to push New Delhi’s allies away from India and towards them.  For example, the Hindu reported that these commentators described the zero-tariff agreement for 97% of the exports between Bangladesh and China as “charity” for a “least developed” country, a critique that caused an uproar among Bangladeshi officials.  

Although there was a diplomatic cost to such remarks, it appears that India has a good reason to be concerned.  Siegfried O Wolf, director of research at the South Asia Democratic Forum (SADF), a Brussels-based think-tank, told DW: “China has a port facility [Hambantota] in Sri Lanka, they have Gwadar [in Pakistan], they are building a port facility in Myanmar [Kyaukpyu] – this gives India the feeling of being surrounded by China. This is the military dimension of Indian concern.”

He also cautioned that China might use investments to gain political influence: “So there is a threat for India that China might influence the government of Bangladesh.”  According to him, this threat may have an economic dimension: “We have seen China driving out other countries from the market. For instance, it has become very difficult for French and German companies to get contracts in African countries.”

Already, Bangladesh has increasingly been gravitating away from India and towards China.  In recent years, Bangladesh, who joined the Belt and Road Initiative that India refuses to take part in, have received $31 billion in investments from China.  In 2015, China became Bangladesh’s top trade partner, thus replacing a position that India had occupied for years.   And now, China is offering coronavirus aid to Bangladesh and there is a sister city agreement, where six Bangladeshi cities will be sister cities of cities within China. 

Shipan Kumer Basu, who heads the World Hindu Struggle Committee, added that in light of the coronavirus pandemic: “China has offered to invest around $24 billion in Bangladesh, which is among the highest level of assistance promised to a country under BRI. A large portion of the committed assistance will be in the form of credit.  BRI is criticized, basically for the debt burden and the exploitation by China that a country faces if they fail to repay the debt. The case of Sri Lanka, another South Asian country, which had to give a portion of its land on lease to China after failing to repay the loan, is well known.”  However, he noted that Bangladesh hopes that they won’t share Sri Lanka’s fate.

“Notably, Bangladesh and China today enjoy a warm and friendly relationship and have formed a strategic partnership,” he added.  “The two countries share a close military and economic relationship. However, the difference in culture between the two countries is considered a lacuna in this relationship. For bridging this gap, China is persistently enhancing its public diplomacy to foster people-to-people connectivity through measures like — encouraging educational and cultural exchanges, organizing visits of media and political parties’ delegations, establishing Chinese language institutes, organizing interaction among the trade bodies, think tanks and many other activities.  China’s public outreach has paid a dividend in forming a favorable public opinion in support of the relationship. In Bangladesh, rarely any negative sentiment about China is voiced in public. Despite the presence of trade imbalance with China, the issue is hardly highlighted and recognized as a problem in the bilateral relations between the two countries.”

However, some members of the international community (like the Sheikh Hasina government) have not been positively viewing China’s massive investment projects and the Belt and Road Initiative.  As Chinese firms seek to build the Tel Aviv light rail, JPOST reported that Chinese involvement in major infrastructure projects in the Jewish state is causing some US officials to question the continued strong American support for the Jewish state, including related to annexing 30 percent of the West Bank under Trump’s peace deal.  US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo proclaimed: “The Chinese strong arms nations to do business with Huawei, an arm of the CCP’s surveillance state.  And it’s flagrantly attacking European sovereignty by buying up ports and critical infrastructure, from Piraeus to Valencia.  Every investment from a Chinese state-owned enterprise should be viewed with suspicion.” 

Nevertheless, the Chinese government has tried to allay these concerns.  Wan Tiunji, who heads up the Chinese Cultural Center in Tel Aviv, proclaimed: “The Belt and Road Initiative is a Chinese government policy seeking to connect Asia and Europe.”   He claimed that other nations benefit from China’s cultural centers and other projects that China advances in the framework of the Belt and Road Initiative.   However, even if this is true, an article in JPOST noted that in 2013, China utilized the fact that they construct much infrastructure in Israel in order to condition Netanyahu’s stopping defense officials from testifying in a New York federal lawsuit against the Bank of China for laundering Iranian money to Hamas and the Islamic Jihad.   A report from RAND warns that China has close ties with Iran and that “the Chinese government might require Chinese companies doing business in Israel to share insights with the Iranian government in order to win friends and influence in Tehran.”  

As much as China may pose a threat to Israel, given the asymmetrical power relations between Bangladesh and China, Basu thinks that his country needs to be even more cautious than the Jewish state: “Bangladesh needs to holistically analyze the ramifications of the Chinese proposals. The principle of equidistance, which has been the guiding principle of Bangladesh’s foreign policy, will be hampered and it will impact its relationship with other powers. Maintaining autonomy in foreign policy is crucial for sustaining peace and stability in South Asia.” 

He also warned that China does not have a positive history when it comes to respecting the human rights of Muslims within their borders: “The Bangladeshi people should know that Muslims in China are in re-education centers.  They are studying a new Chinese version of the Quran.  China has persecuted millions of Uyghur Muslims.  They hold them captive.  But the Muslims of Bangladesh do not raise their voices against China.  The people of Bangladesh will soon learn what is in store for them.”  For this reason, he is greatly disturbed by the rebuke that various Bangladeshi officials recently gave to India and their strengthening of ties with Beijing.   

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It has been 60 years since the Italian Somaliland and the British Somaliland became independent from their respective colonial powers to form a union that miserably failed 30 years later. After a long ever-morphing saga of blood, destruction, and loss of identity Soomaalinimo (Somaliness), these two political entities, legally known as Somalia, have just concluded yet another conference to negotiate a reunion or declare their relationship irreconcilable difference and amicably part ways. Many such conferences were hosted by Turkey, and all agreements reached in Istanbul are still pending. 

While such narrative may have yielded some traction for domestic consumption, in reality, the latest so-called reconciliation on the future of Somalia and Somaliland was nothing more than a geopolitical racket of dangerous consequence to the Somali people on both sides.

Due to the secrecy in which the initiative was shrouded, the last minute marching orders given to the top leaders on both sides to come, the foreign heads of states who participated, and the outcome of appointing a reconciliation committees from both sides compels any objective analyst to conclude this was a distraction tactic for a more serious or sinister issues.

Since 2012, both sides—Somalia and Somaliland—have appointed similar technical committees a number of times only to see them fizzle before the nostalgic thrill wore off. On more than one occasion, deal-breakers were planted right into the very committees that were established to negotiate a win/win outcome for both sides. And this time is no exception.

The Foreign Engines

On June 13th, before any announcement or news bulletin from the Federal Government of Somalia or Somaliland, Djibouti President, Ismail Omar Guelleh, tweeted “Tomorrow in Djibouti, I will chair a meeting between President Mohamed Abdullahi Farmajo and President Moussa Bihi Abdi to follow up on the mediation efforts between the two leaders. I have also invited Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed to attend the discussions.” What a comical irony. So, Abiy was in the neighborhood running some errands before getting invited to drop in the powwow? He must have been as he came dressed for the part.

Seriously though, Abiy Ahmed, the Ethiopian Prime Minister, was the most important official who attended that meeting. He is the conduit or the human thread running through all three competing grand strategies that I outlined in an article entitled Transformation Euphoria in the Horn of Africa that I wrote a couple of years ago. None of them earnestly consider Somalia a strategic partner. Each considers it the perfect dispensable pawn with the ideally useful inept and corrupt leaders.

Despite the inflated excitement surrounding the Djibouti Conference on Somalia and Somaliland, collectively they remain, as I wrote before, “the most important political theatre in the 21st century as it is where geopolitics, geo-economic, and geo-religious dynamics intersect and interplay.” It is where strategically most important waters—Indian Ocean and the Red Sea—intersect and one of the world’s largest untapped oil and gas resource is, due to chronic corruption, widely exposed for exploitation.    

To understand President Guelleh’s incentive to give cover to the real deals taking place off the center stage, one must remember that this is the 20th anniversary of the Arta Peace Conference that put Guelleh on the world stage and deservedly so. Guelleh is facing a groundswell of domestic discontent and growing accusations of human rights violations and corruption. He is also the leader that U.S considers the one who compromised its geopolitical poker game against China. And he is well aware there is no way he would defuse his domestic challengers if he does not have political capital in the West.

Now you see, now you don’t

International predators—including next door neighbors—and their domestic partners know how easy it is to send a clan-intoxicated, cash-addicted bunch of charlatans from both sides into a dramatic fool’s errand.

The Houdinis of corruption, headquartered in The Villa Somalia, are determined to auction the licensing of Somalia’s oil and gas by the first week of August 2020 without adequate and independent checks and balances. Granted President Farmajo signed into law the so-called Petroleum Bill. But, who were the experts who drafted it and the Parliamentarian experts or other independent committee that scrutinized it to protect Somalia from pending exploitation? Equally important, were all seven Somali presidents on board? The answer is: none and no. Neither Somaliland, nor Puntland, and by extension, Jubbaland are on board. Their unequivocal consent is necessary for some of these licensing shenanigans to materialize and to prevent potential resource wars.

In the meantime, the Houdinis have successfully fed two false narratives to a good portion of the Somali public: Somalia’s international loans were forgiven and the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank are giving Somalia a free grant of $800 million. This dangling carrot was good enough to lure Somaliland leadership and it was hoped to boost Presdiden Farmajo and Prime Minister Khaire’s chances for reelection by parliament. Their executive office has already co-opted the parliament unlike any of its predecessors. None of the numerous foreign deals it has been making or new loans received was brought before the parliament for scrutiny or oversight.  

The Counterintuitive Option

Somalia is a web of competing and counter-competing interests and predatory scams. To untangle and sift through all these mostly existential threats requires a moratorium period to administer the shock therapy that it so desperately needs to survive as a nation.

Current state of affairs is such that: foreign sponsored national reconciliation has been a periodical ritual since year 2000. The completion and ratification process of the transitional (provisional) constitution that already costed over $60 million has been on-going since 2004. The periodical U.S. aerial bombardments have been on-going since 2007 and are now intensified to bi-weekly deadly drones. AMISOM (including Ethiopia & Kenya with direct conflict of interest) has been fighting al-Shabaab since 2007. The Somali national army has been under a never-ending process of rebuilding since 2004 while Somalia still remains under UN arms embargo.

Furthermore, the balkanization process of Somalia into clan-based political entities; each with its own foreign, defense, and immigration policies, so to speak, has been on-going since 1991. Each of these entities is ruled by an Alpha clan that claims exclusive or zero-sum rights over all other clans. And each is founded or sustained by a hate narrative.  

Sometimes what one says is the most important; other times, how one says it; other times, where one says it; other times, why one says it; yet other times, who says it. Mindful of all that, I opted to go on record and recommend the ‘T’ option. Not terrorism, but trusteeship. For a context, allow me to digress a little in order to describe these four stages of evolution.

In 1992, a small group of diverse Somalis founded a volunteer-based organization to help assist Somali refugees in Kenya with blankets and used clothes, and help settle the very few who found sponsors. That small group developed close relations. So one night, after dinner, someone raised the most sensitive question at the peak of the Somali fratricide: How do we get out of this mess?

Each one of us was given enough time to ponder the question and add something into the brainstorming basket, so to speak. Each one of us offered something that would be acceptable at the Main Street or the Macca Al-Mukarama Street. All except one of the group who said:

• We need to ask for ‘Trusteeship’ to provide us time to cool off, address grievances, and streamline our national narrative
• We need to change the capital, even for temporary
• We need to redefine the five corner start in the flag to represent values of coexistence instead of lost territories that since accepted to become part of another nation or been recognized as a nation of its own.

In 2004, at the Israaca annual conference held in Columbus, members have thoroughly debated and finally approved a policy paper advocating the UN to consider placing Somalia in a trusteeship program.  

At its peak, that organization—once considered Somalia’s great hope—had a membership of more than 240 of what many considered as some of ‘Somalia’s best and brightest.’ They were from across clan and ethnic lines.

The organization’s modus operandi was to identify topics essential for peace and for the reconstitution of Soomalinimo or sense of nationhood. Debate it for two weeks. Elect an ad hoc committee to draft a policy paper to be approved at the annual conferences.

In 2008, the regional multi-national assembly or Ethiopian conduit known as IGAD has passed what it called “Declaration of the 13th Extraordinary Session of the IGAD Assembly of Heads of states and Governments” in which the transitional government led by President Abdullahi Yusuf   to “sign onto a scheme mimicking the UN Trusteeship only to place Somalia at the mercy of its (then) occupier, Ethiopia. This is a case of putting the fox in charge of the chicken barn…”

In 2013, several months after the transitional period has ended, the United Nations Political Office for Somalia was closed, and the country was welcomed back to the international community of nations, the FGS led by President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, agreed to allow the establishment of UNSOM- United Nations Assistance Mission In Somalia to keep Somalia in an indefinite silent trusteeship.  Within this on-going arrangement, the FGS cannot independently enact any significant domestic or foreign policy without getting clearance from UNSOM which is accountable to no Somali office, even symbolically. Never to be left out, President Mohamud also agreed for Ethiopia to join AMISOM.

Somalia is in a muted trusteeship in which U.K. still remains the country’s pen-holder or the official gate-keeper of all Somalia related issues at the UN Security Council.      

The trusteeship system was established to help the Trust Territories (former colonies) attain the capacity for self-determination and self-governance. This is good so long as there is a trustee willing to help in capacity-building and a trustee council providing the necessary supervision and scrutiny. Once The UN Security Council agrees to such proposal, a friendly country with proven goodwill toward Somalia will be invited to serve as a trustor for a period of 4 years.      

Painful, ego-wounding, and vanity-shattering as it may seem, that official and transparent humiliation maybe the precise condition to level the playing field and expose clan-based false narratives of superiority and equally humble all alpha clans in perpetual zero-sum clan competition: with your mentality Somalia is worse off today than before independence six decades ago.

It is the only way to streamline the multilayered Somalia’s domestic and foreign problems; the only way to form an independent reconciliation commission that is not funded and framed by foreign powers. It is the only way to genuinely negotiate a constitution that sidelines all forms of clan-based rights in favor of citizenship rights and Soomaalinimo.

• Follow author via twitter @Abukar_Arman or abukararman.com

 

 

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Years ago when writing on the plight of the Haitian people, it was evident that the quick global reaction to the 2010 Haiti earthquake may only help Haitians in the immediate term. Other issues like the kidnapping of the Nigerian school girls and the death of Neda at the hands of the Iranian regime received a great deal of attention at the time, only to become buried in stories about nonsense quickly thereafter. The end result of this eruption of immediate attention with next to no long term solutions creates the exact situation that the initial attention tried to avoid, a systemic and persistent oppression of people without power.

The aid to Haiti has been seen as being used to support already wealthy and influential individuals by some in the aid community. The fate of the Nigerian school girls has had some freed, with others still left in bondage. The Nigerian school girls were mostly ignored by international media after a strong and short bout of support for them with no actual or concrete assistance in helping them realise their freedom. The death of Neda has done little to prevent thousands more dying. Even this year with the downing of a civil airline by the same regime, there has been no appropriate support and even what could be seen as a partial submission to the killers of its citizens by officials in Canada. Change cannot be done by immediate actions and almost always gets cast aside later on for the sake of expediency. Still today, the effects of the 2010 Haitian earthquake left thousands in Haiti without proper housing or shelter. Few in Western media has discussed these issues in years.

To challenge a system that does little to invoke change in a society, the long term must take precedence over the short term photo opportunities and meaningless actions by those in control. Perhaps long term solutions are not that evident, but it is almost always the case that short term policies produce nothing more than campaign ads and photos. The reality is that if no one cares, nothing will change, and if that becomes the status quo it will enshrine itself throughout the entire system and culture.

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The enormous financial means that West Germany is still transferring to East Germany, 30 years after re-unification, suggest that Moscow’s grab of Crimea in 2014 has been an ill-calculated adventure. Sustaining over a long period of time the highly-subsidised economy of the annexed peninsula will be beyond the capacities of a more and more crisis-ridden Russian state. With deep historical connections between Russians and Crimea lacking, they will be less and less ready to sacrifice scarce financial resources to the remote peninsula during a time when Russia’s own population is suffering economically.

Until a few months ago, Vladimir Putin’s resolute seizure of Crimea, in February-March 2014, looked to be the defining moment of his, so far, four presidencies. It brought momentous change not only to Russia’s foreign relations, and changed European geopolitics to its core. Moscow’s capture of the beautiful peninsula also heavily impacted Russian domestic affairs. It created, with over 70 per cent public support for annexation in Russia and over 80 per cent of measured post-annexation approval on Crimea, a so-called “Crimean Consensus” in society at large. Only in 2019, the high approval rate in public opinion polls, in view of increasing economic hardship, started to sink. Notably, this tendency appeared already before the coronavirus crisis hit Russia in March 2020.

In 2014, however, the annexation appeared to most Russians – across all social layers, professional groups and political camps – as an elegant, quick, smooth, bloodless, and exhilarating operation. It was a stroke of strategic genius deftly undertaken by a daring Kremlin, in a unique historical moment. This was a once-in-a-lifetime chance that Putin took firmly advantage of. To not go and get the gorgeous Black Sea pearl back under Moscow’s control – when it was briefly so easy to do – would have been an unforgivable omission for the Russian nation.

At least that is how not only the Kremlin and its closely controlled mass media present the “re-unification” of Russia and Crimea. This is also how many ordinary Russians – even many otherwise liberal and pro-Western observers – thought until recently about the annexation. This foreseeable effect was probably also the main reason why the Kremlin did it in the first place. Yet Putin’s ominous reference to the 1990 re-unification of Germany in his Crimea annexation speech of March 18, 2014, already indicated the major long-term challenge of his land grab. There will, as his quoted German example illustrates, be further costs for Russia, over the years and decades to come.

To be sure, the two “re-unifications” are very different in their origins, nature, status, and consequences. Neither is Crimea fully comparable to the “German Democratic Republic” nor is Russia today similar to West Germany. There was a plain Russian military aggression on Crimea, the preparation of which had already started on February 20, 2014, when Ukraine’s pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych was still in power. In East Germany, in contrast, the local population first rebelled against a Moscow-sponsored dictatorship after which a complicated domestic and international political process finally led to a peaceful reunification on October 3, 1990.

Still, for all the differences, there is, for the Russian people, a clear lesson to be drawn from the German example: the economic and social integration of new territories into an existing state is, as the Germans have learnt during the last 30 years, a rather expensive undertaking. The main question with Russia’s all too uncomplicated acquisition of Crimea in 2014 will thus not be whether Russians want Crimea or not. Rather, the issue is whether the Russian nation is ready to pay the full price for this audacious territorial enlargement of its state, and whether the Russians will still be prepared to do so once the various economic as well as social effects of the pandemic will fully kick in.

The former East German state’s territory – with such cities as Berlin, Leipzig, Dresden, Magdeburg, Halle or Jena – is flesh of the flesh of Germany. The lands of the former GDR are, in terms of their history and geography, clearly a part of Germany. An unequally large part of the cultural heritage of the German nation – such as its Protestant church, Magdeburg town law, classic and Romantic literatures and so on – were created on the territory of the 1949-1990 Soviet-German satellite state. The crucial biographical phases of such famous Germans as Martin Luther, Johann Wolfgang Goethe, Johann Sebastian Bach, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and many others played out in the lands of the post-war East rather than the (much larger) West German republic.

The historically disproportionate cultural weight of East German cities and towns in the formation of the modern all-German nation is one of the reasons why West Germans agreed to transfer approximately 1.6 trillion euros to East Germany between 1990 and 2018. This is also why they are today still ready to pay willy-nilly the so-called Solidaritätszuschlag (solidarity surcharge) which is an additional obligatory salary reduction amounting to 5.5 per cent of their income tax, almost 30 years after re-unification. One wonders whether the Russians will still be prepared for lengthy and costly financial commitments to Crimea, once the grave social repercussions of the coronavirus crisis and its various economic after-effects start biting.

The birth name of Crimea’s internationally best-known Russian son, the famous marine painter Ivan Aivazovskiy, is Hovhannes Aivazian, whose Armenian family moved to Crimea from the former Eastern Polish and today Western Ukrainian region of Galicia. The majority of Crimea’s main indigenous ethnic group, the Crimean Tatars, as well as its main political organs, the executive Mejlis and representative Qurultay, are resolutely anti-Putinist and staunchly pro-Ukrainian.

Unlike Russia and Crimea, Germany’s East and West are geographically unified. Because of, among others, earlier close connections between the FRG and West Berlin, an enclave located within the former GDR, East and West Germany’s infrastructures had already before 1990 been partially integrated. Russia only managed to create a physical link to Crimea in 2018-19 when it gradually completed the so-called “Crimean Bridge” through the Kerch Straits. This conduit, to be sure, constitutes an impressive engineering achievement.

Yet the Kerch bridge is no panacea for the numerous challenges of the Crimean economy and its full integration into the Russian one. Moscow’s generous donations for Crimea’s budget and economy of, until 2019, about 20 billion US dollars, have led to significant economic growth on the peninsula since 2014. At the same time, there has been a sharp drop in Ukrainian mainland and foreign non-Russian tourism and private investment in Crimea. This momentous loss has only partly been compensated for by tourists and private investors from Russia, and will become more acutely felt on Crimea, as Russia’s economy dives into recession or even depression.

There are, moreover, some major infrastructural challenges for Crimea’s new Moscow-installed authorities. The most curious one is the peninsula’s vastly diminished supply of fresh water, after Ukraine closed its North Crimean Canal from the Dnipro river to the abolished Ukrainian Autonomous Republic of Crimea in 2014. Over the last six years, Russia has only done little to address the rising water issue on the peninsula. Above all, there is no larger project to utilise saltwater from the Black Sea. Today, there is such a wide range of technologies for the production of fresh water available that Moscow would be able to overcome the problem of sanctions on Crimea. A number of countries are now undertaking desalination on an industrial scale, including Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Israel. The main challenge for such projects is usually that of providing sufficient energy for the desalination process – an issue that for Russia as a self-ascribed “energy superpower” should, however, not be salient. Moscow has, nevertheless, not even started to implement some larger project to adequately address Crimea’s water issue although the problems have been accumulating for almost six years now.

No such challenges have been hampering the development of the East German lands since re-unification. On the contrary, international tourism, foreign investment and water quality, among many other aspects of social and economic life, have vastly improved. Nevertheless, the East German economy remains, until today, dependent on significant monthly subsidies from West Germany.

The evolving deep crisis in Russia’s economy as a result of the simultaneous effects of the Covid-19 pandemic, dropping energy prices, and continuing Western sanctions will have far-reaching social and eventually political as well as geopolitical repercussions. To be sure, as long as Putin is in power, Crimea will remain under Russia’s control. However, a sober weighing of future fiscal means of the Russian state, continuing financial needs of an internationally isolated Crimea, remaining basic infrastructural challenges of the peninsula’s economy, and dearth of emotional attachment of Russians to Crimea does not bode well for the continuation of Moscow’s expansionist adventure.

Many self-ascribed realists dismiss Crimea’s return to Ukraine as mere wishful thinking. Yet a realistic assessment of likely future developments within the Russian Federation already foretells that the Kremlin’s daring annexation of the peninsula is only a temporary phenomenon. Ukrainians (not the least Crimeans), Western diplomats, and Russian politicians should brace themselves for yet another major change in the geopolitics of Eastern Europe’s post-Soviet space – once Putin has left the political stage.

This brief was first published on the website “Emerging Europe.”

 

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A year has passed since the Department of Defense released the Indo-Pacific Strategy Report (IPSR); however, we still lack future visions surrounding how best to truly earn the hearts and minds of our allies and partners in the Indo-Pacific community. In the long run, America needs to institutionally convince the community that it is the endgame defender of the regionally shared common values from threats imposed by any revisionist, malign, and rogue states’ national interests.

The framework for the IPSR was explicated in the former Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan’s keynote speech during the 2019 Shangri-La security summit. Simply put, the IPSR could be understood as being a neorealist version of the Obama administration’s ‘Pivot to Asia’  rhetoric. It reasserts America’s leadership role to safeguard regionally shared principles of “respect for sovereignty and independence of all nations,” “free, fair, and reciprocal trade,” “peaceful resolution of disputes,” and “adherence to international rules and norms” through neorealist visions’ preparedness, strategic partnerships, and promotion of a networked region. Strategically speaking, the IPSR is innovative to the extent that it inclusively extends the strategic geopolitical boundary of the region from Asia-Pacific to India-Pacific to reflect the changing strategic geopolitical landscape of the region. Nevertheless, it is more or less a protraction of the deterrence theory-based power through strength logic of balancing regional security order through minimalist reinforcement of America’s traditional hub-and-spoke-centered architecture. The latter aspect could be best exonerated as minilateralist alliance management efforts to efficiently strengthen the credibility of America’s deterrence capability against the declared antagonists’ increasing instances of breaching the rules of the game in the region. However, such an immoderately hawkish stance casts an implication on critics that America’s minilateralist management of its hub-and-spoke architecture is widening the threat perception gap between America’s pursuit of hard-hedge anti-China containment and middle/small power allies/partners’ pursuit of a soft-hedge strategy against China. Furthermore, its less-prioritized view of regional multilateralism underestimates the increasingly multidimensional nature of today’s landscape of strategic warfare that rather demands skillful peace through diplomacy, full spectrum diplomacy strategies.

Widening Threat Perception Gap Between America and Allies/Partners

For many ASEAN member countries, the IPSR signals a paradigmatic shift from prosperity to security, which might peripheralize their ASEAN centrality vision and revive the Cold War Hamlet enigma of tight-roping between ‘bandwagoning’ or balancing strategies. These concerns are apprehending not only ASEAN member countries but also the members of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue excluding America: Australia, India, and Japan. The four allies’ diplomatic/political willingness to hard-hedge against China is questionable due to the countries’ diverging national priorities. For instance, Japan’s growing thaw with China since the escalation of the U.S.-China trade war, the surfaced reality revealing the intensification of the country’s economic dependency on China over the last decade, implies that it is burdensome for Japan to adopt a political stance in favor of America’s radical policy shift to hard-hedging against China. Similarly, Australia’s establishment of the National Foundation for Australia-China Relations, an attempt to offset the fallouts from the U.S.-China trade war, alludes that the fallouts outweigh the country’s risk perception of China’s existential threats. For India, the IPSR’s sketch identification of the country’s security role in the region misleads the country to understand the IPSR as a complementary initiative to its regional economic policy, titled Act East.

Despite the widening threat perception gap between the Indo-Pacific community and America, the relegated importance of regional multilateralism under the Trump administration’s minilateralist pursuit of the America First doctrine has fostered a contingency-based, transactional, and top-down diplomatic culture that prioritizes practical, yet malign/revisionist partisan pursuit of national interests over sustainable regional norms or institutional mechanisms. The 2019 political rift between South Korean and Japanese elites that led to the Moon administration’s suspension of GISOMIA(General Security of Military Information Agreement) is a good example of how the spillover effects of Trumpism can boomerang to burden America. Since President Trump’s inauguration, both the Abe and Moon administrations have emulated Trumpism for their malign partisan maneuvering of the rift. Whereas the Abe administration has abused it to consolidate its right-wing nationalist supporter base, the Moon administration did the same for its left-wing nationalist supporter base. This diplomatic botch for America-led trilateral security cooperation in Northeast Asia reveals the limits of the minilateralist hub-and-spoke alliance portfolio management.

Amidst the post-INF arms race climate, which beclouds the Indo-Pacific regional security order with uncertainty, adherents of deterrence theory often abuse the controversial Thucydides’ Trap as a good excuse to argue in favor of the restoration of the Cold War certainty. Their so-called ‘peace through strength’ emphasis, however, seems to disregard one of the most important Cold War lessons, in that the Soviet Union would have walked away from the negotiation table if NATO’s dual-track approach failed to successfully calibrate the risk perception gap between America, its European allies and, eventually, the Soviet Union. Given the absence of a collective security community like NATO in the Indo-Pacific, America needs an alternative form of alliance portfolio management that is viable in the long run. Such a strategy, on the one hand, ought to be instrumental for risk perception calibration between America and its allies so that we can come up with the positive creation of peaceful resolution strategies in the escalatory phases of U.S.-China conflicts. Conversely, it should also be normatively preparatory to gradually set the cornerstone conditions for the establishment of a NATO-like value-sharing security community in the region. The historical animosity and the tradition of need-based diplomatic gathering in the Indo-Pacific cannot simply be managed by Trumpist minilateralism. In order to better strategize the risk management of future security dilemmas/conflicts, America rather needs to accommodate the fluid network of what Victor Cha calls “Complex patchworks” or, indeed, bilateral, trilateral, and plurilateral institutions that connect America, China, and small/middle-power allies/partners.

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The present and future effects of a Covid shutdown on international society will have significant consequences on our employment, economy, taxes, and even those mechanisms that protect and insure us. New laws and regulations that would be considered a violation of consumer rights and protections, labour codes, and to some degree human compassion, are taking place in many countries at once.

Protections, even ones that favoured consumers to a greater degree, are being limited or outright suspended. Anyone who has recently tried to find a recourse for having their money returned has often been denied. One notable example are those seeking compensation for their air travel or hotel reservations as they are often being told that they are no longer owed a refund. This is occurring because many regional and national governments are aware that for many large companies, covering their usual contractual obligations with their customers might place those companies in the red, and might even end the existence of those companies altogether. For this reason, many governments are suspending or altering laws that protect consumers. While they are advising their customers to change dates, the worse case scenario may be that the company gets wound up into bankruptcy and those customers lose their investment altogether.

The basis for many large economies is that the governments, the banks, and the insurance companies need to be solvent in order for commerce and society as a whole to become successful. While a coordination to reduce or remove taxes from small and medium sized business entities would likely have the effect of saving employees their wages and accompanying insurance, the governments and banks seek to push the onus of the damage caused by Covid on those with less influential interests in society. For this reason, the Covid lock-down permeates the economic system, as someone in the chain has to pay for the debt. As governments offer trillions in financial support, impressions are widely positive. In many cases governments will go beyond the call to pull out all the stops, using taxpayer money in order to help in the short term, while piling on unsustainable, eye watering debt and deficits for the future. The reality however is that if there is no money, and the government will not be able to help when the next emergency comes about. For this reason there should be strict controls and oversight on spending during the Covid crisis.

The next crisis of confidence may be in the confidence industry itself. As we see above, many companies are not honouring their original agreements with consumers, leaving the consumer to face the losses. What occurs when a state or region runs out of employment insurance assistance? More taxes will surely result, but what occurs when a private insurance company faces bankruptcy? More often than not the insurance company will not pay out as they should, may put up administrative or legal barriers or just void the policies altogether and ask the governments to alter the laws so that the company preserves itself instead of servicing their clients. Even some labour laws are being altered so that severance payments can be cruelly delayed during a possible economic depression. With a lack of insurance, any losses or damages related to Covid (and those apart from Covid) could result in the termination of otherwise healthy companies and industries.

So it will be the case that any additional damage or losses to companies may not permit them to return, as insurance may be limited or non existent. The job losses will exacerbate as private people also lose their coverage, but also do not pay into the insurance industry. Governments may have a limited capacity to tax and spend as employed people are evidently not a good source of revenue. While it will be a rocky road ahead, there has to be balance, and that balance must be met with extreme transparency. Any government or company fleecing tax money from their customers must be held to account to a great degree. Any damage to society will be now felt by most of us, because corrupt practices in 2020 will significantly hurt us all.

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You can find the link to the quiz here.

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Demonstrators hold signs at a Black Lives Matter protest in Birmingham, England, on June 4, 2020. Photo: Mike Kemp/In Pictures via Getty Images

In recent days, headlines in America have been dominated by pundits raising awareness about the widespread racial inequality in America following the brutal murder of George Floyd and Rayshard Brooks by white police officers and the subsequent race riots that have occurred across the nation.  Both murders were horrific and unjustifiable.  However, it is pivotal to note that in our quest for equality and justice, not only African Americans have suffered from racist prejudice and other instances of bigotry should not be neglected at this critical hour.

Jews, Hindus, Maronite Christians, Muslims, and other groups have also suffered from religious prejudice and their struggle for justice should not be neglected merely because they have not taken to the streets in protest.  Indeed, if the recent protests in America have taught us anything, it is that we should all be fighting against all forms of racism.

During the recent race riots in America, a Maronite Church was defaced with hateful graffiti.  Around the same period of time, five synagogues and three Jewish schools fell victim to hate crimes.  One of the synagogues was defaced with graffiti that read “f_ck Israel.”  Another Moroccan Jewish synagogue had graffiti reading “f_ck pigs” written on it as well.   A statue of Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat who saved thousands of Hungarian Jews from the Nazis, was smeared with anti-Semitic slogans.

Jewish owned businesses and buildings were also looted and targeted with anti-Semitic graffiti. In fact, according to Yeshiva World News, nearly 75% of the Jewish-owned stores in an Orthodox enclave in Beverly Hills were looted. Closer to home in the Washington, DC area, the windows of Chai Bar, a Kosher restaurant, were smashed.  Another kosher restaurant, Shouk, was looted and set on fire.

More recently, the Anti-Defamation League reported than an anti-Semitic flier has been circulated, which proclaims, “If Jewish Americans make up two percent of the population, why do they get a special privilege when it comes to top universities?   Ending white privilege intersects ending Jewish privilege.”

This flier has been circulated at a time when there are many tweets speculating that George Soros, a Jewish billionaire, stands behind the recent race riots in America.   Such incitement will do nothing but encourage more violence against Jews in America, at a time when anti-Semitic hate crimes are at an all time high.  Yet sadly, the anti-Semitism that has come to the fore during these race riots is not being widely covered by mainstream American media outlets.

As Mendi Safadi, who heads the Safadi Center for International Diplomacy, Research, Public Relations and Human Rights noted, there are different types of racism, including racism based on skin color, ethnic racism and religiously based racism.   Racism based on skin color is what existed in the Jim Crow South, while the Kurds experience ethnically based racism in countries like Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria.

According to Safadi, religiously based racism is what Jews and the Hindus of Bangladesh and other religious minorities in places like Syria experience: “A mixture of different religions is considered unacceptable to such people.” As a consequence Syria and Bangladesh have seen the horrors of ethnic cleansing.

Shipan Kumer Basu, who heads the World Hindu Struggle Committee, proclaimed, “The percentage of Hindus living in Bangladesh has gone down from more than 30% of the total population in 1947 to a mere 7% today. The heinous crimes that have been committed against the Hindus are physical assault, rape, murder and forced conversions.  These crimes take place on a daily basis in Bangladesh.”

Basu himself was imprisoned for his work advocating for persecuted Hindus in Bangladesh and he called upon other members of the international community to take a stand against anti-Hindu racism: “We have been striving for the rights of all Hindus in the Indian subcontinent for the last twenty years and have been able to convey our message on behalf of the Hindu community to different human rights groups such as the United Nations and other international groups about the plight of Hindus in Bangladesh, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Historically, Hindus were oppressed in Bangladesh, Afghanistan and Pakistan”

“Our struggle for peaceful coexistence for the Hindu Community along with other religious sects will continue until we obtain equality,” he declared.  “Like the protesters in America, we seek for racism to come to an end.  As the Americans fight against racial inequality, Hindus are still getting murdered in Bangladesh merely due to the racism against them  One African American man was killed and the American people are on strike, and they are doing many things to stop racial inequality.  But in Pakistan and Bangladesh, Hindus are killed and nothing happens.  As we are facing the coronavirus pandemic, we feel frustrated and depressed that the persecution of Hindus has increased exponentially.  Hindu lands are being taken away by force.  Hindu girls are getting abducted and forced into marriages.  It is time to break the silence on this.”

The post Op-Ed: Do not neglect the struggle against other forms of racism appeared first on Foreign Policy Blogs.

Hong Kong: Lawmakers carried out during parliament mayhem – May 18 2020

With the sudden shock of Covid-19, almost all economic activity locally and globally had ceased after February 2020. Only now towards the end of May 2020 have some countries decided to carefully open up businesses, economies and society in returning to normalcy. Much of the idea of a return to normal is linked to the views of how some believe the post pandemic world can and will operate. The reality is that this pandemic was not the first, and will not be the last. In many parts of the world, economic collapse and crisis is almost a generational plague, with each new generation facing their own dilemma and recovery over many years. What many in regions like Latin America, the Middle East, Africa, Asia and Eastern Europe have experienced may come to pass in Western nations, that is, if they ignore the experiences of these other regions since the end of the Second World War.

The post war German economy survived the near total destruction of German infrastructure and society with intense aid for allied countries in order to build a strong Germany as a bulwark against the Iron Curtain. The progress of Germany since the 1950s has been remarkable, even though the country was left in ruins post 1945. Regions like Latin America that never received a sustained and focused bail out after the Great Depression in 1929 were plagued with generations of debt, accompanying corruption and even government sponsored terror. In the early part of the 20th Century, countries like Brazil and Argentina received as much immigration from the South of Europe as did New York. Some of the reasons for this was that Argentina was in better shape economically than Italy was at the beginning of the era. With the arrival of the Great Depression, the recovery of Argentina and much of Latin America never enabled Argentina to become more prosperous than any Western European country ever again. Much of the regions was plagued by debt, low growth, overspending and corruption, problems that have existed for generations.

With many Western countries now being challenged by a possible era of Depression and massive debt, it is important that the lessons of these other regions ring loudly in the application of policies to get all countries out of this economic crisis. Support for citizens require funds to be used liberally, but for a set period of time. Political advantages should not be taken in the middle of a Depression, and using absolute powers given to many governments to push their agendas will absolutely corrupt any democracy. Hiding or blurring information about how much money has been used should be considered criminal, as it will hurt the lives of average citizens and disadvantage the poor and middle class. The absurdity of giving raises for politicians or public sector employees, or adding additional taxes during a Depression is also cruel, and a clear sign of a government that represents the 1%, the takers, and not the producers in a society. Any actions that may limit PPE, medicine, food and general health for citizens should be strictly addressed. Without foresight and the diminishing of congressional or parliamentary powers, generations of debt and corruption will absorb otherwise healthy democracies. Hundreds of years of civilization gave us divided power and full rights, it can all be lost within a few years. A charter enshrining these values is likely needed, with no caveats or preferences given to any group in society. Weak societies who do not take actions now to preserve their representatives and democracy will surely lose it.

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By Mendi Safadi

Another Iranian site has been discovered in Syria near Al Baida en route to Siyaf and it is intended for an attack deep inside of Israel.  This is an Iranian nuclear site deep inside the heart of Syria that poses a tangible danger to the Jewish state.

The site is located south of Meisaf.  The construction began four years ago in an old military site belonging to the 47th Missile Brigade.  The area was bombed by Israel in August 2019.  The site is very important in several ways, the most important one being its strategic location.  It has an eastern entrance along the road and another secret entrance on the northwestern side.

This is an Iranian site.  The function of the Syrian officers and recruits is to provide Iran with relief, to serve them and to provide some maneuvers at a number of points at a distance from the site.  The Iranians refuse any Syrian presence except for a few undeniable loyalists to Iran.

A study revealed about a year ago the entrance of a number of vehicles with building materials and cement, provided by the General Housing Organization and the Ibaa Building and Mortgage Organization.  It is owned by Hussein Shahin.  Concrete walls were added to the site.  It is intended for excavating underground tunnels and others works over a period of months.

According to our sources, the excavations are intended for establishing our warehouses and underground halls.  The depths of the halls are 17 meters.  Private flights also landed on the site several times.  When each flight arrived, all of the Syrian soldiers and officers were removed from the base.  People with cameras were also banned from the site.

Trucks full of Russian and Iranian long-range missiles were brought into the site for development and improvement.  There is also a fighter jet facility in the southwestern part of the base.  Our sources indicate that the present work of the site includes the development of long-range rockets and missiles.  It was confirmed that there is suspicious equipment at the site. 

As for the Syrian officers at the base, there is a lietenant colonel named Hassan Khalef and an officer named Ali Asif Al Muhammed.  Among the most important Iranian officers at the site are Hussein Abdul Ilai AL Bashiri, Hussein Ali Kashbaf, the son of one of the military leaders killed in Syria, and Ali Mohammed Madani, who is directly responsible for Iran’s bases and military power in Syria.

Also, according to our sources, a couple of months ago, a meeting of senior level Iranian officials took place that included the late Qassem Soleimani accompanied by General Ali Asgar Nourazi, who is one of the most wanted in Israel and Mohammed Hussein Zadeh, who is responsible for supplying Iranian forces in Syria. 

Our information indicates that the Sayif Base will be ready for full military action by the middle of next year and will focus on: 1) hitting any target by sea that threatens Iran’s existence within Syria by more than 700 meters; 2) Attacking deep inside of Israel; 3) Attacks capable of reaching Turkish bases.

It is important to note that the base is purely Iranian military and contains a number of halls, plazas and underground tunnels, as well as several aircraft.  There is also a suspicion that there may be a nuclear reactor.  Furthermore, after the site was constructed, the back of it was filled with more than two feet of black red soil covered in cement. 

Mendi Safadi, the head of the Safadi Center for International Diplomacy, Research, Human Rights and Public Relations, is a lecturer and expert on Islamic affairs, terrorism, Syria and the Middle East.  He has published numerous articles and served as a political and strategic adviser about the Arab Spring and the Syrian revolution. Previously, he was the chief of staff in the Office of the Deputy Minister for Development of the Negev and Galilee and Regional Cooperation.  He served as a link between officials in the government and the Syrian opposition.  

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In an interview, Shipan Kumer Basu, President of the World Hindu Struggle Committee, reported that the Sheikh Hasina government has been only praying that Muslims get spared from the coronavirus pandemic yet had no blessings to give to the minority communities within her country: “A number of non-Muslims live in Bangladesh.  No prayer was offered for their protection at this time. The question to the international community, are non-Muslims not citizens of Bangladesh? Do they not pay taxes and VAT to the government?”

Advocate Govinda Pramanik, the Secretary General of the Hindu Mahajot, noted, “During the pandemic, my organization is helping Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists and Christians by providing relief. But a number of Muslim organizations, including Bangla Aid, are only giving relief to Muslims.  Hindus, Buddhists and Christians have to convert to Islam if they are to get relief.  How can a secular country conduct themselves like that?”

He added: “Hindus are being tortured, killed and raped every day in Bangladesh during the Corona epidemic but Sheikh Hasina is not taking any action.”  Debasis Basu, president of the Bangladesh branch of the World Hindu Struggle Committee, concurred that attacks on Hindus by Muslims continue in Bangladesh: “Even in the midst of the Corona pandemic, Muslims are attacking Hindus. But the dictator Sheikh Hasina did not take any action in this regard.”

Shipan Kumer Basu, president of the World Hindu Struggle Committee, noted that Bangladeshi human rights activist Aslam Chowdhury, who has tirelessly worked in order to advance Hindu minority rights, remains in jail despite the pandemic, which already caused a football player whose cell was in the vicinity of Chowdhury to succumb to the virus: “He had gotten bail at a different time from the High Court but the Supreme Court overrode it. Chowdhury is a well-respected human rights activist associated with the Bangladeshi opposition and this stands behind his imprisonment.  His continued imprisonment during the coronavirus pandemic demonstrates the bad intentions of the Bangladeshi government.  We demand his immediate release.”

Bangladesh Janata Party (BJP) President Mithun Chowdhury has been imprisoned for almost three years for working to protect the interests of the Hindus as well. Although all Muslim parties have been politically registered in Bangladesh, no Hindu party has yet been registered. While working to protect the interests of minorities, Mithun Chowdhury wanted political registration of the BJP but was arrested by the government. Mithun Chowdhury could have stood by the Hindus in dealing with this difficult situation in the country.

However, Bangladesh is not the only country where Hindus are getting persecuted amid the pandemic.  In Pakistan, there are reports that both Hindus and Christians have been denied food aid amid the pandemic.  Furthermore, recently in Pakistan, during the height of the pandemic, a 14 -year-old Christian girl was abducted, forcefully converted to Islam and then married off to her abductor.   

Abhishek Gupta, president of the World Hindu Struggle Committee India, said the Mamata government in West Bengal was also creating divisions between Hindus, Muslims and various parties in the distribution of relief: “The Mamata government is giving priority to Muslims and their party TMC in distributing relief and isn’t providing any aid to Hindu religious priests , which is anti-democratic. The Mamata government is also hiding the number of patients and deaths from Corona, which puts the people of West Bengal at the highest risk of death.”

In conclusion, Basu called upon the international community to not neglect the Hindus of Bangladesh, Pakistan and West Bengal at this critical time and to ensure that Hindus also receive assistance in dealing with the coronavirus.  

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There has been a great deal of discussion in Western and other countries surrounding an economic and political disengagement from China’s economy. Since the acceptance of China into the WTO in 2001 and the great re-introduction of China into the world economy after 2008, the Chinese economy has flourished, mainly based upon supplying consumer goods to the US and Europe. With an ever growing middle class in China, it made sense for many international firms to create a presence in China, all the while adapting their manufacturing processes to produce in China while exporting less expensive, Union free products back into the US and EU. The growth of China’s economy reached double digits in some years, with masses of rural Chinese residents flocking into the larger cities to take jobs in the newly reinvigorated manufacturing sector. Most international companies took advantage of this years long boom in China’s growth, setting up Chinese firms in a legal and political environment that took little notice of labour rights, while allowing for a maximization of profits in China and the ability to ship and profit abroad. Western companies made money, and the owners of these companies made money, allowing China’s government to profit and reinvest in China. The West and East were linked economically, with losses in China’s RMB value now affecting those in New Jersey, Amsterdam and Abu Dhabi.

The strategy of integrating two large economies was hailed as a success post Second World War. The idea of integrating the German and French economies into a European Economic Community arose from the theory that economic losses on both sides would deter future conflict, in a region that was known for having a great many conflicts over generations. While integrating China into the WTO and world economic system was not intended to solely reduce conflict, the hope was that implementing China into a democratic economic system would influence China to become more economically motivated, thus motivating property rights and the values of Western democracy in some form. The motivation on making money while passively promoting human rights values was part of the theory, but for the most part it never took shape. Nations that were once considered strong democracies, as in Hong Kong, are now losing rights rapidly while the rest of the world ignores their challenges. The suspicion of influence over international organisations has lead some countries to question the advice of those international bodies that have the majority of their economic ties to one or two countries. Even strong democracies are showing signs of influence, to the detriment of their own citizens.

For many large companies a pulling away from China’s economy would mean a great loss of revenue, and it is likely the case that any downsizing or sale of many of these companies may only find buyers from the Chinese market. For those who have benefitted from China’s economic boom to take a decade of lost revenue and little to no growth produces a large disincentive for them commercially. While often running very wealthy companies, the reality is that owner and CEOs would lose money personally as well. A separation from China’s economy would not only take a massive economic hit on most companies, it would also place them into the political realm as the idea to separate would place hard working Chinese employees against hard working American, European and other employees where the population, through no fault of their own, would take the brunt of the losses during separation. In the event that post-Covid-19 economies do not recover in the next two to three years, the reality may be that economic suffering hurting workers in the West may become the catalyst for political leaders to enforce a real separation from China’s economy.

To enable companies and governments to change their economic model that has been enshrined since 2008 would likely require a great deal of government lead incentives to push industries back into their own national economic system and away from China’s low cost production economy. Part of China’s economic plan in recent years has been to move from manufacturing into more Research and Development intensive industries and compete with Western economies on more value based product categories. While China still is in the process of making this change, Western governments may force rapid change before the new policy takes shape fully in China. In order to do this, Western governments would need the money and political will to fund losses to companies and incentivize them to return. Carrots may work better than sticks, as a move to another low cost production economy may become more of an incentive than returning home.

With the massive losses from Covid-19 shutdowns, even the US and EU have taken a great deal of economic damage, so much so that Chinese companies would benefit from gobbling up companies in other countries while the value is low. For the grand disengagement from China to work, it would have to be done with like minded countries working in concert, still depending on each other but collectively deciding to move their industries back into their own backyards. Trade and development would likely continue within these blocks of nations, or within large self-sustaining economies, but with the shared goal of reducing dependency. The ties between nation states and flag ship national companies may become crucial, and weaker countries may end up having to choose their blocks as nationally supported companies take precedence over shared trade. Legal instruments like prohibiting key industries from being sold to foreign entities would become crucial, as well as a restriction on the sharing of Research and Development. China would likely have a harder time reaching record growth levels in this scenario, but with so much economic development and new technologies now residing in China, they would be a strong competitor within the world economy. Without this massive and nearly implausible push, it will be the case that the international economy will remain the same for generations to come.

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After large scale protests have been reported in over a dozen prisons and several rebellions have broken out in prisons across Iran, Pastor Saeed Abedini and a number of other political dissidents wrote a petition to US President Donald Trump.  They proclaimed that the United States should help Iran’s political prisoners by increasing American pressure on the mullah’s regime at this critical time.  They adamantly oppose any sanctions relief offered by the Democrats, claiming that it will do nothing but embolden the terrorist ambitions of the mullah’s regime at the expense of Iran’s political dissidents.   

“On behalf of Iranian Americans who are former political prisoners and have experienced firsthand the torture and the violence of the Iranian mullah’s, we write to urgently request your support for political prisoners in Iran,” the petition reads.  “Based on the information that we received, all prisoners and especially political prisoners are at severe risk of infection and death due to the coronavirus pandemic and the Iranian regime’s systematic mishandling of the health crisis.”

According to the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, “Conditions in Iran’s prisons were dire even before the threat of coronavirus, but activists had become increasingly concerned with the ability of overcrowding to facilitate the spread of coronavirus.”  There are reports that the situation for prisoners “began deteriorating rapidly as coronavirus spread, including floods of raw sewage and rarely functioning water supply.”  According to the petition, many Iranian political prisoners are outraged and have protested against this, yet their pleas have been ignored by the regime:  “In response, the notorious Iranian Revolutionary Guards has attacked, wounded and killed dozens of prisoners, many of whom are prisoners of conscious and some of whom are as old as 80 years old.  In addition, the Iranian regime has executed a number of protesters in order to create fear among the inmates.”  

The petition by the Iranian dissidents added: “As you are aware, Iran’s ruling regime has grossly misreported its COVID-19 cases and engaged in a malicious cover-up of fatalities.  Accurate figures provided by the National Council of Resistance of Iran reveal that the coronavirus death toll is nearly 35,000.   The conditions inside of Iran’s overcrowded prisons are uniquely disturbing.   Many of us can provide first-hand accounts of how the regime uses prison conditions as a method of torture.   Infected prisoners have not been quarantined or isolated.   Eye-witness reports indicate that the prison overcrowding and lack of sanitary essentials has led to high rates of infection.  This is not only inhumane but exacerbates the pandemic both in Iran and across the world.”

Given this, the petition emphasizes that humanitarian and medical assistance should only go to the Iranian people and not the mullah’s regime.  They also stressed that the Trump administration should be applying maximum pressure in order to ensure that political prisoners are released from Iranian prisons.  It should be emphasized that Iran has already released some criminals but to date continues to refuse to release political prisoners due to the coronavirus pandemic, perhaps because the Iranian regime wants the political prisoners to die.  However, the petition stressed that it is the duty of the free world to apply maximum political pressure in order to liberate all prisoners of conscious from the Islamic Republic of Iran. 

As Amnesty International proclaimed, “The Iranian authorities must immediately and unconditionally release hundreds of prisoners of conscience amid grave fears over the spread of coronavirus (COVID-19) in Iran’s prisons. The authorities should take measures to protect the health of all prisoners and urgently consider releasing pre-trial detainees and those who may be at particular risk of severe illness or death.”  

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The loss of local businesses will likely have a greater long term effect on your community and country past losing your favourite pub or preferred place to eat. Besides making communities interesting, innovative and increasingly energetic, smaller and medium sized companies are a significant contributor to a healthy democracy. While the Corporatist model of policy development brings together large industry, government and labour to determine policy approaches in many Western European nations, the power and influence of small and medium sized businesses is lacking. Unfortunately, many who will experience job loss in Corporatist systems may not have other options for work as there are likely only a few larger companies that would avail themselves of the skills needed for employment. We have learned in the past that economic upheaval and abrupt policy changes many years ago at France Telecom and other large companies lead to a significant number of employees committing suicide. While the direct reason prompting this hopelessness was not determined, the inability to see a future for many of them may have been the cause. Increased economic opportunities at the time might have given employees some added hope for their future.

While the Industrial Revolution produced models for economic policy development that often only included large industry, labour and the government, those that were not fully integrated into those interest groups had limited their career prospects. During the industrial revolution, locals were the ones that moved from rural to urban centres and took up positions in newly formed industries. Newcomers to North America and South America did find employment in many of those industries, but they also expanded in the next generations to make their own start-up companies, creating employment for many of those who would have not been able to find work in the few large industrial firms at the time. For these reasons, the entrepreneurial class rose to such a great degree than they compete, and often provide more employment in the US and Canada than large industry. While the SBA and CFIB still have little influence over the policy decisions of governments in the US and Canada, the number of employees that depend on the entrepreneurial class is significant.

Hernando de Soto Polar produced some of the most interesting studies on how small and medium sized companies can promote a more equitable society in his research at the beginning of the 2000s. Latin America at that point had gone through twenty years of economic upheavals after the end of many years of closed borders and Import Substitution Industrialization policies that left most nations bankrupt. He saw that his fellow Peruvians were very capable of producing economic growth in their own communities, but did not have the power to influence policy decisions that made it easier to set up and run their own companies. In his analysis on Peru and Egypt, he showed that increased ability for smaller entrepreneurs to succeed also transformed economies into more equitable places to operate, and have added powers to those motivated and intelligent individuals who wanted a healthy community, thus producing a healthy country. It can be argued that much of the wealth and flexibility in the job market in the US and parts of Canada can be attributed to small and medium sized businesses contributing to low unemployment, and having some say in the policy decisions in society.

The loss of many small and medium businesses might have a negative effect on democracy as a whole. To lose much of the entrepreneurial class by further burdening small and medium sized businesses during a recession, or depression, not only limits their progress, but also reduces jobs and eliminates the best and most innovative in society from bettering that society. In the case of Canada for example, small and medium sized businesses actually make up the the majority of job producers in the country at over 65%, but during the current crisis the Federal Government of Canada added environmental taxes on all companies and citizens in the country, and even had the audacity to give all Federal politicians a raise on the same day. In comparison, the Prime Minister of New Zealand has recently declined a large portion of her own standard pay as a message of solidarity with the public. With the country possibly heading into depression era levels of job losses, the new tax deters rehiring those who lost their jobs, while adding to the cost of living for those who now live with no income. It is tantamount to cheering on the Sheriff of Nottingham when he takes from the newly poor and gives to the rich elites in society. In addition, it reduces the power of small and medium industry to have influence on policy decisions made by the government. With those most interested in vibrant communities being punished by bad policy, it may actually be detracting from a healthy democracy in that country.

While it will be impossible to save many small and medium sized companies during this crisis, the way in which many entrepreneurs operate will allow many to return when times are better. What must be done however is to not burden them or our communities further when recovery is possible. Without their voice on local matters, jobs will not return and our economy and government will not be as in-touch with us past elite opinions and elite options.

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