Foreign Policy

The summit between President Barack Obama and representatives from the Persian Gulf countries that kicked off today at Camp David is meant to reassure Washington’s Arab allies. “Don’t worry about the nuclear deal with Iran,” Obama will say. “We’ve got your back.”

And what’s the best way to show your friends that you’ve got their back? Sell them billions of dollars worth of advanced weapons. In fact, it seems like arms sales are the Obama administration’s tool of choice these days for dealing with everything from counterterrorism to a lagging economy. And the consequences, unsurprisingly, are bloody.

In its first five years in office, the Obama administration entered into formal agreements to transfer over $64 billion in arms and defense services to Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) member states, with about three-quarters of that total going to Saudi Arabia. And new offers worth nearly $15 billion have been made to Riyadh in 2014 and 2015. Items on offer to GCC states have included fighter aircraft, attack helicopters, radar planes, refueling aircraft, air-to-air missiles, armored vehicles, artillery, small arms and ammunition, cluster bombs, and missile defense systems.

Sales to GCC members have been the most important component of the record-level U.S. arms deals concluded during Obama’s term. The Obama figures for sales worldwide even edge out levels reached during the Nixon administration, when the end of the Vietnam War and the rising purchasing power of members of the OPEC oil cartel spurred the United States’ first major arms export boom.

The surge in arms sales under Obama is rooted in two factors, one political and one economic. The political aspect of the Obama approach mirrors the path pursued by President Richard Nixon in response to the unpopularity of the Vietnam War. In 1969, Nixon announced that henceforth the United States would supply generous quantities of military assistance to allied regimes, in an effort to “avoid another war like Vietnam anywhere in the world.” And in a 1967 article in Foreign Affairs, Nixon referenced the political roots of his emerging policy, noting that Vietnam had sown “bitter dissension” domestically, producing a “deep reluctance to become involved once again in a similar intervention on a similar basis.”

Substitute Obama for Nixon and Iraq for Vietnam, and you have a latter-day version of the Nixon Doctrine of arms sales promotion. Obama wants to be seen as a president who ended large-scale wars, not a president who started new ones. And, as he has made clear time and again, he is particularly reluctant to put large numbers of U.S. “boots on the ground,” as the Bush administration did in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Given these restrictions, the Obama administration has developed an approach to warfare designed to limit U.S. casualties. This has relied largely on drone strikes and the extensive use of Special Forces; but boosting arms sales advances is also a part of this hands-off approach, giving allies the equipment and training to fight terrorism on their own. (Let’s forget for the moment the fact that Obama’s approach may spawn more terrorists than it kills by generating anti-U.S. sentiment.)

But it might be the legacy of the 2008 economic crisis, as much as the 2003 Iraq disaster that drives this White House’s arms sales. The Obama administration clearly wants to create jobs in the defense industry and boost the bottom lines of major defense contractors. The Pentagon’s 2010 announcements of offers involving tens of billions of dollars’ worth of F-15 fighter planes, Apache attack helicopters, armored vehicles, and other equipment to Saudi Arabia listed the prime beneficiaries as Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, General Electric, the Sikorsky Helicopter unit of United Technologies, and ITT Aerospace. But these are just the major contractors; thousands of subcontractors across the United States will get a piece of the action as well. For example, in announcing the deal for selling 84 Boeing F-15s to the Saudis, Assistant Secretary of State for Political-Military Affairs Andrew Shapiro proudly asserted that the deal would create 50,000 jobs in 44 states, most notably in St. Louis, the site of the main assembly plant for the plane.

Foreign sales are particularly critical for keeping alive weapons production lines that are about to be closed down as the Pentagon moves towards buying next-generation systems. Absent new domestic orders, Boeing’s F-18 production line will have to close in early 2017. But last week’s report that Kuwait intends to buy 40 F-18s for $3 billion holds out hope that the line will stay open for another year or more, during which time the company can seek more foreign sales to prolong the life of the program even further. Similarly, the General Dynamics M-1 tank, a program which the Army started winding down in 2012, has been surviving based on yearly add-ons to Pentagon budget requests spearheaded by the Ohio and Michigan delegations, whose states host the main production sites for the vehicles. These efforts have been supplemented by a deal to upgrade 84 M-1s for Saudi Arabia.

The Obama arms sales boom has bolstered the bottom lines of companies like Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and Raytheon. Each firm has been the lead contractor one or more mega-deals like the $29 billion offer of 84 Boeing F-15 fighter jets and related equipment to Saudi Arabia, a $6.5 billion sale of Lockheed Martin’s THAAD missile defense system to Qatar, and the proposed transfer of the Lockheed Martin/Raytheon produced Patriot Air and Missile Defense System to Saudi Arabia for $1.8 billion. The payoff won’t come all at once, but as these deals work their way through the pipeline, they will generate substantial profits for each of these firms for years to come.

As Pentagon procurement spending has dipped slightly due to the caps on the agency’s budget established in the Budget Control Act of 2011, arms industry executives are looking to promote overseas sales even more aggressively — and the Middle East market will be central to these efforts. Lockheed Martin has set a goal of increasing exports to 25 percent of total sales over the next few years. In a conference call with investors in late January, Lockheed Martin CEO Marillyn Hewson suggested that continued “volatility” in the Middle East and Asia make them “growth areas” for the firm. And a few years ago, Boeing launched an effort to get export sales in its defense division up to 25 to 30 percent, from just 7 percent in 2005. Dennis Muilenburg, a company vice president who formerly ran Boeing’s defense segment, has suggested that if the F-15 deal with Saudi Arabia stays on track, the company will be “well on our way” to its goal.

The Obama administration is clearly on board with the industry’s agenda. The lengths to which U.S. officials will go to help secure an arms sale for a U.S. company were revealed at a House Foreign Affairs Committee in April 2013. Asked whether the administration was doing enough to advocate for U.S. arms exports, Tom Kelly, principal deputy assistant secretary of the State Department’s bureau of political-military affairs, said that, “it is an issue that has the attention of every top-level official who’s working on foreign policy throughout the government, including the top officials at the State Department … in advocating on behalf of our companies and doing everything we can to make sure that these sales go through.” Just to make himself perfectly clear, Kelly went on to say that [arms sales promotion] “is something that we’re doing every day, basically [on] every continent in the world, and we take it very, very seriously and we’re constantly thinking of how we can do better.”

The Obama administration can definitely do better — but not by hawking top-of-the-line weaponry to Middle Eastern regimes. That approach has already proved disastrous.

In 2011, the U.S-backed security forces of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates intervened to help put down the pro-democracy movement in Bahrain. Last summer, the United Arab Emirates conducted bombing raids against Islamist forces in Libya, further inflaming the situation in that country. Most recently, Saudi Arabia, armed with U.S. planes and bombs, has launched a devastating assault on Yemen that has killed at least 700 civilians, displaced hundreds of thousands, and sparked a humanitarian emergency by blocking access to food and medicine.

One shudders trying to imagine what comes next after the president inks billions more dollars worth of arms sales at Camp David this week.

Photo by Kevin Dietsch – Pool/Getty Images

Just over a year ago, Edward Snowden appeared in a pre-recorded clip during a nationally televised public forum to ask President Vladimir Putin whether Russia spies on its citizens by monitoring their communications. The president declared in response, “We don’t have a mass system for such interception, and according to our law it cannot exist.” Conveniently, Putin didn’t provide robust details on the System for Operative Investigative Activities, under which the state can amass data from Russian communication systems; phone calls, emails, and Internet searches are all fair game. Collecting information requires a court order, but legal decisions are made largely in secret. In 2012 alone, according to Russia’s Supreme Court, security services were authorized to intercept phone and web traffic more than 500,000 times. This is to say nothing of the illegal surveillance many Russia hands suspect the Kremlin of conducting.

Yet the new epoch of snooping in Russia involves more than metadata. Much like British authorities, who use closed-circuit TV devices throughout London, Moscow deploys cameras to keep a watchful eye on its populace. And it is the next generation of such video surveillance that has inspired the work of British-based photographers Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin: What would the consequences be if cameras didn’t simply document, but could actively recognize faces, allowing security forces to monitor specific individuals’ whereabouts?

To explore this question, the artists recruited more than 1,000 Muscovites as models, including Pussy Riot band member Yekaterina Samutsevich (pictured above), and shot a series of portraits using a prototype of facial-recognition technology developed by Russian engineering company Vocord. Unlike with a typical biometric system—for instance, touching a thumbprint pad to enter a secure room—Vocord’s innovation does not require a person to be an active participant in, or even to be aware of, the identification process. (Hence the portrait subjects’ expressions being rendered passive.) Rather, it uses four lenses, operating in tandem, to capture and recognize a face, stripping it bare of shadows or even makeup. Conceivably, the technology could be linked to police databases across Russia, notifying law enforcement as individuals of interest—terrorism suspects, Kremlin critics, human rights activists—
are recognized. It could be placed in subways, stadiums, or other crowded places.

To the artists, the project is something of a warning: Technology, Chanarin says, “is always ideological.”

AIN EL HILWEH, Lebanon — The gunmen who control this tiny, cramped Palestinian refugee camp in south Lebanon are uncharacteristically eager to please. Hardened militants scurry to meetings with political rivals, and speak with newfound candor to journalists about past unsuccessful efforts to overcome a history of deadly feuds in the camp.

For decades, the coveted slot of camp boss has gone to the man able to deploy the most shooters and force Ain el Hilweh’s unruly clans and factions to fall in line. Today, however, an unlikely new order prevails: Bitter rivals have forged an unprecedented level of cooperation to police their sometimes-anarchic camp, forcing the most violent jihadists to lay low, and even turning over Palestinian suspects to the Lebanese Army, an act that just a few years ago would have been considered an unpardonable treason. Strongman Munir Makdah, a member of the Fatah movement, presides over a special council of 17 militia leaders — including some borderline jihadists — who must approve the most sensitive moves.

“It’s very important: This is the first time we’ve done anything like this,” Makdah said during a recent visit to his headquarters, nestled in Ain el Hilweh’s claustrophobic horizon of apartment blocs. “I call it the democracy of the gun. We tell our brothers when they visit that they can do the same thing in Palestine.”

Since its establishment in 1948, Ain el Hilweh has been a byword for militancy — a haven for fugitives and a bête noir (at different times) to the Lebanese government, the Israeli military, even the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). An estimated 100,000 people live in the camp, which is rimmed by walls, barbed wire, and army checkpoints. Under a convoluted agreement, Lebanese soldiers search the cars going in and out, but don’t enter the camp itself, leaving policing inside to the Palestinian factions.

The experiment underway in this camp represents a rare instance of cooperation and pragmatism in a region where fragmentation and infighting is the norm. Much more is at stake than simply the stability of an overpopulated square kilometer: There is a widespread fear that if the Islamic State, or jihadists sympathetic to the group, ever gained a foothold in Lebanon, it will be in a place like Ain el Hilweh — where residents are poor, politically disenfranchised, and ineffectively policed.

The agreement in Ain el Hilweh presents significant potential upside, too, in a region currently short of examples of political progress. The camp is home to actors who can impact flashpoints all over the region: It could contain the seeds of reconciliation between Hamas and Fatah in Gaza and the West Bank, while authorities everywhere might look it as a model for a successful initiative to curb jihadists.

“Syria’s war was like a storm coming to us,” Makdah said. “Everyone was worried about the camps. We reflect society.”

When it comes to security, senior Hamas officials in Ain el Hilweh amiably take orders from Makdah. At the camp’s Hamas office, a visiting Fatah official refilled the Hamas chief’s coffee cup as the Hamas official gave his unvarnished assessment of the regional security situation. “Honestly, we Palestinians are in a weak position,” said the official, Abu Ahmed Fadel.

Fadel said it took the factions much too long to learn the lesson of the crisis in the Nahr el Bared refugee camp in north Lebanon in 2007, when jihadists battled the Lebanese Army. That fight destroyed the entire camp and left 27,000 residents homeless. Ever since then, Fadel said, Lebanese leaders suggested that the Palestinians set aside their internal differences and form a united front. It took what Fadel called “the fires in Syria” to finally push the sides to agree.

“Compared to what’s happening around us, we’re a stable river,” said Khalid al-Shayeb, the Fatah deputy who’s in charge of the patrols in Ain el Hilweh and the neighboring Mieh Mieh camp. “We managed to neutralize the threats from Palestinians much more effectively than the Lebanese Army has managed to neutralize the threats from the rest of Lebanon.”

There’s no sign here of the discord that forced a bitter break between Hamas and its long-time patrons in Damascus, or the blood feud between Hamas and Fatah, or between Hamas and the more extreme religious factions like Islamic Jihad and Ansar Allah. One fear has managed to outweigh all that acrimony: the dread of an encroachment by the Islamic State, whose entry into the camp could provoke outsiders to destroy it and cost the grand old factions everything.

“People should be united because there is a threat to everybody,” said Ali Baraka, a senior Hamas official based in Beirut.

That’s not to say that the camp’s residents have entirely stayed out of the Syrian war. Some reports say that one of Makdah’s own sons snuck into Syria to join the jihadists. Makdah has figures of his own: precisely 52 Palestinians from all the camps in Lebanon, he says, have been tracked joining the Syrian jihadists.

The impact of the war is felt everywhere in Ain el Hilweh. A human flood of refugees has entered over the past several years, filling the impossibly crowded camp to its breaking point. According to Makdah, at least 20,000 newcomers moved to the camp since 2011, when war broke out in Syria. Officials have struggled to maintain the camp’s fragile water supply and say they can’t provide adequate education, housing, and health care to the camp’s residents. Until last week, Makdah said, he had turned over his offices to refugees. Now that they’ve found better dwellings, he’s moved back in.

A murder in April tested Makdah’s efforts to construct a new order in the camp. A Lebanese supporter of Hezbollah named Marwan Issa was dragged into Ain el Hilweh and murdered. According to Palestinian security officials, Issa was a member of a Hezbollah auxiliary militia called the Resistance Brigades, and his suspected killers were known arms dealers. They believe the murder was related to a weapons deal gone awry. Two suspects were quickly apprehended. Leaders of the 17 factions called an emergency meeting to vote on whether to hand them over to the Lebanese authorities.

“Usually the Islamic factions object,” said Bilal Selwan Aboul Nour, the camp security officer in charge of liaising with the Lebanese security establishment. “In this case, it was different. The victim was Lebanese. And if we didn’t cooperate, it could bring trouble on the entire camp.”

Aboul Nour immediately delivered the captives himself to the Lebanese Army barracks up the road.

A third suspect in the murder remains at large in the camp, however, illustrating the limits of this new cooperative order. That suspect is under the protection of Jund el-Sham, a jihadist faction, in the Taamir area of the camp. “We can’t use force,” Aboul Nour said. “He’s in an area outside our control.”

Hezbollah and the Lebanese government have been patient and understanding, according to the Palestinians, although Hezbollah called the killing a “stab in the back of the Lebanese resistance.”

It was the Islamic State’s infiltration of the Palestinian camp of Yarmouk in Damascus that motivated the dithering Palestinian factions to unite last summer. At the time, the already unraveling region was experiencing extra strain: The Islamic State had seized much of northern Iraq and declared a caliphate, and had seized control of some entrances to Yarmouk and assassinated Palestinian operatives, according to Baraka. Senior officials from Fatah, Hamas, and the Lebanese government quickly agreed that if the Islamic State could win followers in Yarmouk, it could easily do the same in Lebanese camps.

Since September, the Palestinian Joint Security Committee has doubled the number of camp police in Ain el Hilweh from 200 to 400. Fatah supplies the top commanders and foots 70 percent of the cost of the committee, and Hamas provides the rest. The officers are mostly familiar faces in the camp, some of them veteran fighters in their fifties. Now they wear red armbands that identify themselves as Joint Security Committee fighters. Makdah has not only brought together Fatah and Hamas, he has also convinced jihadists and secular Marxists to police the camp in joint patrols — a success that eluded generations of Arab leaders before him.

Most of the fighters still stay close to their factions: In the headquarters, Fatah old-timers cluster around the small fountain full of goldfish. Outside, Ansar Allah’s fighters — identifiable by their long Salafi-style beards — politely decline to talk to reporters. Near the hospital, the clean-shaven leftists of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine shun the uniform altogether; their unit commander, Ali Rashid, wears blue jeans and a brown leather jacket. The groups sometimes organize joint patrols, and the major checkpoints include fighters from all the factions.

It was especially difficult for secular leftists to join forces with Islamist jihadists, Rashid said.

“We agreed that we would cut off any hand that tries to mess with security in the camp,” Rashid said. “We cannot tolerate even the smallest action from any takfiri [extremist] who enters here.”

So far, he said, the extremists in the camp have obeyed the new order. They might shelter fugitives — but so long as the fugitives are in the camp they refrain from any active role in militant operations.

Makdah says the camp really needs 1,000 police officers. In March, he extended his writ to the nearby camp of Mieh Mieh. If the experiment continues to succeed, Palestinian and Lebanese security officials said they hope to spread the experiment to all the Palestinian refugee camps in the country.

Ain el Hilweh’s unique circumstances make it an unlikely template for other places: It’s a hyper-politicized area whose claustrophobic living conditions make the Gaza Strip appear positively suburban by comparison. But sudden and intense collaboration between militants of secular, Marxist, Islamist and jihadist pedigrees show just how dramatically the Syrian war has shaken the old order. And it provides a fleeting glimpse of the kind of politicking — and transcending of old divisions — that has so far escaped mainstream Palestinian politics and the revolutionary movements that fueled the Arab Spring uprisings.

MAHMOUD ZAYYAT/AFP/Getty Images

Eight months after a devastating war, Israel’s continued and deliberate policy of besieging Gaza and enforcing its separation from the West Bank means conflict could break out again.

The formation of a new right-wing coalition government doesn’t look like it will help. The cabinet appears to be a devastating blow to hopes of any accord with the Palestinians. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has a lot to do to convince domestic and foreign audience that he has a credible desire and vision for peace.

Netanyahu is now trying to find common cause with neighboring Arab countries over the Islamic State and violent Salafi-jihadism, instead of working toward a regional peace agreement. But Israel should recognize that Gaza is not immune to these radicalizing trends as its population sinks further into poverty and despair.

The plight of Gaza and its people, and the security threat it poses to the whole region, was at the heart of our mission earlier this month to Israel and Palestine. We went as members of The Elders, the group of independent former leaders who campaign for peace and human rights across the globe.

One place we visited was Kibbutz Nir Am, just one kilometer from the border with Gaza. We heard directly from people on the front line of the conflict who wish to live in peace with their Palestinian neighbors. One mother’s words stood out: “If people have nothing to live for, then they will find something to die for.”

She and her fellow kibbutz residents are understandably frightened and angry about the threats of rocket attacks and tunnel raids, but we were impressed by their insistence that only a just peace can bring security to their community.

We regret that we were unable to visit Gaza on this trip, to see the situation there for ourselves. What we heard from independent experts and United Nations officials confirmed our worst expectations regarding poverty, housing, health, and political deadlock. It only strengthened our determination to work for peace, a two-state solution, and the lifting of the blockade.

The situation in Gaza is intolerable. Eight months after the end of last summer’s war, not one destroyed house has been rebuilt. People cannot live with the respect and dignity they deserve.

A complete paradigm shift is essential. This demands the lifting of the siege and an end to Israel’s policy of separating the West Bank and Gaza: the two main components of what should, in our view, become an independent Palestinian state. Unfortunately, as we heard during our visit, without Gaza the two-state solution simply cannot be realized.

We have both spent decades working for peace in the Middle East and, notwithstanding the growing number of skeptics, believe the two-state solution remains the only viable outcome.

Gaza’s 1.8 million people are besieged, isolated, and desperate. They cannot enjoy any of the aspects of normal life, from trade and travel to health and education, that people in our countries — and, indeed, in Israel — take for granted.

The risk of another war is very real. This would be disastrous not just for the people of Gaza but for all Palestinians and all Israelis as well. Everyone who lives in the Holy Land has suffered under the shadow of conflict for long enough.

To avoid further bloodshed and boost the currently slim chances of a peace agreement, Palestinian reconciliation and unity is a prerequisite. When we met with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, we were encouraged by his commitment to convene the Interim Leadership Framework, a new caucus that would bring together the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization and representatives of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, the main factions in Gaza.

Abbas asked us, as Elders, to secure from Hamas a written request for the convening of elections, and he committed to hold fresh presidential and Palestinian Legislative Council elections upon receipt of this communications. This is now the focus of our ongoing work in the region.

We also believe it is essential that the Palestinian Government of National Consensus is fully established in Gaza, initially to control the border crossings and thus to allow many more goods to enter the territory for reconstruction and other essential purposes.

These steps might seem merely procedural but they are vital to reconnecting Gaza and the West Bank politically, economically, and socially.

Even if Palestinian factions can be reconciled, however, they will still need credible and sincere partners for peace on the Israeli side. Such forces do exist despite the dominant trends in the Knesset. We were encouraged by the sincere commitment of several proudly patriotic Israelis we met for the realization of the two-state solution.

The best guarantee of Israel’s future security and acceptance by its neighbors will be the two-state solution and an end to the occupation and settlement expansion. To help achieve this goal, we feel it is high time that the countries of Europe take a more proactive role, underpinned by a serious financial commitment to assist in Gaza’s reconstruction.

Although the United States will remain a key player, it cannot shoulder the burden of peacemaking alone. We will do all we can to support EU High Representative Federica Mogherini so an effective multilateral process can be set in motion.

This was the fourth Elders mission to Israel and Palestine since 2009. Our organization was founded by Nelson Mandela to work for peace and human rights around the world. Each time we visit this region, it is brought home to us how the former cannot be secured without the latter. The people of Israel and Palestine deserve nothing less.

ABBAS MOMANI/AFP/Getty Images

Europe is poised to try to help Libya stem the lethal human trafficking trade that has imperiled the lives of tens of thousands of desperate migrants crossing the Mediterranean Sea in search of a better life in Europe.

But Libya’s U.N. ambassador, Ibrahim Dabbashi, is essentially saying “not so fast.”

The Security Council’s four European members — Britain, France, Spain and Lithuania — have crafted a resolution that would grant Europeans broad authority to use military force to seize suspected smuggling ships on the high seas or in Libya’s territorial waters, according to a diplomat familiar with the draft. The resolution, which European foreign ministers are scheduled to take up on Monday in Brussels, would also allow European forces to pursue human traffickers in Libya.

It’s unclear how many European navies are prepared to participate in a concerted interdiction effort on the high seas, and it seems highly unlikely that any European countries would relish the chance to send combat forces into a country riven by a bloody civil war.

Dabbashi doesn’t want to wait to find out. In an interview with Foreign Policy, Dabbashi expressed deep reservations about the European plan, which he said could violate Libya’s sovereignty. He also fretted that Libyan fishermen might get caught up in the international operation and have their boats, their only source of income, destroyed. “It will be very difficult to distinguish between fishermen and trafficking boats,” he said. “It could be disastrous for fishermen.”

The ambassador’s concerns echo public and private misgivings being expressed about the European plan from the United Nations, the United States, and Russia. The resolution would be adopted under Chapter 7 of the U.N. Charter, a provision that is traditionally invoked to impose sanctions or authorize military action. The European text, which may be shared with the 15-nation Security Council later this week or next week, also would permit the detention of smugglers and the scuttling of their ships. In addition, foreign powers would be allowed to mount attacks on Libyan soil to seize any “assets” the smugglers might use to further their illicit trade.

The initiative is being driven most fervently by Italy and EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini, an Italian. Rome has shouldered the greatest burden of accommodating the massive flow of tens of thousands of desperate migrants into Europe. In previous efforts to stem the tide, Italy sought unsuccessfully to rally international support for a U.N.-backed stabilization force in Libya.

European powers cast the diplomatic push on humanitarian grounds, but Dabbashi voiced suspicion that Italy and other European powers were actually seeking a blank check to carry out offensive military operations on Libyan soil and Libyan territorial waters. The European approach, he said pointedly, could “raise more problems than it solves.”

The European diplomacy follows one of the deadliest months for the nearly 60,000 migrants that have fled unrest in Africa and the Middle East for Europe since the beginning of the year. In one particularly horrific incident, a boat carrying more than 750 migrants capsized off the coast of Sicily, killing most of the passengers.

“In the first 130 days of 2015, 1,800 people have drowned in the Mediterranean,” Peter Sutherland, the U.N.’s special representative for international migration, told the Security Council Monday. “That total represents a 20-fold increase over the same period last year – and at this pace, between 10,000 and 20,000 migrants would perish by autumn.”

The migrants come from as far away as Afghanistan, Eritrea, Somalia, and Syria, where political repression or long-standing conflicts have fueled a mass exodus. The largest numbers are transiting through Libya, which is in the midst of its own civil war, and are paying a fee of $5,000 to $15,000 for their passage to the southern shores of Italy, according to the United Nations. “They face a substantial risk of death,” Sutherland said. “But, clearly, the situations from which they flee are even more dangerous.”

European governments have faced intense criticism for mounting what has largely been a lackluster response to the rising migrant death toll.

Last November, European leaders shuttered an Italian naval operation, dubbed Mare Nostrum, that patrolled international waters in search of smuggling boats and sought to prosecute the traffickers. The program, which is credited with saving thousands of lives, was considered too costly by its European funders. A newer, less ambitious European program, called Operation Triton, only operates within about 21 miles of Italy’s shores, and has only six vessels at its disposal, according to Sutherland. Mare Nostrum had 32.

The push for a Security Council resolution is aimed to show renewed European resolve. It comes as the European Commission on Wednesday announced a new European migration plan, which would triple funding for a European maritime operation aimed at rescuing migrants at sea, establish a quota system for distributing refugees throughout Europe, and forge a common security policy aimed at dismantling traffickers networks and fighting the smuggling of humans.

On April 23, the European Council endorsed a plan favored by Mogherini “to undertake systematic efforts to identify, capture, and destroy vessels before they are used by traffickers in accordance with international law.”

The European call for the use of force has faced some skepticism at the United Nations, where U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, Russia, and the United States have expressed public or private reservations about the plan. “Destroying the boats in not the appropriate way, it’s not the good way,” Ban told reporters during a visit to the Vatican. He voiced concern that destroying boats could damage an already ailing local economy.

Russian officials, for their part, have voiced regret for supporting a resolution in 2011 that paved the way for a NATO-backed overthrow of former Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, saying they were fooled into believing that the mission was designed only to prevent the mass slaughter of civilians. Moscow remains skeptical about the latest European plan. “We think it’s just going too far,” Russian Ambassador to the U.N. Vitaly Churkin said late last week.

The United States has not publically criticized the European proposal. But during a May 11 closed-door Security Council debate, Samantha Power, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, asked a series of pointed questions about the European plan, according to three diplomats briefed on the meeting. One of her biggest: Whether creating a European force designed to deliver rescued migrants to Europe for processing might actually encourage people to try to make the risky passage.

Power and other American diplomats have also privately raised concerns with foreign officials about the wisdom of trying to adopt the resolution under Chapter 7 of the U.N. Charter, a provision used to authorize sanctions or the use of military force. Washington worries that governments in other parts of the world, including Asia, might seek authorization for military force against their own migrants using the provision.

Some diplomats, however, say they suspect the U.S. is reluctant to see the Security Council getting into the business of addressing migration issues because it doesn’t want to set a precedent that might invite other governments to call for council consideration of American migration policies.

Speaking to the Security Council on May 11, Mogherini sought to downplay the military nature of the operation, saying the Europeans had no intention of sending an intervention force onto Libyan soil. She also assured council members that the effort was not aimed at forcing refugees to remain in Libya, where many faced detention in extremely harsh conditions.

“Let me explicitly assure you that no refugees or migrants intercepted at sea will be sent back against their will,” Mogherini told the council. “Their rights under Geneva conventions will be fully honored.”

Asked to expand on Power’s remarks in the closed-door meeting, a U.S. official said that the Obama administration wanted to ensure that “any response that imposes consequences on smugglers and their assets should avoid putting migrants in further danger.”

But the official, who declined to be identified by name, said: “We support Europe’s effort to take a comprehensive approach to resolving these migration challenges and would emphasize that – as laid out in the EU council’s conclusions – a sustainable solution must include elements to expand search and rescue operations, increase legal avenues to migration, provide protection to refugees, and help source and transit and transit countries to manage migrants and refugees more humanely, in addition to cracking down on smugglers.”

European officials, meanwhile, are calling on Libya’s leaders to write a formal letter to the U.N. granting their consent for a new mission.

But any effort to secure Libyan backing is complicated by the fact that two rival factions — the internationally recognized government, headquartered in the eastern city of Tobruk, and a coalition of Islamists and fighters from the Misrata-based militia — are in the midst of a bloody civil war. Any decision to use force would require the formal consent of the government in Tobruk, which fled the Libyan capital of Tripoli last summer. But it would also require the approval of the rebels, who now control Tripoli and many of the country’s main ports. The failure to secure both parties consent, U.N. officials warn, could undermine U.N.-brokered talks aimed at forming a government of national unity in Libya.

While Dabbashi didn’t rule out the possibility that the Libyan government might ultimately agree to an outside maritime force, he set potentially insurmountable terms. “If we have to ask for assistance we will ask for assistance of the Security Council to extend the authority of the Libyan government over all of Libya,” he said.

That is a non-starter as it would run contrary to U.N. efforts to negotiate a power-sharing arrangement, according to diplomats. But they said they remain confident that they can secure the support of the key Libyan parties.

“We know what Dabbashi thinks, but at the end of day, if we are going to get a request from the government, it’s not going to be a letter written by Dabbashi,” said one U.N.-based diplomat.

The Libyans are not the only ones to harbor serious doubts about the European plan. “Nobody really thinks the European Union has a very convincing plan,” said Richard Gowan, a U.N. expert at New York University’s Center on International Cooperation. “There is a lack of clarity over how these operations would work [and] there is a lot of fear that this will end up in situation where the Europeans blow up harmless civilians. The U.N. secretariat is unconvinced it’s a good idea, Ban Ki-moon is unconvinced it’s a good idea.”

Gowan said the Italian government has failed to build European and U.N. support for a peacekeeping force in Libya, and the current strategy offers an opening to enlist greater support for military involvement in Libya. “This is partially a genuine response to migration crisis but it’s also an alibi for a serious European intervention in Libya,” he said. There is a lot of “genuine skepticism” about whether this constitutes a viable strategy capable of addressing Europe’s migration crisis, Gowan added, or a “lowest common denominator” pact that simply papers over differences within Europe.

“To be honest it looks like a half-baked baked plan that could go seriously awry,” said Gowan. “My suspicion is a lot of people are hoping maybe Russia and China will kill this off and save everyone a lot of embarrassment.”

Francesco Malavolta/AFP/Getty Images

Famed fictional archaeologist Indiana Jones often said antiquities belong in museums. A new bill introduced this week in Congress agrees.

Rep. Bill Keating (D-Mass.) is offering new legislation, called the Prevent Trafficking in Cultural Property Act, to help the Homeland Security Department block Islamic State sales of antiquities on the black market, a major source of the group’s revenue. It’s not clear how much the sale of these artifacts, looted from museums and archaeological sites, is bringing in, but intelligence officials estimate it’s the second largest source of funding for the group, behind oil revenue. In one region of Syria, the group reportedly cashed in on $36 million by selling plundered artifacts.

The United Nations already has a ban against the sale of items looted from Iraq and Syria. But according to Keating, efforts within U.S. law enforcement to stop their sale are poorly coordinated, and officials charged with preventing the illicit trade are not well trained.

“It takes more expertise to be able to spot what’s an antiquity,” Keating told FP. “These investigations aren’t occurring the way they should.”

The Islamic State profits from the sale of stolen relics in two ways. In some cases, the group offers them on the black market. In others, it serves as a courier between parties, exercising a tax as high as 50 percent on their sale.

The market for these goods is global, but Keating said the main buyers are in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Japan. His bill would require DHS to appoint a lead law enforcement coordinator to stop such sales in America, better train U.S. officials to identify stolen pieces, and improve efforts to prosecute buyers.

Keating said Reps. Mike McCaul (R-Texas) and Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.) also have signed on to the plan, which he described as a way to cut off Islamic State funding that is just as important as military operations against the extremists on the battlefield.

“It’s something we have control over,” he said, referring to cracking down on the black market. “There are so many things we don’t have control over.”

Photo Credit: Louai Beshara/Getty Images

Who would’ve thought superstar Johnny Depp’s dogs would become the focus of an international incident? But here we are, in 2015, and Depp, who is in Australia filming the latest Pirates of the Caribbean film, finds himself in a stand-off with Canberra over the fate of his dogs, which the Australian government argues were brought into the country illegally. If they aren’t sent back home, Australia is threatening to kill the dogs.

The Australian Department of Agriculture argues that the dogs were brought into the country without the proper permits and in violation of the country’s biosecurity laws. “We found out he snuck them in because we saw him taking them to a poodle groomer,” Agriculture Minister Barnaby Joyce told reporters, according to the Guardian.

The dogs in question are two Yorkshire terriers named Boo and Pistol, and if Depp doesn’t ship them back to California on the private jet on which they arrived, they could be put down by the Australian government in a matter of hours. Joyce gave Depp 50 hours to get the dogs out of the country. “It’s time that Pistol and Boo buggered off back to the United States,” Joyce said. “He can put them on the same chartered jet he flew out on to fly them back out of our nation.”

Australia has intense restrictions in place on importing dogs to prevent the spread of animal-borne diseases. Dogs must be vaccinated and checked for rabies by approved veterinarians before leaving for Australia, and then quarantined for a minimum of 10 days once they arrive. The guidelines posted online by the Australian Department of Agriculture include a 19-step guide to comply with these regulations. If they aren’t followed, the animal’s owner has to either send the dog home or pay for their pet’s euthanasia.

Depp appears to have not bothered complying with these, and the fracas over his pets has turned into a minor media firestorm, with reporters camped outside his Gold Coast mansion waiting for a glimpse of the dogs and to learn their fate.

They’ve even spawned heartfelt appeals for animal equality:

Maybe we have a hashtag campaign to look forward to: #BringBackBooAndPistol.

Kevin Winter/Getty Images

Colombia is facing a key challenge familiar to many countries attempting to transition out of armed conflict: conducting peace negotiations while armies are still on the battlefield. With the FARC rebel group’s recent violation of its self-imposed ceasefire that resulted in the killing of 11 Colombian army soldiers, the peace talks have had a bumpy couple of months. But despite what some have argued, the sky is not falling. The talks are best understood as an elaborate political kabuki dance, high on posturing and symbolism, and regularly featuring both setbacks and shows of good faith. Though negotiators are walking a dangerous tightrope, the peace process has proven robust so far. So despite several mishaps (including another battle at the end of April), the progress to date and the underlying structure of the conflict are still forcing the parties toward a deal.

True, recent incidents in Colombia have been unnerving. Although the FARC declared a unilateral ceasefire over Christmas that was partially reciprocated by the Colombian government’s temporary halt to airstrikes, it was broken when the 11 army soldiers on patrol were attacked and killed by a FARC unit on April 15. This tragic incident and previous skirmishes are compounded by a deeper mistrust built up over a conflict that has lasted over fifty years and claimed over 220,000 victims. Colombians can’t be blamed for their suspicion, and the government’s reluctance to commit to a bilateral ceasefire was reinforced by the testy Caguan negotiations from 1999-2002. During that effort, the FARC took numerous towns, massed on the edge of Bogotá, and even shelled President Álvaro Uribe’s inauguration ceremony. The words “Colombia” and “failed state” often appeared in the same sentence. It is therefore understandable why some might believe the talks to be at risk today, and why the U.S. envoy to the talks, Bernard Aronson, admonished the FARC to “show they are serious.” But what many observers have missed is that the conditions in Colombia today are different.

There are several reasons why the peace process remains strong. The talks have already made historic progress and the FARC has made many shows of good faith: it has given up on its call to institute a socialist state, admitted responsibility for its role in the conflict, listened to victims and asked them for forgiveness, aided with removing land mines, and ceased kidnapping and recruiting of child soldiers. Important sub-agreements have been reached on land reform, political participation, and the drug trade. 

The posturing of the armies on the battlefield is also better viewed as a “tremble” rather than as a sign of an impending collapse of negotiations. Game theorists invoke the concept of the “trembling hand” to represent a player’s mistake or an accident that sends the game toward deeper conflict. In one recent such “tremble,” a FARC front commander attacked energy towers because news of a cease-fire was delayed in reaching him. Nevertheless, the process has proven robust in the face of such trembles — including previous attacks by both sides. Negotiations have continued to progress and FARC negotiators have been helpful and responsive in mitigating flare-ups of conflict. Case in point: the mysterious capture of General Alzate by the FARC in the western department of Chocó in November of last year (when he ventured into a FARC-controlled village) was successfully resolved through his timely release. Even after the latest fatal skirmish, which some accounts suggest was accidental, the FARC has recommitted to a ceasefire.

Perhaps most importantly, the structure and incentives underlying these talks are different from those that prevailed during the previous talks in Caguan. The alternative of resuming fighting remains far less desirable for both sides than a negotiated agreement. The FARC is weak and still prefers a deal, which is why they are still at the table, have begun to implement policy changes and pressed hard for a ceasefire.

The government also has much to gain and little to lose by continuing to negotiate. It has proven difficult to finish off the FARC militarily, given its places of refuge in the jungle and in the mountains. A political agreement would be much neater than trying to hunt down every last rebel. There is also the worry that if the FARC is defeated militarily, it may splinter into criminal bands. So far, the FARC is also not using the talks to mask a massive remobilization, as it did during the Caguan talks. And although the Colombian government was burned by this remobilization, it will be much harder to fool this time around. The FARC is far weaker today: its force strength has dropped from around 18,000 to 7,000 troops. The Colombian military is also much stronger as a result of Plan Colombia assistance and other training and procurement programs. If the FARC engages in militancy or if negotiations break down, the government will not have sacrificed its position and the military would be able to continue pressing an offensive that has proven effective at pushing the FARC onto their heels.

This doesn’t mean there are no threats to the stability of the talks. There are. Perhaps the biggest risk factor is the armies that remain on the battlefield, which can lead to accidents and clashes. A security dilemma persists in which neither actor can simply sit still and allow themselves to be vulnerable, and both sides still have constituents they must appease and missions to achieve. The FARC must still hide its camps, evade the army, and fund itself. It has shown greater restraint in offensive operations against the military and police, but has also bombed oil pipelines. The conflict has also continued to displace civilians. Further, the FARC Central Secretariat and negotiators in Havana may also have uncertain control over some parts of the battlefield, particularly fronts in southern and western Colombia that are more closely linked to the drug trade.

The government is also responsible for squandering trust during the talks. Earlier this year, President Juan Manuel Santos invoked former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin when he said, “We are going to negotiate as if there were no terrorists, and we will fight the terrorists as if there were no negotiations.” Indeed, Minister of Defense Juan Carlos Pinzón cannot in good conscience order his troops to sit on their hands and refrain from defending the Colombian people. The military has continued operations, including killing FARC leaders and, in one incident in late 2012, killing over 20 FARC soldiers in southern Colombia. Colombian military intelligence also broke the FARC’s communications encryption, leading to an eavesdropping scandal last year when the military set up an operation in the back of a lunch counter in downtown Bogotá to monitor the peace talks in Havana. If the FARC’s communications cannot be assured, the group may justifiably doubt the government’s willingness to comply with norms of the negotiation, or hold up its end of a final agreement.

The slow pace of talks is also not helping. The process is already in its third year and since reaching three sub-agreements in quick succession, there has been little good news of late. The talks have continued behind closed doors in Cuba as negotiators toil with the most difficult parts of the agenda: justice and punishments for FARC members, reintegration of the guerrillas into Colombian society, and the technical details of the agreement’s final implementation. A lack of recent “wins,” along with bad news from the battlefield, have only fueled skepticism by opponents (such as former President Uribe) and volatile public support.

The loss of civilian lives and soldiers on both sides is tragic. But it is not yet a threat to the peace process, because too much has been invested to endanger the historic progress that has already been achieved. There may be a few more unfortunate trembles yet before a final deal is concluded. But sustained progress in the negotiations, exercising patience and restraint, and enduring international support will help keep both parties at the table. The trembles suggest that rebel spoilers could materialize as a future hazard to a final agreement, but that will only become apparent once success is realized. For the moment, the trembling hands in Colombia appear to be steadied.

In the photo, Colombian soldiers render funeral honors to their comrades killed in a FARC attack on April 16, 2015.
Photo Credit: LUIS ROBAYO/AFP/Getty Images

On the evening of May 12, an Amtrak train carrying commuters from Washington, DC, to New York derailed, killing seven and injuring more than 200. To some, the deadly accident highlights the dangers posed by America’s crumbling and underfunded infrastructure, though on May 13, in a vote that had already been scheduled prior to the Amtrak crash, House Republicans voted to slash the budget for the publicly-funded railroad service by $260 million.

But Americans weren’t the only ones talking about the crash. China is home to the world’s longest high-speed rail network, built in just a decade. And while the officially communist country’s system of governance faces a bevy of international criticism for human rights violations and lack of rule of law, China’s steadily expanding infrastructure is a major point of national prestige. It’s also a major point of sensitivity; to many Chinese, the image of a train crash is deeply resonant, recalling a deadly high-speed crash in 2011 and a subsequent cover-up that cut to the heart of the legitimacy of their government. Perhaps that’s why some disgruntled Chinese web users have taken the Amtrak derailment as an opportunity to deflect criticism back on the United States.

Chinese netizens let loose the sarcasm on social media platform Weibo, parroting with apparent relish criticism, directed at China, that has been branded as Western — although much of it actually comes from Chinese reformists themselves. Though online chatter about the U.S. crash was limited, it was largely in this vein. One such criticism is that train crashes are a symptom of an inferior model of governance, often simply called a “system” in Chinese. “With such a backwards system and a backwards rail network, it would be strange if such accidents didn’t happen in the United States!” wrote one Weibo user on May 13. Another common criticism is that the Chinese government cares more about economic development, and its own survival, than the well-being of its people.  Still another feigned shock and denial, writing, “But how could a train derail in a democratic country?” And in a reference to China’s increasing number of international high-speed rail deals, one user proclaimed, in a comment that turned the U.S. save-the-world mentality on its head, “Chinese rail, it’s time to go save the American people!”

Such comments may appear to be simple schadenfreude, but they also reveal a lingering scar on China’s own national consciousness, and an ongoing debate between conservatives and reformists about the best path for China to take. In July 2011, 40 passengers were killed when two bullet trains collided in the southeastern city of Wenzhou. But government officials initially suppressed news of the crash; they even concealed one of the damaged train cars in a dirt pit, almost burying alive a three year-old girl still trapped in it. The memory of that attempt at deception hasn’t faded. On May 13, numerous Weibo users commenting on the Amtrak derailment made thinly-veiled references to the Wenzhou crash and the failed cover-up. One comment called on China’s pro-American liberals to “come out and cover up the scene” of the Amtrak accident. Another Weibo user fired out a series of mocking questions, writing, “Why haven’t you revealed the condition of the victims? What are you trying to hide? Who is lying?” Many believed the deadly crash was the result of a governance model which prioritized economic growth over human safety, as well as the corruption which has riddled China’s state-owned rail industry. To that, one user wrote, “A country that so disregards the safety of its people has a huge problem with its system.”

In the wake of the Amtrak tragedy, Americans got a taste of how a tragic train crash can trigger political and social controversy. In China, it dredged up memories of a years-old incident, and a simmering debate between liberals and conservatives, that’s never truly been buried.

Getty Images

By Chris Mondloch
Best Defense guest columnist

Back in February, several Members of Parliament began urging the United Kingdom’s Ministry of Defence to stand up a Sikh regiment in the U.K. Army. Not surprisingly, a similar proposal was dashed in 2007 amid charges of being segregationist.

But Sir Nicholas Soames, who was a Defence Minister in the’ 90s and is now a Conservative MP, has decided to take another stab at creating an all-Sikh regiment. Rory Stewart, who chairs the Defence Select Committee, responded favorably to the proposal, but suggested a reserve Sikh regiment may be the best initial option. Either way, the Conservatives’ resounding election victory last week means this proposal is likely to receive serious consideration. All of the very apparent racial sensitivities considered, is there way that creating an all-Sikh Army regiment could actually make sense in terms of the U.K.’s policy goals?

The answer is probably no. But it’s worth a closer look, because bringing back a segregated military unit has important considerations for the U.K.’s desired identity, and will certainly conjure up some pretty negative colonial memories.

On the face of it, this is a move to achieve higher inclusion among British Sikhs, who are severely underrepresented in the armed forces. Only about one in every 30,000 British Sikhs are currently in the military, which is much lower than the national ratio of approximately one in every 300 Brits in uniform. Hypothetically, standing up a 700-man Sikh regiment would boost national unity, patriotism, and all that good stuff.

From the religion’s beginnings in early 16th century India, the Sikhs have a storied history as a minority group who had to fight to maintain their religious freedoms amidst oppression. Sikhism developed out of abhorrence for the Hindu caste system, cementing a legacy of dissent against prevailing social orders. By 1700, the Sikhs had developed a ‘spiritual-military collective’ willing to fight for their faith, first against the Islamic Mughal Empire, and then against the Afghan invasion of the subcontinent. When the British East India Company’s army invaded the Punjab region in 1845, the Sikhs nearly defeated the imperial forces but were eventually forced to surrender.

In the colonial era that followed, the Sikhs forged strong ties with the British, who incorporated two battalions of Sikh infantrymen into the imperial army. In addition to their service on the subcontinent, hundreds of thousands of Sikhs fought for the U.K. in World War I and World War II.

Given the Sikh’s warrior culture and history of royal service, it’s not hard to fathom why certain British policymakers want to increase their numbers in the military. But creating an all-Sikh unit in 2015 seems like an outdated imperial solution to the modern-day problems facing the U.K. MP Soames (who happens to be Winston Churchill’s grandson) called on the MoD to “do away with political correctness” because a Sikh regiment would “make up a very serious gap in our armed forces.”

What serious gap is this? Adding less than 700 troops to a military that is 187,000 strong will hardly boost operational capabilities in any significant way.

Rather, the gap that Soames wants to fill is more based on identity. With an elevated threat risk from jihadist elements in the U.K., and an embarrassingly high number of radicalized British citizens traveling to the Middle East to join ISIS and other Islamist groups, supporters of a Sikh regiment likely wish to give the U.K. Army a more ethnic dimension. After all, this was a successful strategy for the Brits as they conquered a quarter of the world in the 19th century, so what’s to stop it from working now?

Granted, the Sikh community doesn’t seem like a bad place to start. They are a proud people with a legacy of promoting religious tolerance and fighting Muslim persecutors, not to mention their historic loyalty to the crown. Sikh membership in the Armed Services is not proportionate to population demographics, so it makes sense for policymakers to seek a plan to increase recruitment, which Sikh leadership in the U.K. has supported. But given the U.K.’s colonial past, creating an ethnically and religiously homogenous Army regiment is likely to do more harm than good, harkening back to an imperial era that has long since passed.

The Ministry of Defence has also recently called for an increased recruitment effort among British Muslims, who are also severely underrepresented in the armed forces. It has been estimated that there are twice as many British Muslims in ISIS than the U.K. military. However, it is hard to fathom any parliamentary support for an all-Muslim regiment to combat this frightening trend.

Some ethnic units do still exist in the British military. The Royal Gurkha Rifles, comprised solely of Nepalese soldiers, remain operational, as do the Scottish, Welsh, and Irish Guards. But while still perhaps vestiges of colonial times, these units are based on territorial affiliations, not religious identity. Explaining the benefits of maintaining the Gurkhas, the MoD says the following:

One of the strengths of a Gurkha battalion on operations today, and particularly in Afghanistan, is the ability of the soldiers to understand cultural nuances, and to empathise with people in conflict zones. Unforgiving in battle, the soldiers are equally generous and warm hearted to those who are affected by conflict.

Although some of these statements are questionable in themselves, it’s an even further stretch to apply this logic to the creation of a Sikh regiment. Whereas the Gurkhas are recruited straight from the Himalayan foothills, a Sikh regiment would recruit from London and Birmingham, hardly a rough-and-tumble warrior culture. Sikhs should be proud of their ancestors’ honorable military legacy, but their valor alone is not enough to justify a segregated unit for a new generation of soldiers.

Sikhs do have legitimate concerns about serving in an integrated military setting. Sikh men are not permitted to shave their beards or cut their hair, and must wear a turban at all times. Strict grooming standards have traditionally deterred Sikhs and other religious groups from serving in uniform. It is especially bad in the U.S. military, which as of last year only had three observant Sikhs in service. It was only in 2010 that the military relaxed its strict regulations banning articles of faith in uniform. The most recent DoD policy allows Sikhs to wear the turban, beard, and long hair in uniform only after they obtain a waiver from their chain of command, meaning their freedoms are subject to change anytime they change duty stations – not exactly providing any level of certainty for prospective Sikh recruits. Just this past November, the ACLU and United Sikhs sued the Army after a Sikh college student was banned from Hofstra University’s ROTC program for his personal appearance.

The U.K., however, has more progressive policy. Turbans and beards are allowed for practicing Sikhs to serve in in almost all settings, including the several Sikh soldiers who have served as Buckingham Palace guardsmen. The only restrictions in the MoD’s Religious Fact Sheet are based on operational concerns — Sikhs may not be able to serve on aircrews because of the tight-fitting helmet, and may need to shave in life-threatening situations where a beard prevents a respirator or gas mask from sealing.

Although British Sikhs face few restrictions in terms of grooming standards, that doesn’t necessarily make it easy to serve in an integrated unit. A huge part of being in the military is conformity and unit cohesion. It must be very difficult for a young Sikh soldier, who stands out from his peers and follows a different grooming standard. But providing a quick fix to the problem by putting all the Sikhs in their own unit does not solve an institutional problem. Sikhs face racism in the civilian world as well — incidents like the 2014 attack on a Sikh lawyer in London and the murder of a Sikh gas station clerk in Arizona right after 9/11 are among the most severe examples of the bigotry that still exists. Fostering an institutional culture of acceptance within the British armed forces, rather than bending to underlying discrimination, is the best way to address this problem from within.

The U.K. is already way ahead of the U.S. in terms of creating hospitable military conditions for Sikhs and other religious devotees who require relaxed grooming standards. Soames and others are right to recognize the need to recruit more Sikhs and remind the general public that many generations of Sikhs have served the U.K. honorably. But segregating them into their own regiment is not a prudent way to foster feelings of greater unity or enhance operational capability. It is more likely to highlight Sikhs’ differences and open up a Pandora’s Box of post-imperial sentiments and further calls for religious segregation of the British military.

Chris Mondloch served as an intelligence analyst for the U.S. Marine Corps for seven years, including a deployment to Helmand Province, Afghanistan in 2012. He is graduating from the London School of Economics this fall with a Master’s Degree in International Relations. He tweets at @C_Mondloch

Joshua Martin/U.S. Navy/Flickr

By James Sisco and Ajit Maan
Best Defense guest columnists

Clearly extremists are not afraid to fight or to die. They often welcome and embrace the idea of martyrdom. So, what are they afraid of? A common operating procedure among various extremist groups is to control and disempower girls and women. If one of their central operating procedures is any indication, they are afraid of girls. Smart girls.

The mechanisms extremists use to control women include rape, acid attacks, slave trading, and stoning. They occur in places like Somalia, Pakistan, Nigeria, Iraq, and Myanmar to ensure that women do not participate in the political process and is a central tenant of extremism wherever it is found. The fact that forced control of women and girls is a priority for extremist groups ought to clue us into a potential weakness that can be exploited.

Women in conflict zones represent an immense untapped resource to create and ensure stability within communities and societies. The segment of the population that is disproportionally targeted for systematic suppression possesses the potential to alter the power structures of the environment. That is why they are targeted.

When we see menacing images of men dressed in black wielding swords we should recognize that educated women might be their un-doing. And they know it. That is why Boko Haram abducted over 200 Nigerian schoolgirls. That is why fourteen-year-old year old Malala Yousafzai was shot in the face on her way to school — not just anywhere but symbolically — on her way to school. That is why acid attacks target girls attending school rather than girls in brothels. It is the potential danger that educated girls represent that scares extremists most.

Educated women and girls have the potential to do what drones, bullets and boots on the ground cannot do; they can counter extremism from the inside. Therefore, the U.S. and its allies should adopt an approach that empowers women on the ground in conflict zones to preempt and counter violent extremism. Instead of viewing women in war zones only as victims, we should view them in an irregular warfare context as potentially powerful allies.

The “human terrain” has traditionally been limited to male terrain. And when women have been engaged, the engagement has been limited to intelligence gathering — a good move but one without strategic foresight. Limiting engagements to a Q&A session (Where are the bad guys?) over-looks valuable social information and potential collaboration opportunities.

While there have been admirable and well intentioned development initiatives to stabilize situations for women in hot spots, many of them, while deserving of support, have not moved beyond a humanitarian framework. The Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review recognizes this. It makes the point that empowering women is not just a nice thing to do—it is imperative to the long-term security of the U.S. and counter-terrorism efforts. The concept is based on forming coalitions with women on the ground. But while the report’s vision is compelling its implementation remains somewhat vague.

A women-focused shared security approach delivers an instrument to bridge the gap between theory and application. Aligning U.S. security interests and the security interests of women in conflict zones, establishes a platform to develop strategies and programs to empower women and counter extremism. The initiative is much like the one implemented by a Special Forces in Kandahar, Afghanistan.

In Kandahar, Identity Conflict Theory was applied to a tribal society to determine its primary and secondary identity layers. Understanding identities and basic community needs enabled the construction of small-scale, high-impact development projects that not only addressed community needs but also established positive relationships between Special Forces and the local community. For example, contributing to local agricultural development led not only to a 350 percent increase in yields, but also a 10-fold reduction in roadside bombs in some of the most insecure districts of the Kandahar province. Within eight months of the implementation of this program, one of the most kinetic environments in Afghanistan became relatively benign.

A women focused shared security initiative would directly engage female populations with the understanding that security means different things for women than it does for men. The traditional assumption that women’s security concerns are addressed when men’s security concerns are addressed doesn’t follow. Not only are women’s concerns left largely unaddressed by all-male coalitions, but also over-looked is the tremendous potential for a different kind of civil engagement.

If we set aside both ethical considerations and heroic self-image, and consider the situation strictly from a pragmatic point of view, we will view girls and women in conflict zones as more than deserving recipients of generosity. They are invaluable assets in preventing and addressing extremism in their families and communities. Making coalitions with this over-looked majority of the population is important to our own national security interests. If we include the ethical component and national identity, we have a multi-faceted motivation to secure and ensure women’s participation in the security, policy, and economic infrastructures of their communities.

Women in conflict zones represent an immense untapped resource that has significant influence and the ability to alter power structures within communities and societies. We should harness the power and capitalize on the strategic benefits of forming coalitions with women in areas where we want to have influence. Empowering women and girls is ethically responsible, consistent with U.S. national policy and a strategically prudent security measure.

James Sisco is a former recon Marine and naval intelligence officer and currently the president of ENODO Global, a business intelligence firm that focuses on population-centric analysis to solve complex social problems in dynamic cultural environments. Ajit Maan, Ph.D. is ENODO Global’s vice president for research and analysis and author of Counter-Terrorism: Narrative Strategies and Inter-narrative Identity: Placing the Self. She also edits the Strategic Narrative blog.

U.S. Army/Flickr

More than ever, I am persuaded that it was British spec ops who did arranged the assassination of French Admiral Darlan, the former chief of its Navy who became a Vichy leader. I was just rereading volume three of Churchill’s memoirs of World War II and noticed his description of the admiral as a “dangerous, bitter, ambitious man.”

In warfare, if you think a foe is dangerous, you do something about it.

National Archives

The local communities in South Sudan’s Greater Upper Nile region have borne the brunt of the politically driven violence that began in December 2013. Since then, nearly 2 million people have been forced from their homes. Farmers have been unable to plant their crops due to continuing insecurity, increasing the threat of famine, and outbreaks of disease like Cholera have struck refugee camps and conflict-affected areas alike. In the midst of this, communication has broken down. To reach the people they need to — internally displaced people and those who remain in danger zones — media and humanitarian organizations have had to find new ways of using decidedly low-tech solutions.

While mobile phones and online social networks are pervasive in South Sudan’s urban areas, in the country’s rural regions many people still rely on traditional means of communication – primarily radio. Nearly three-quarters of the population listen on a daily basis. For many people in Jonglei, Upper Nile, and Unity states, where the fighting has been the thickest community radio and shortwave are critical sources of information about the conflict. And the lack of communication options has forced peacebuilders to take creative and novel steps to do get across messages that both contain vital information — and could even help pave the way toward peace.

The Sawa Shabab radio drama, produced by Free Voice South Sudan and United States Institute of Peace (which founded the PeaceTech Lab, where I work), is one of the more innovative attempts to reach at-risk youth communities. Premised around hosting a continuing conversation with youths and changing attitudes about their roles in resolving conflict, the first season began airing last year in English and Arabic — five episodes were also piloted in Dinka and Nuer languages. At the end of each episode, the program asks its audience to call and text into the show and respond to scripted questions about the storylines and how they think the characters are responding to conflict. The show receives an average of 400 responses per episode — and some of the seem to point toward the show making real progress. One young man from Bor, the capital of Jonglei State, called in to say: “Thank you all in the new nation Sawa Shabab! My message is that we must understand our peoples and ourselves. Let us do things (to address) what happens in our country.” But even for those who can’t respond, it empowers the youth audience to think differently about how to build peace.

And Sawa Shabab is not the only effective radio program in dealing with the country’s conflict.

Internews, an international media development NGO, has developed a radio program called “Boda Boda Talk Talk” that airs in U.N. camps for internally displaced people in Juba and Malakal. Broadcast on speakers in tents or attached to speakers driven around the IDP camps on motorbikes (called boda bodas), it offers a news update with local information and NGO-sponsored info about services for displaced people. Greetings sent from camp inhabitants to others and two-minute soap operas on relevant issues acted out by locals comprise the rest of the program. Internews trains local citizen journalists on how to gather information in the camps and investigate what the displaced communities’ needs are. The goal of the program is to help humanitarian NGOs communicate more effectively with displaced people in need of services. “The big thing about our project is that we’ve enabled NGOs to give simple solutions to provide information,” Meena Bhandari, Director of Humanitarian Programs at Internews said. “We can do that with simple technology by making professional recordings on a USB stick and blasting it on a speaker.”

During the worst of the fighting over the last year and a half, a handful of community stations were destroyed. Some have been rebuilt, while others have broken new ground — Internews launched a station called Nile FM in March 2015 to cater to displaced communities. The U.N.’s Radio Miraya also reaches IDP camps, and Radio Tamazuj, an independent station, is widely listened to via shortwave throughout the region. All told, two to three local FMs stations service the state capitals in the Greater Upper Nile, as well as three Internews-supported community stations and additional Radio Miraya repeaters, which retransmit the network’s signal.

Despite the relative success of these radio programs, traditional obstacles such as the lack of local language media content and poor information infrastructure continue to limit how far media projects can reach. The war has brought additional challenges to informing these at-risk communities.

For example, the political space for open debate and press freedom has been diminished as a result of the on-going violence. Although local media were under scrutiny prior to the first outbreak of fighting in December 2013, control has gotten even tighter. Numerous journalists have been arrested and attacked in the past year and a half, including five journalists killed in January by unidentified gunmen. Local radio stations such as the Catholic Radio Network’s Radio Bakhita have been shut down. Even the U.N.’s Radio Miraya has been threatened with closure. The government does not tolerate interviews with or statements from rebel leaders. As a result, according to a report by the British Foreign & Commonwealth Office, “self-censorship by journalists and media houses continues to be widespread.”

Still, the boundaries of communication are still being pushed with new technologies.

USAID’s VISTAS program, administered by AECOM International, is initiating a pilot program that will distribute up to 250,000 digital audio players to areas in Jonglei and Unity states where FM radio is unavailable. The players would be loaded with peace-oriented programs from other organizations as well as their own material related to trauma healing. Cell phones are part of this, too. Mobile penetration rates, while still low at 28 percent nationally, according to the 2013 National Audience Survey conducted by Forcier Consulting, are substantially higher in urban areas. Natalie Forcier, CEO of Forcier Consulting in South Sudan, told me, “Access to a mobile network can be life or death for communities. It’s a building block that opens door for everything else in development.”

Yet despite the potential of mobile, it’s far from a panacea. John Tanza Mabusu, co-host of Voice of America’s “South Sudan in Focus” program, argued, “Mobile is effective but literacy is an issue (for text messaging). How many people can read your message? Interpretation of this message can differ. How do you interpret a message about the peace deal in Addis Ababa? The best way of passing information is by empowering existing radio stations with good reach.”

Similarly, good old-fashioned face-to-face interaction is still one of the most trusted means of communication in many rural communities. Some humanitarian organizations continue to utilize word-of-mouth and distribution of leaflets with cartoons to spread the news about cholera treatment and sources of clean drinking water. As with radio, however, local and international groups are also beginning to use inter-personal communications in innovative new ways to reach at-risk people with entertaining and educational information about peace and health services.

One promising byproduct of the on-going conflict in South Sudan is a subtle shift in the collective mindset regarding how information is consumed. For the humanitarian organizations doing their best to provide services to the at-risk communities, creative programs like “Boda Boda Talk Talk” can help them understand the people they serve better. For local people who are struggling to manage displacement and insecurity, they are increasingly seeking sources of information outside their personal networks. Nicola Franco, a producer at Free Voice South Sudan, explained, “The conflict has changed things because there is more demand for information from the capital. People want to know the news through radio – and whether the rebels are coming.”

 ASHRAF SHAZLY/AFP/Getty Images

Afghanistan

Kabul hotel attacked by Taliban

Fourteen people, including one American, were killed in an attack on a Kabul hotel on Wednesday (BBC, AP, CNN, NYT). Gunman stormed the Park Palace Guest House late Wednesday evening as a crowd, many of them foreigners, gathered for a concert at the hotel, which is in a wealthier part of the capital near several aid agencies and a hospital. Police stormed the hotel after the three gunmen were inside, but the attackers were able to hold the hotel for five hours. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack.

NATO to stay in Afghanistan after 2016

On Wednesday, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) formally announced plans to retain a small troop presence in Afghanistan after 2016 (WSJ, Pajhwok). NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said that the future mission, called “Enduring Partnership,” would be led by civilians. NATO’s leadership will finalize plans for the new mission by the fall, but Stoltenberg said that the NATO force in the country would be smaller than the current one.

India

Prime Minister Modi meets President Xi

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi arrived in China on Thursday, launching a three-day official visit (U.S. News & World Report, Times of India, BBC). In a sign of personal diplomacy, Modi met with Chinese President Xi Jinping in the city of Xian, Xi’s hometown in central Shaanxi province. This was intended to mirror Xi’s visit to India last September, when Modi hosted the Chinese president in his own hometown of Ahmedabad in the western state of Gujarat. The two leaders met for about an hour and a half and discussed a number of issues, including border disputes, terrorism, and bilateral trade and investment, which is Modi’s top priority on this trip. Modi hopes to decrease India’s $38 billion trade deficit with China and attract Chinese investment in Indian infrastructure projects (NYT). Modi also visited cultural sites including a Buddhist temple housing translations of Sanskrit texts and the famed Terra Cotta Warriors. Modi is scheduled to meet with the Chinese Prime Minister in Beijing on Friday and Chinese business leaders in Shanghai on Saturday (WSJ).

Indian Cabinet approves child labor ban with exceptions

The Indian Cabinet approved amendments to a bill on Wednesday that would ban the employment of children under the age of 14, except in certain industries (Hindustan Times, Firstpost). The Child Labour Prohibition Bill, introduced in 2012 by the previous Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government, originally called for an outright ban on employing children under 14. The current Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government’s version of the bill carves out exceptions for “non-hazardous” family enterprises, the entertainment industry, and sports. Under the current law, child labor is allowed in all but 18 specified occupations. Children’s rights activists decried the inclusion of the exceptions in the bill, arguing that they were regressive and in contradiction to the Right to Education Act, which guarantees education for children under 14 years of age. “The provision, ‘home-based industries,’ will be used for exploitation of children and betrays the real intent of this government. We are legalizing a horrible reality instead of banning it,” said activist lawyer Vrinda Grover (Times of India). The proposed amendments also increase penalties for employers but decrease penalties for parents for breaching the law.

Indian Supreme Court demands action on India-Bangladesh border

The Supreme Court of India chastised both the central government and the government of the northeastern state of Assam on Wednesday for “dragging their feet” on securing the border with Bangladesh (The Times of India). The court accused the central government of not paying enough attention to India’s eastern border, noting, “The western border with Pakistan, being 3,300 km long, is not only properly fenced but properly manned too and not porous at any point” (The Hindu). In a judgment made in December of last year, the court had ordered the central government to construct roads and install floodlights along the eastern border to prevent illegal immigration and cross-border trafficking. Led by Justice Ranjan Gogoi, the Supreme Court accused both the central government and Assam state government of not implementing its orders in a timely fashion. The court has appointed an independent commissioner to visit the border and report back to the court in three weeks. The court also expressed disapproval of the Assam High Court’s lack of urgency in filling positions for special foreigners tribunals, which are charged with identifying and deporting illegal immigrants from Bangladesh. India and Bangladesh recently reached a deal to resolve all outstanding border disputes between the two countries.

Pakistan

Mass funeral in Karachi

A mass funeral took place in Karachi on Thursday for the victims of a militant attack on a bus carrying minority Ismaili Shia Muslims (BBC, ET). Flags were flown at half-mast and markets, schools, and transit were closed during the day of mourning. At least 45 people were killed in the attack by gunmen on a crowded bus on the city’s outskirts. Officials found pamphlets purporting to be from ISIS at the site of the attack, but the Pakistani Taliban also claimed responsibility for the attack.

— Emily Schneider and Udit Banerjea

Edited by Peter Bergen

By Paul McLeary with Ariel Robinson

Well, that’s news. Washington has big plans for stationing advanced weaponry in Australia, senior Defense Department officials say, in what would be a military first for the two close allies.

During testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Wednesday, the Defense Department’s Assistant Secretary for Asian and Pacific Security Affairs David Shear said that in addition to the movement of U.S. Marines and Army units around the region, “we will be placing additional Air Force assets in Australia as well, including B-1 bombers and surveillance aircraft.”

The plans come just as Washington considers sending ships and aircraft to South China Sea to assert the right of free passage and challenge Beijing’s recent island building spree there, including airstrips in a bid to expand its scope of influence.

Requests for comment to the U.S. Pacific Command and Pacific Air Forces have not been returned, but stationing bombers in Australia is not an entirely new idea. Back in 2013, then-commander of the Pacific Air Forces Gen. Herbert “Hawk” Carlisle (who is now Commander of Air Combat Command) floated the idea, but nothing came of it.

But now U.S. officials are adamant. “We claim the right of innocent passage in such areas, and we exercise that right regularly, both in the South China Sea and globally,” Shear said. Earlier in the day, Pentagon spokesman Col. Steve Warren said that “international law does not recognize man-made islands as an extension of the mainland, and in this case, nor do we.”

“No matter how much sand you pile on a reef in the South China Sea, you can’t manufacture sovereignty,” Daniel Russel, Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, told the Senate committee.

The new crew. We wouldn’t exactly call them “fresh faces,” but if the Senate signs off on their nominations, the Joint Chiefs of Staff will have three new members come this fall. We’ve already tracked the nomination of Marine Corps Gen. Joseph Dunford as the next chairman of the Joint Chiefs, but now we have two more: Gen. Mark Milley as Army chief of staff and Adm. John Richardson as chief of Naval operations.

Defense Secretary Ash Carter’s fingerprints are all over the nominations. Richardson is the top nuclear officer in the Navy, and has been plucked three years into an eight-year assignment with the Energy Department to take over the sea service. Remember, Carter is a former nuclear weapons analyst who has promised to make modernizing the nation’s aging nuclear weapons infrastructure a key part of his tenure. And Carter praised his work with Milley when the latter was the No. 2 commander in Afghanistan in 2013, and Carter was second-in-command at the Pentagon.

Of note: Reporters were told Wednesday morning that Carter would make a few brief remarks introducing the nominees and neither he nor the nominees would take questions, which is becoming the norm in his Pentagon. Earlier this month, as an example, the secretary also bolted after making a few brief remarks in announcing the rollout of the Defense Department’s latest sexual assault report. But this time the AP’s Robert Burns – a gentlemanly institution at the Pentagon – called out, “Mr. Secretary!” to Carter as he was about to walk away from the podium. For a second the possibility hung out there that Carter might actually have an unscripted moment, but he was quickly swallowed in a crush of military brass and moved out. Carter has only held two press conferences since taking over in February.

All together now! The Obama administration is huddling with senior leaders from the six Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) nations this week in Washington, and whenever a meeting like this occurs, it’s a sure bet that a series of expedited weapons shipments and foreign military sales announcements will follow.

So, why isn’t Israel protesting the possibility of more weapons being shipped to its neighbors?

One reason, FP’s John Hudson writes, is that is that the Obama administration is being careful about how it assists Gulf allies in facing the Iranian threat without overstepping Israel’s Qualitative Military Edge, “a calculus the executive branch is required by law to take into account as it licenses the transfer of weapons to Middle East governments.” Another reason for Israel’s “relaxed temperament,” Hudson reports, is Israel’s “newfound kinship with Arab countries who share its concerns about Iran’s rise in the region.” As David Ottaway, a Gulf expert at the Wilson Center, noted, “The Israelis have cared less about the deals happening this week because there’s a feeling in Israel that they now have an undeclared ally in the GCC against Iran.”

Yoda’s back! Sort of. When the 93-year-old Andrew Marshall retired from his perch as the Defense Department’s top futurist at the Office of Net Assessment in January, a huge hole as left in the building’s, but also in conspiracy theorizing.

But the drought appears to be over. The Washington Post’s Greg Jaffe on Wednesday reported that Ash Carter has picked a younger Yoda – if no less brainy — to fill Marshall’s shoes.

Jim Baker, a retired Air Force colonel who currently serves as a top adviser to Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey, is being tasked with doing things a little differently. “His selection reflects Carter’s desire to shift the focus of the office, which has concentrated on long-term threats to the United States that were often overlooked by a Pentagon consumed by more immediate concerns.” Jaffe writes.

Welcome to a very special edition of the Situation Report, where we celebrate the accomplishment of making it to Thursday! Pass along your notes, tips, and events to paul.mcleary@foreignpolicy.com or on Twitter: @paulmcleary.

Who’s Where When?

At 8:30 a.m. a group of think tankers from the Center for a New American Security, American Enterprise Institute, the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, and the Center for Strategic and International Studies speak at at the Senate Russell office building about defense reform. Also speaking are Republican Rep. Mac Thornberry, Chairman, House Committee on Armed Services, and Democrat Rep. Adam Smith, Ranking Member, House Committee on Armed Services. 10:00 a.m. Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert Work speaks in the Pentagon courtyard at the first-ever DoD Lab Day showing off some of the leap-ahead tech the Defense Department is investing in. 12:00 p.m. Iraqi Ambassador to the United States Lukman Faily and Pakistan’s Defence and Army Attaché Brigadier Chaudhary Sarfraz Ali speak at The Potomac Institute about combating terrorism.

Middle East

A senior Israeli intelligence official says Egypt is buying the Russian S-300 ground-to-air defense system. Dan Williams reports for Reuters. Neither Egypt nor Russia has confirmed the sale.

The Lebanon Daily Star writes that Hezbollah and the Syrian army have gained control of the highest mountain in the Qalamoun region along the Lebanese border. Syrian state TV thanked the Syrian army and “the Lebanese resistance.”

Europe

Authorities in the Czech Republic blocked a shipment of “sensitive technology usable for nuclear enrichment” to Iran after “false documentation raised suspicions,” Louis Charbonneau and Robert Muller write for Reuters.

Estonian officials say that they have a pretty solid plan for dealing with any “little green men” – the moniker Western officials have given to Russian special forces operatives working undercover who sprung up in the early days of the Ukraine crisis last year — according to the country’s chief of defence. “They will be shot,” reports the Financial Times.

Afghanistan

At least one American and two Indians were killed in an attack on a guest house in Kabul Wednesday evening. The attack came after “gunmen opened fire at a meeting of Muslim clerics in the southern province of Helmand, killing at least seven people, police said,” writes Mirwais Harooni for Reuters.

Congress

Senate Armed Services Chairman John McCain on Wednesday rejected a request “for changes in federal law to let the two largest U.S. arms makers use more Russian rocket engines to compete for military satellite launches against privately held SpaceX,” Andrea Shalal reports for Reuters.

President Obama is convening delegations from the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) nations at Camp David today to discuss pressing security issues across the Middle East. The summit is foremost an opportunity for the president to make assurances to the Gulf about their security if a nuclear agreement is reached with Iran, but will also include discussions about the Saudi-led intervention in Yemen, the continuing Syrian civil war, and the fight against the Islamic State.

President Obama met with Saudi delegates yesterday, including Interior Minister Crown Prince Mohammed bin Nayef and Defense Minister Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman; Saudi Arabia’s King Salman and Bahrain’s King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa are skipping the summit in what has largely been perceived as a snub of the Obama Administration. President Obama is expected to offer the Gulf states a large package of defense systems to ensure the GCC’s security but has already quashed the idea of a NATO-like defense pact advocated by some Gulf diplomats.

Islamic State Deputy Reportedly Killed

The Iraqi Defence Ministry reported yesterday that Abu Alaa al-Afri, the Islamic State’s top deputy to the organization’s self-appointed caliph, has been killed in an airstrike in the city of Tal Afar. They also released video of a strike and photos of his body. The U.S. government has cast doubt on the Iraqi government’s report, saying it did not conduct a strike on the mosque in Tal Afar, where Afri was reportedly killed, and some have noted that the video released by the Iraqi government may be the same as one released by the United States depicting a May 4 strike in Mosul.

Headlines

• The Vatican announced it is preparing to sign its first treaty with the Palestinian leadership, days before a visit from Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas; the Vatican has recognized Palestine as a state since 2013.

• Iranian parliamentarians are backing away from a bill that would halt nuclear negotiations with the United States until Washington apologizes for perceived threats; some said that they were not aware of plans to fast-track the legislation, while others said they were duped into signing what they didn’t even realize was a bill.

• The Yemeni government warned Iran yesterday that it “bears complete responsibility for any incident that arises from their attempt to enter Yemeni waters” if it does not allow the search of a cargo ship purportedly carrying humanitarian aid; the United States has urged Iran to direct aid through the U.N. hub in Djibouti.

• Syrian opposition groups have declined to meet with U.N. Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura for preliminary peace talks, citing his comments supporting a role for Assad in a potential political transition.

• The British government said it would opt-out of any quota system approved by the European Union for a burden-sharing redistribution of migrants fleeing to Europe from Libyan ports.

-J. Dana Stuster

NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP/Getty Images

In the absence of a major announcement on a security pact or missile defense shield, this week’s summit between the United States and six Persian Gulf countries is likely to fall back on a time-honored tradition: a series of expedited arms transfers from Washington to the oil-rich Arab states and a joint-statement highlighting America’s “renewed commitment” to the Gulf.

In the past, such weapons transfers have prompted major concern in Israel and Capitol Hill about Jerusalem losing its military edge over its Arab neighbors. But this time is different.

According to an official with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee — the most powerful pro-Israel lobbying organization in the U.S. — the group is not trying to lobby Congress to block arms deals with the Gulf. The Israeli government has also refrained from weighing in, according to Hill staffers who maintain routine contacts with the Israelis.

“Israelis have been silent,” said a congressional aide familiar with the issue. “AIPAC was asking a lot of questions, but I wouldn’t characterize our interactions on this as lobbying.”

One reason, according to State Department and congressional sources, is that the Obama administration is carefully assessing how it can help Gulf allies deter a threat from Iran without overstepping Israel’s Qualitative Military Edge (QME), a calculus the executive branch is required by law to take into account as it licenses the transfer of weapons to Middle East governments.

Another reason for Israel’s relaxed temperament is its newfound kinship with Arab countries who share its concerns about Iran’s rise in the region. “The Israelis have cared less about the deals happening this week because there’s a feeling in Israel that they now have an undeclared ally in the GCC against Iran,” said David Ottaway, a Gulf expert at the Wilson Center, using an acronym for the six countries that makeup the Gulf Cooperation Council.

But satisfying all sides equally is easier said than done — and at least some of the top weapons systems on the GCC wish list are not expected to be supplied due to QME considerations, including the F-35 Lightning II, a “fifth-generation” fighter jet designed to be virtually invisible to enemy radar, and BU-28 bunker buster bombs, which Washington has only provided to Israel. Instead, the Gulf countries are likely to walk away with promises to expedite the transfers of long-sought munitions and radar equipment.

“The Emiratis and to a certain extent the Saudis had wanted to build this session into a much more robust agreement on both security guarantees and specific arms transfers,” said a congressional staffer familiar with the issue. “The U.S. side had to manage those inflated expectations back down to something more realistic.”

The summit itself, a gathering of senior officials from Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman and the United Arab Emirates, isn’t likely to produce a statement that details a laundry list of weapons deals. However, leaders are expected to discuss ways the U.S. can expedite long-desired equipment that will help Gulf countries deter Iran and replenish arms used in the Saudi-led bombing campaign against Houthi rebels in Yemen.

Those items are likely to include new avionics equipment for F-15 and F-16 aircraft, upgraded radar systems that reach greater distances and identify smaller objects, and an increased flow of ordnance to Gulf militaries, such as Joint Direct Attack Munitions or JDAMs, which are one of Saudi Arabia’s main weapons in that air war. Upgraded radar equipment, in particular, is seen as important for spotting incoming Iranian small boats or surveillance and armed drones.

Obama invited the GCC countries to Camp David in April with the goal of easing Arab concerns about the emerging nuclear deal with Iran and five world powers. Ahead of the summit, Saudi Arabia and the UAE had been pushing for the U.S. to agree to a mutual defense treaty, a proposal Washington now says is not in the cards.

In an interview with al Jazeera Wednesday, Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes said that a formal defense “treaty is not what we’re looking for.”

“It took decades to build NATO and the Asian allies but we can provide clear assurances that we will come to their defense,” he said.

Some have attributed the decision by Saudi Arabia’s monarch, King Salman, not to attend this week’s summit to Washington’s refusal to commit to a defense treaty.

For its part, Washington wants to avoid making ironclad security guarantees in a region marred by perpetual instability.

As an alternative, Obama is expected to push for a regional defense shield aimed at guarding against the Iranian missile threat, but while Saudi Arabia is supportive of the project, other GCC countries, such as the UAE, have raised doubts about the feasibility of the effort. An easy fallback is additional arms sales.

Any new weapons deals would accelerate Riyadh’s ongoing push to grow and modernize its armed forces. Last year, Saudi Arabia passed India and became the world’s top importer of weapons, aircraft, and other military equipment, according to IHS’ annual Global Defense Trade Report. Riyadh’s imports jumped 54 percent between 2013 and 2014, and IHS projected a further 52 percent increase this year.

In the last 20 years, Saudi Arabia has invested nearly $500 billion into its military, according to Jean-Francois Seznec of Johns Hopkins University. With nearly three-quarters of that cash going to the United States, Riyadh is one of the most lucrative sources of income for U.S. defence companies.

Riyadh isn’t the only Gulf power opening its wallet wide: the IHS report noted that Saudi Arabia and the UAE spent $8.6 billion on defense imports in 2014, an amount bigger than that spent by all of Western Europe put together.

The UAE, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia are already in the process of upgrading existing Raytheon Co Patriot missile defense systems to utilize new PAC-3 missiles. The UAE is also buying another missile defense system from Lockheed Martin: a longer-range Terminal HIgh Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system.

By next year, Qatar could close a $6.5 billion deal for a THAAD system, which could be followed by a similar purchase by Saudi Arabia.

Over the years, the massive flow of arms to Gulf allies has caused a number of flare ups in the U.S.-Israel relationship. A particularly heated battle surrounded the Reagan administration’s $8.5 billion arms sale to Saudi Arabia in 1981, the largest foreign arms sale in U.S. history at the time.

The sale, which included the transfer of AWACS reconnaissance planes to Riyadh, was loudly protested by Israel and its allies in Congress. Though President Ronald Reagan ultimately cleared the sale, he denounced the meddling of Israel in U.S. politics in ways unfathomable in the current political context. ”It is not the business of other nations to make American foreign policy,” Reagan said at a news conference that year.

Ottaway, the Gulf expert, said much has changed since that historic dispute. “Almost all these more sophisticated American arms going to the Gulf are pre-negotiated with Israel,” he said. “If AIPAC doesn’t like the deal, you can be sure that nobody’s seriously thinking about providing it.”

For its part, the State Department insists it has no problem managing the interests and concerns of all parties involved, despite the groundswell of mutual distrust that is synonymous with the Middle East. “Our close engagement with GCC member states is not incompatible with our unwavering commitment to Israel’s Qualitative Military Edge, as evidenced by our substantial military cooperation with both Israel and the GCC,” State Department spokesman Jeff Rathke told Foreign Policy.

Getty Images

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), positioning himself for a run at the GOP presidential nomination, appears to have flip-flopped on the Iraq war.

For years, Rubio maintained he would have still gone to war knowing what we know today: that Iraq didn’t actually possess the purported weapons of mass program that George W. Bush used to justify the invasion. In a question-and-answer session after a speech outlining his foreign policy vision at the Council on Foreign Relations Wednesday, he reversed course.

“Not only would I not have been in favor of it, President [George W.] Bush wouldn’t have been in favor of it and he said so,” Rubio told journalist Charlie Rose, who was leading the session.

Rubio’s reversal adds him to the growing list of GOP contenders trying to come to terms with how to talk about the Iraq War, which sharp majorities of Americans from both parties regard as a mistake. In recent days, Jeb Bush said he would still go to war in Iraq. Under fire, he changed his answer and insisted he wouldn’t.

Rubio’s comments are at odds with at least two of his previous statements. In March, he said on Fox he would have gone to war and that the world is a safer place without Saddam Hussein. This is a claim he repeated in 2010 during an interview with CNN.

He took a different stance Wednesday.

“Ultimately though, I do not believe that if the intelligence had said Iraq does not have a weapon of mass destruction capability, I don’t believe President Bush would have authorized to move forward,” Rubio said.

Photo Credit: Andrew Burton/Getty Images

The House just passed a White House-backed National Security Agency reform bill Wednesday, but it faces an uphill battle in the Senate, where lawmakers say the legislation would make America less safe, and an key electronic privacy group is pulling its long-time support for the proposal.

The issue for both Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and the Electronic Freedom Foundation is Section 215 of the Patriot Act, a provision that allows for the bulk collection of American phone records by the NSA. A federal court ruled the program illegal last week, but left the door open for Congress to allow it with new legislation. The House bill removes Section 215, while the legislation being considered by the Senate contains it.

McConnell’s problem with the House version of the disingenuously-named USA Freedom Act is that it doesn’t give the government the authority to continue mass collection of American data. He maintains eliminating the program would make the United States less safe, despite little evidence that the data collected by the government has stopped terror attacks.

Wednesday’s House vote is the latest episode in a two-year struggle to pass intelligence reform in the wake of Edward Snowden’s leaks about the NSA’s broad surveillance operations. Tech companies, Obama, civil liberty groups, and many lawmakers support reform efforts, but getting a bill Congress and the White House can agree on has so far proven elusive. The House vote approving the measure by an overwhelming 338 to 88 margin also comes as intelligence and defense officials debate the ground rules of cyberwar.

Still, the bill could die a quick death in the Senate, where a similar measure failed to garner enough support to even make it to the floor for a vote. McConnell, along with other Republican hawks like Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), are promising to fight the bill once it arrives in the upper chamber.

The EFF, a group that has been advocating for electronic privacy since 1990, supported the bill as recently as last week. Now, though, it’s singing a different tune, saying the court ruling finding the surveillance program illegal changed their position. In a blog post Monday, EFF’s civil liberty director, David Greene, and its legislative analyst, Mark Jaycox, argued the ruling should compel Congress to revert to a 2013 version that contained stronger provisions outlawing mass surveillance.

Other privacy advocates are also opposed to the bill. Daniel Schuman, policy director of the progressive group Demand Progress, said the legislation does not address the controversial Section 706 provision allowing the government to collect email and internet traffic information

“Taking a bite of a poisoned apple is not going to address the underlying issues,” he said. “You don’t ask for the bare minimum.”

Photo Credit: Win McNamee/Getty Images

Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor was one of the few bright spots on the United States’ much-maligned rail system. Connecting Boston to Washington via major cities including New York, Baltimore, and Philadelphia, the route was both profitable and enjoying a steady rise in ridership numbers. The deadly Amtrak accident Tuesday night, which killed at least seven people and injured dozens more when it derailed in Philadelphia, will change that, at least in the short term. Philadelphia Mayor Michael A. Nutter called the accident “an absolute disastrous mess,” adding: “Never seen anything like this in my life.” And in an ironic case of timing, on Wednesday the House Appropriations voted to cut Amtrak’s public funding in 2016, from $1.4 billion to roughly $1.1 billion.

How do you solve a problem like Amtrak, which has bled money practically since it began operating in 1971? Tokyo thinks it has a solution, at least for the Northeast Corridor: a high speed rail, built with Japanese technology and funded, at least in part, by Japanese money. In September, an investor group told Maryland state regulators it had lined up more than $5 billion from Tokyo, “which hopes to showcase the technology behind superconducting magnetic levitation or ‘maglev’ trains to an American audience,” according to The Washington Post. And in October, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said that if Tokyo built the train, “you could travel from Washington to Baltimore in 15 minutes, and to New York within less than an hour.”

It would also help solve Amtrak’s problem of reliability. That’s what people want from Amtrak and especially its high-speed Acela line, according to R. Richard Geddes, director of Cornell’s infrastructure policy program: for a train scheduled to arrive at 10:30 a.m., for example, to actually arrive at 10:30 a.m. Amtrak’s express Acela line, which takes just under 3 hours to travel from Washington to New York City, was on time 69 percent of the time over the past year, compared with near 100 percent for Japan’s high speed rail the Shinkansen, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Safety-wise, Tokyo’s train system certainly is not any worse than Amtrak — though it might not be much better, either. “Amtrak is certainly not a notoriously dangerous mode of transportation,” said Clifford Winston, a transportation expert at the Brookings Institution think-tank. “We’re not behind the curve here.” And Tokyo has had its share of rail accidents, most notoriously in April 2005, when a commuter train derailed and crashed into an apartment building, killing 107 people on the train and injuring hundreds more.

Tokyo’s proposal is not out of the blue. Besides potential developments in the Washington-to-New York City route, there’s also a company trying to develop a high speed rail between Dallas and Houston. And in January, the state of California broke ground on a high-speed rail connecting Los Angeles to San Francisco – though it’s not expected to be operating until 2028. While emphasizing that the cause of Tuesday’s accident is still unknown, Geddes said “there’s consensus that Amtrak needs to be upgraded and modernized.”

So is high-speed rail the way to go? Probably not – because of the cost. Even if Tokyo does pay for more than $5 billion of the D.C.-to-Baltimore route, the entire project would reportedly cost at least $10 billion. And citizens of Baltimore and Washington aren’t exactly clamoring for the ability to travel quicker between the two cities. The tens of billions of dollars needed to build a maglev line between Washington and New York, the only connection that would make sense for the system, is so huge that the project won’t get built, Andy Kunz, president and CEO of the U.S. High Speed Rail Association, told The Washington Post late last year.

Why don’t we spend the tens of billions of dollars to upgrade our rail system? As New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio pointed out in a recent interview, China spends 9 percent of its GDP on infrastructure, while the United States spends only 1.7 percent. In March, Beijing announced that it will be spending roughly $128 billion on domestic rail construction in 2015, whereas the United States typically only spends $50 billion annually on road and transit projects.

Winston said the U.S. doesn’t spend tens of billions of dollars on rail projects because it would be a huge waste of money. China and Japan, with their extensive network of high-speed rail, “are making huge sacrifices for the systems they have – the billions and trillions they’re spending on these systems are costing them elsewhere.” High-speed rail, he said, doesn’t make sense in a country with a population as spread out, and as dependent on planes, and automobiles, as is the United States.

Rather, instead of relying on foreign government money, bring in the private sector. Upgrading the Northeast Corridor, Geddes said, can be done with a public-private partnership. This allows for more innovation and accountability – two qualities Amtrak sorely lacks. “The best practices come from the private sector,” said Winston. Trying to find government best practices – including with Tokyo — “is a race of the bottom.” Amtrak’s history “is a long and sad one,” said Winston. Its future doesn’t have to be.

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