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Australia and Papua New Guinea unable to agree on the future of the refugees
by John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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About 600 male refugees inside a refugee center on Manus Island in Papua New Guinea (PNG) are barricading themselves inside, refusing the leave as Australia and PNG attempt to shut down the center on Tuesday.
The men are refusing to relocate to other to other more residential facilities in PNG, saying that they fear violence by the locals.
Starting in 2013, Australia's prime minister Kevin Rudd announced that any asylum seeker who arrives by boat without a visa will have "no chance" of being resettled there as a refugee. Australia intercepted refugees who tried to reach the country by boat and sent them to offshore refugee centers. Under an agreement with the respective countries, men have been sent to Manus Island in PNG, while men, women and children have been sent to refugee centers on Nauru.
From the point of view of meeting its objective, the policy has been successful. While there had previously been tens of thousands of "boat people" per year arriving in Australia, that number has been reduced to almost none, because refugees know that they will be transferred to one of the offshore detention centers.
However, the policy has been extremely controversial, and has been opposed by humanitarian organizations, who claim that the refugee centers in PNG and Nauru are filthy and unsafe, with numerous stories of beatings, torture and sexual abuse.
Australia's refugee policy was thrown into chaos in May of last year, when the PNG Supreme Court ruled that PNG's Manus Island refugee center was inhumane, and had to be shut down. After months of finger-pointing between PNG and Australia, the Manus Island refugee center is officially closed as of Tuesday, November 1.
However, the refugees have barricaded themselves into the center and are refusing to leave. In order to force them to leave, food, water, electricity and sanitation will no longer be provided to the center after Tuesday. At some point, police try to forcibly remove them.
This situation is being described as a "powder keg." All along, there has been sporadic violence between the refugees in the center and between the refugees and locals. According to some reports, handsome young male refugees from the center and attractive young girls from the neighborhoods have formed secret relationships, with violence breaking out when the girls' families discover what's going on.
So now refugees are being asked to relocate to refugee centers in residential neighborhoods, and are refusing to leave because a number of PNG locals have threatened violence against anyone moving into their neighborhoods. Reuters and Sydney Morning Herald and Post Courier (PNG) and Radio New Zealand
When the PNG Supreme Court issued its ruling last year, Australia issued a statement saying that PNG was responsible for the health and welfare of the refugees after they leave the refugee center. On Saturday, PNG's government issued a statement saying Australia was completely responsible. Humanitarian groups are demanding that the refugees all be relocated to Australia, something that's opposed by Australian government officials, who fear that such a move would trigger a new flood of boat people arriving in Australia.
As usual, money is a large part of the motivating factor here. In May, the Australian government confirmed that it had spent A$4.89 billion (US$3.83 billion) on its Nauru and PNG Manus operations since 2012. Thus, the refugee centers have been a valuable source of income to the two countries involved, and they don't wish to lose it. So few people in PNG's government are suggesting that the refugees simply be shipped back to Australia.
Under Australia's agreement with PNG, Australia is financially responsible for food, services and healthcare. These financial obligations will continue, even if the refugee center is closed, however the contractors providing the services will be under contract to PNG rather than to Australia. Estimates are that Australia will pay $150-$250 million per year.
In a statement Saturday by PNG's immigration minister:
"It is PNG’s position that as long as there is one individual from this arrangement that remains in PNG, Australia will continue to provide financial and other support to PNG to manage the persons transferred under the arrangement until the last person leaves or is independently resettled in PNG.PNG has offered refugees the option of resettlement but will not force refugees who do not wish to settle in the country … they remain the responsibility of Australia."
As of the date of closing of the camp, there is no agreement on what will happen to the refugees. Some may be granted refugee status and remain, others will be refused and will be deported back to their home countries. Some will be transferred to other refugee centers on PNG, and others will be transferred to Nauru.
Some may be transferred to third countries. In November of last year, President Barack Obama and Australia's Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull signed an agreement to allow 1,250 refugees being held in the offshore detention centers to be resettled in the United States. President Donald Trump reluctantly agreed to honor the deal, but so far only 54 refugees have been transferred to the United States.
From the point of view of Generational Dynamics, the rapid worldwide growth in the number of refugees and displaced persons is one of the main factors leading to the next major wars in the world. The Crisis Group estimated a year ago that there were 65 million such people, mostly from war regions in Syria, Afghanistan, Somalia, and South Sudan. Sydney Morning Herald and Crisis Group and Asian Age and Guardian (London)
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 31-Oct-17 World View -- A 'powderkeg' as Australia closes refugee camp and refugees refuse to leave thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(31-Oct-2017)
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In retaliation, Afghanistan bans entry of Pakistan trucks
by John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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A long-awaited "historic" first occurred on Sunday, when India shipped its first consignment of wheat to Afghanistan through Iran's Chabahar port. The shipment travels by sea from Mumbai, India, to Chabahar, and then overland through Iran to Afghanistan.
The agreement for India to invest $500 million to increase the size of the Chabahar port was signed in Tehran in May of last year, in a signing ceremony attended by the leaders of Iran, Afghanistan and India. Sunday's shipment was more symbolic than otherwise, since the port will take at least another year to be fully functional.
The shortest overland route from India to Afghanistan is, of course, through Pakistan, but in December 2015 Pakistan decreed that Indian trucks would no longer be permitted to travel overland to Afghanistan. Pakistan required India to follow a complex route shipping goods by sea to Karachi, where they would be loaded onto Pakistani trucks for overland delivery to Afghanistan.
The Chabahar is also being developed in competition to Pakistan's Gwadar port, which is receiving heavy investment from China as part of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). The purple lines in the map above show China's traditional trade routes across the sea, using China's "String of Pearls" port facilities (purple stars), while the red lines show the trade routes being planned using Iran's Chabahar port.
India and Pakistan, of course, have very poor relations. India is very concerned about China's heavy investment in Pakistan in the CPEC program. In return, Pakistan is very concerned about the fact that India is also investing heavily in Afghanistan's infrastructure, building on the relationship between Afghanistan and India at Pakistan's expense.
As regular readers are aware, Generational Dynamics predicts that in the approaching Clash of Civilizations world war, the "axis" of China, Pakistan and the Sunni Muslim countries will be pitted against the "allies," the US, India, Russia and Iran. Pakistan Today and Pajhwok (Afghanistan) and The Hindu and Livemint (India, 10-Dec-2015)
Much of the competition between the Chabahar and Gwadar ports is related to strategic military planning in anticipation of the coming war between India and Pakistan, but a lot of it also has the more prosaic objective of providing jobs for truck drivers.
Pakistan's December 2015 decree forbidding Indian trucks from traveling overland through Pakistan to Afghanistan had the effect of causing Indian truck drivers to lose jobs and Pakistani truck drivers to gain jobs, since shipments from India had to come through Pakistan's Karachi port, and there loaded onto Pakistani trucks for overland delivery into Afghanistan.
In addition, in recent years, Afghanistan trucks have not been allowed to enter Pakistan, although at one time they were permitted to carry goods overland to either the port of Karachi or to the border with India.
On Sunday, Afghanistan's president Ashraf Ghani issued a decree forbidding Pakistani trucks from entering Afghanistan. According to Afghanistan's transport ministry:
"The Afghanistan and Pakistan Trade Agreement (APTA) has expired. Before this Pakistan did now allow Afghan trucks to enter its territory. So we do the same and after this, Pakistani trucks will be unloaded at borders and Afghan trucks will carry the goods to Hairatan and Shir Khan ports."
Afghanistan trucking company execs were delighted. One said, "By this move lots of people will get job opportunities and the transit companies will also get work." Another said, "Pakistani trucks go to every part of our country, but our trucks are not allowed to enter Pakistan. We want the government to do the same to Pakistan."
Apparently anticipating this decree, Pakistan has recently tried to head it off by offering to negotiate with India on the terms of a new transport deal. However, India turned down the offer, according to an Indian government official who said, "It wasn’t a real offer, as far as India sees it." Tolo News (Afghanistan) and The Hindu
The Afghanistan-Pakistan Transit Trade Agreement (APTTA) was originally signed in 1950, and has undergone numerous changes over the years. The original purpose was to permit land-locked Afghanistan to import goods through Pakistan's Karachi port, without the Pakistan authorities charging customs duties on the goods, since they simply passed through Pakistan. The agreement also allowed Afghanistan trucks to travel overland to India, though that is no longer permitted.
India has asked to be included as part of the APTTA agreement, and to allow its trucks to deliver goods to Afghanistan through Pakistan. Pakistan has refused for several reasons, two of which have already been given: for strategic military reasons, and to prevent Indian truck drivers from taking jobs from Pakistani truck drivers.
However, there's a third reason, having to do with smuggling and corruption.
There's evidence that something like 50% of the goods currently being imported under APTTA -- such as cotton goods from China, or vegetable fats and oils from Indonesia and Malaysia -- never reach Afghanistan. Instead, corrupt Customs Officials permit them to be unloaded within Pakistan for sale there, evading customs duties.
These foreign goods flood into Pakistan in competition with locally produced goods, and the losses in customs duties from smuggling was estimated to be $35 billion from 2001-2009.
One figure estimates that APTTA accounts for 75% of an estimated $5 billion worth of smuggled goods entering Pakistan. Some other figures estimate that around 40% of transit goods do not cross the Pak-Afghan border, or they re-enter into Pakistan from Afghanistan. China envisions its trade to increase by more $1 trillion over a decade. Even a small percentage of that volume of trade smuggling into Pakistan would be crippling to its economy. Business Recorder (Pakistan) and Business Recorder
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 30-Oct-17 World View -- India begins shipping wheat to Afghanistan through Iran's Chabahar port thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(30-Oct-2017)
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Dozens killed in Mogadishu, Somalia, bombings, two weeks after hundreds killed
by John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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At least 23 people were killed and dozens injured from a series of coordinated suicide bombings and gun battles on Saturday afternoon in Mogadishu, the capital city of Somalia.
The al-Qaeda linked Somalia terror group Al-Shabaab claimed credit for the terror attack. The first attack was a car bomb outside the Nasa Hablod hotel, usually frequented by Somalia politicians. A second car bombing in the same area targeted security forces and ambulances as they arrived at the hotel to respond to the first bombing. A third bombing occurred when an attacker detonated his explosive vest inside the hotel. The explosions were followed by heavy gunfire.
Saturday's bombings came just two weeks after a massive truck bombing in a busy marketplace in Mogadishu killed 350 people. That was by far the worst terror attack in Somalia's modern history.
If there's any black humor in this horrific situation, it's that al-Shabaab claimed credit for Saturday's attack, but not for the attack two weeks ago. According to most analysts, the reason that they didn't claim credit for the previous attack is that so many civilians, including many women and children, were among the 350 dead, and al-Shabaab feared a public relations disaster. Nonetheless, Somali civilians are furious at al-Shabaab and hold them responsible for all those civilian deaths. The latest attack targeted politicians, security forces and ambulance drivers, and apparently the al-Shabaab terrorists believe that ordinary people will love them for helping to stamp out (or blow up) government corruption. Garowe Online (Somalia) and Long War Journal and AP and CNN
Since October 8, when I first reported on the deaths of four US troops in Niger, this little-known event has become the subject of major political controversy.
The story that has emerged pretty much follows what was known at that time. A convoy of American soldiers were ambushed by a group of dozens of militants, believed to be linked to Islamic State in Greater Sahara (ISGS), a militant group that has sworn allegiance to the so-called Islamic State (IS or ISIS or ISIL or Daesh). There have been additional details coming out that indicate that the ambush was planned by local villagers, who tipped off the militants, and then delayed the American convoy from leaving long enough for the militants to get into place for the ambush.
The first controversy that has arisen was the national and international scandal as it was debated in media around the world whether President Trump had or had not momentarily forgotten the name of one of the soldiers, surely a question of galaxial significance, and well worth five or six days of constant 24-hour media coverage.
And second, there was shock and surprise on the part of many people that there are some 800 American troops in Niger. South Carolina Republican Lindsey Graham admitted that he hadn't known that, but said, "They were there to defend America. They were there to help allies. They were there to prevent another platform to attack America and our allies." The 800 US troops in Niger work with 4,000 military personnel from France, the former colonial power in the region, and 35,000 local partners.
There are actually some 6,000 American soldiers in missions in 53 African countries. These soldiers typically provide training and security assistance for local forces, including intelligence and reconnaissance help.
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(In one sense, 6,000 American soldiers in Africa really isn't a lot, given the size of Africa. Africa is the size of the ENTIRE United States INCLUDING Alaska PLUS all of China PLUS all of Europe -- and there's still enough room left over to throw in New Zealand.)
The reasons given for the increase in American forces is to confront the challenges from Islamic extremists, traffickers, smugglers and antigovernment militias on all sides. In the case of Niger and the Sahel region, al-Qaeda has been long established there in the form of Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), and lately has reorganized into JNIM (Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslim, or Group for the Support of Islam and Muslims). Now, adding to that, with ISIS being expelled from its major strongholds in Syria and Iraq, there are ISIS-linked militias in Africa, including Islamic State in Greater Sahara (ISGS), which was responsible for the deaths of the American soldiers in Niger.
From the point of view of Generational Dynamics, this effort in Africa is nothing more than a holding action. No one can possibly believe that we can defeat these militias in Africa, just as we haven't been able to defeat the Taliban in Afghanistan, just as the French haven't been able to defeat AQIM in Mali, just as UN peacekeepers haven't been able to end the war in Central African Republic. The two recent bombings in Mogadishu, Somalia, shows how far off any such defeat would be. On the other hand, a complete US withdrawal could be destabilizing to countries where the US troops are providing support.
So the main American mission is to provide support and training to local national troops, while taking steps to guarantee that no American troops become casualties -- which means that everything possible will be done to learn the lessons from the Niger ambush, to make sure it doesn't happen again. CS Monitor and Deutsche Welle
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 29-Oct-17 World View -- New Somalia terror bombings again raise question of US military strategy in Africa thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(29-Oct-2017)
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Burundi's government to amend constitution to let Nkurunziza hold power until 2034
by John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Burundi on Friday completed its formal withdrawal from membership in the International Criminal Court (ICC), one year after the government informed the ICC that it would do so.
Burundi officials are saying that the reason for the withdrawal is that the court is racially biased against Africans, since of the 10 preliminary examinations that have proceeded to full investigations, nine have involved conflicts in Africa. But six of those nine cases were investigations requested by African nations, while two of them, Libya and Sudan (both considered to be Arab countries, but not Black African countries) were referred by the UN Security Council.
Both South Africa and The Gambia also filed plans last year to withdraw from the ICC, citing the same bias against Africa, but both countries later took back their withdrawals.
It's much more likely that the reason for Burundi's withdrawal from the ICC is that one UN report after another has found that Burundi's government, with Hutu president Pierre Nkurunziza, has repeatedly committed crimes against humanity, mostly against members of Tutsi tribe, the historic enemies of the Hutu tribe.
In 2016, there was an initial United Nations report on Burundi, based on interviews with more than 500 people among the over 500,000 who had fled the country from the violence. The violations included torture, rape, beatings, arbitrary jailings and summary executions. Nkurunziza's reaction to that report was to ban the United Nations from Burundi, and to withdraw Burundi's membership from the International Criminal Court (ICC).
The latest report, issued six weeks ago, focused on the Imbonerakure, the youth wing of Nkurunziza's political party. The word Imbonerakure means "visionaries," and for these kids, being "visionary" means raping women and beating people with iron bars. Reports in 2015 indicated that Nkurunziza's police would select targets in the opposition, and would give kids in the Imbonerakure police uniforms, along with instructions to go to the homes of the targets, kill the men with iron bars, rape the women, and then kill the women and children.
Burundi officials were celebrating on Friday on the "great achievement" of withdrawing from the ICC.
Burundi's Justice Minister Aimée Laurentine Kanyana said:
"Without any problem, in total peace and security, we have been able to leave ICC. Let's rejoice!"
A presidential spokesman said:
"The ICC has shown itself to be a political instrument and weapon used by the West to enslave [African states]. This is a great victory for Burundi because it has defended its sovereignty and national pride."
Members of Burundi's government now believe that the countries war crimes and crimes against humanity are now beyond the reach of the ICC, but ICC officials disagree:
"Burundi’s withdrawal does not affect the jurisdiction of the court with respect to crimes alleged to have been committed during the time it was a state party, namely up until 27 October 2017."
A spokesman for Amnesty International said: "The Burundian government has made a cynical attempt to evade justice by taking the unprecedented step of withdrawing from the ICC. But perpetrators, including members of the security forces, cannot so easily shirk their alleged responsibility for crimes under international law committed since 2015."
Overall, the violence in Burundi has claimed between 500 and 2,000 lives, according to differing tolls provided by the UN or NGOs and more than 400,000 Burundians have fled abroad. Iwacu (Burundi) and Standard Media (Kenya) and Amnesty International and Xinhua
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The violence and crimes against humanity began in 2015, when president Pierre Nkurunziza announced that he would run for a third term, in violation of the constitution. Nkurunziza did run, and won the election as president. There were peaceful protests in opposition to Nkurunziza, and that's when Nkurunziza began his crimes against humanity, targeting the opposition.
Now Nkurunziza plans to amend the constitution so that he can continue to hold power. Under the planned amendments, he'll be able to hold power until 2034.
Burundi's last generational Crisis war was the war the 1994 Rwanda genocide, in which Hutus tortured, raped and massacred Tutsis, killing over 800,000 in 100 days. Three countries, Rwanda, Burundi and Uganda, were all participants in the Hutu-Rwanda genocide. The Hutu and Tutsi tribes have been historic enemies for centuries, and have conducted extremely brutal wars with each other, the most well-known of which is the 1994 Rwanda genocide.
Today, all three countries are in a generational Awakening era, which follows a familiar generational pattern. When a country's generational crisis war is a civil war between two ethnic groups within the country, then in the decades following the end of the war, especially during the next generational Awakening era, the ethnic group that won the war and took power begins new violence, atrocities, rapes, and arbitrary jailings and executions against the ethnic group that lost the war.
From the point of view of Generational Dynamics, we've seen this time after time, in Syria, Zimbabwe, South Sudan, Burundi, Thailand, Uganda, Democratic Republic of Congo, Cameroon, Eritrea, and other countries, where leaders in generational Awakening and Unraveling eras use arbitrary jailings, violence and atrocities to keep the opposition ethnic group out of power. Over a period of years, the violence worsens until it turns into a full-scale generational crisis civil war when the next generational crisis era arrives.
The leaders of all three countries involved in the 1994 genocide are using force and violence to remain in power. Uganda's president Yoweri Museveni, 73 years old, allied with the Tutsis, took part in many of these gruesome atrocities and slaughter. The current president of Rwanda is Paul Kagame, a Tutsi, also taking extraordinary measures to stay in power.
President Pierre Nkurunziza was not just a Hutu soldier in the 1994 Rwanda genocide. He was also a Hutu militia leader, and undoubtedly was responsible for many atrocities against Tutsis during the massive slaughter of Tutsis. So from the point of view of Tutsis, you have a hated Hutu militia leader responsible to atrocities and slaughter of Tutsis, and of course they're going be furious and want revenge.
The people of Burundi finally settled the 1994 genocide in 2005, with all sides signing the "Arusha Accords" that set down rules for how the country would be governed. The Arusha Accords specified that a president could only hold power for two terms. They also specified that the constitution could not be amended.
So now a militia leader from a tribe of vicious war criminals, Pierre Nkurunziza, is using extreme violence to stay in power illegally, and prevent his political opponents, the Tutsis from taking power. This will not end well. Iwacu (Burundi) and AFP
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 28-Oct-17 World View -- Burundi's Hutu government leaves International Criminal Court to avoid crimes against humanity charges thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(28-Oct-2017)
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North Korea renews threat of massive hydrogen bomb test over Pacific
by John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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In an interview with CNN on Wednesday, Ri Yong-Pil, a senior diplomat in North Korea’s Foreign Ministry said that previous threats of a large hydrogen bomb test over the Pacific should be taken seriously.
The original threat came from North Korea's foreign minister Ri Yong-ho in September, who said that North Korea was planning to test "an unprecedented scale hydrogen bomb," just before giving a speech to the United Nations:
"It could be the most powerful detonation of an H-bomb in the Pacific. We have no idea about what actions could be taken as it will be ordered by leader Kim Jong-un."
At the time, President Donald Trump tweeted a response: "Kim Jong Un of North Korea, who is obviously a madman who doesn’t mind starving or killing his people, will be tested like never before!"
So on Wednesday, Ri Yong-Pil renewed the threat:
"The foreign minister is very well aware of the intentions of our supreme leader, so I think you should take his words literally."
Up until now, North Korea's nuclear tests have taken place underground on North Korean soil. A hydrogen bomb test over the Pacific would be an enormous escalation. The hydrogen explosion would threaten shipping and planes flying overhead, and would release a great deal of radiation and cause environmental damage.
The North Korean threat has been particularly alarming to the Japanese people, since the missile carrying the hydrogen bomb would have to fly over Japanese airspace. The Japanese are obviously concerned that a failure in the propulsion system could bring the missile down on a Japanese city.
It's quite likely that this threat was a factor in the landslide victory of Shinzo Abe's party in last week's parliamentary elections. The prime minister, who is leader of Japan's Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) took a highly nationalistic stance against North Korea during the campaign, and said:
"We can no longer let ourselves be fooled by North Korea. We cannot succumb to its threats. By taking advantage of our strong diplomacy, we have to make sure the North will have no other option but change its policy and return to the negotiating table."
Now with Wednesday's renewed threat by Ri Yong-Pil, nationalism is likely to surge even higher. Abe has vowed to change Japan's constitution, and bring an end to Japan's pacifism, and North Korea's renewed threat should make that easier. Guardian (London, 22-Sep) and CNN and Reuters and Daily Star (London)
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The Pentagon on Tuesday announced that the USS Theodore Roosevelt aircraft carrier and strike group would enter the US 7th Fleet area of operations in the western Pacific. The flagship will be joined by several guided-missile cruisers and destroyers.
It joins the Ronald Reagan Carrier Strike Group already in the region, where it has been taking part in joint exercises with the South Korean navy. The Ronald Reagan is permanently stationed with the 7th Fleet.
According to commanding officer Capt. Carlos Sardiello:
"USS Theodore Roosevelt is prepared to carry out the full spectrum of possible missions, from humanitarian relief to combat operations. When a carrier leaves on deployment, we have to be ready for anything."
Then on Wednesday, the Pentagon announced that USS Nimitz aircraft carrier and strike group would also enter the US 7th Fleet area of operations in the western Pacific.
The Nimitz had previously been deployed with the 5th Fleet in the Mideast in Operation Inherent Resolve, the name of the US military operation against the so-called Islamic State (IS or ISIS or ISIL or Daesh) in Iraq and Syria. Eventually, the Theodore Roosevelt is expected to take the place of the Nimitz in the 5th Fleet area of operations, covering the Middle East.
Having three aircraft carrier strike groups in the region is extremely rare, and represents a huge show of force in response to North Korean threats, in advance of President Trump's scheduled visit to Seoul and Beijing next month.
However, Pentagon officials claim that the deployment of three Navy aircraft carrier groups has been planned for some time. According to spokesman Dana White:
"This was a unique opportunity to show that the U.S. is the only power in the world that can demonstrate that kind of presence and a unique opportunity for them to be together.It’s not directed towards any particular threat. But it is a demonstration that we can do something that no one else in the world can."
This is the first time since 2007 that three carrier groups have deployed together to the same location. Navy.mil and Military.com and The Hill and Navy.mil and Russia Today
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 27-Oct-17 World View -- US sends three aircraft carrier strike groups to waters around North Korea thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(27-Oct-2017)
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Bangassou becomes the most dangerous town in Central African Republic
by John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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The ethnic and religious civil war that began in Central African Republic (CAR) in 2013 was supposed to have ended long before now, but instead the violence has been increasing steadily, and at the same time, the amount of funding for peacekeeping efforts from donor nations is decreasing, leading to fears of an even larger bloodbath than we've seen so far.
At a press conference in CAR on Wednesday, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres said:
"We need the commitment of the international community not only to reduce this suffering, but because there is an opportunity to build a new Central African Republic in peace and security.This international solidarity can allow the Central African Republic to engage in a process of development for the benefit of all its people.
I am optimistic [that] it is the moment for the international community to commit because it is worthwhile."
Well, if Guterres is really that optimistic, then he's delusional.
CAR is in the midst of a generational crisis war, and a generational crisis war can only end in one way. This is what politicians don't understand. Since 2013, they've sent in different waves of peacekeepers, they've had several elections for president, they've even had a visit from the Pope. Each of these events was supposed to bring an end to the war, but that hope was always delusional. A generational crisis war comes from the people, not from the politicians or the religious leaders. Central African Republic is a huge country, and the war is both religious and ethnic, pitting Christians against Muslims and land-owning farmer tribes against nomadic herder tribes.
Not surprisingly, there is often an alignment between the farmer-herder fault lines and the sectarian fault lines. In Central African Republic, the Muslims are mostly from nomadic herder tribes, while the Christians are mostly from land-owning farmer tribes. However, this division isn't monolithic. As I described a couple of months ago, there are also Muslim farmer tribes, and in some cases the Muslim and Christian farmer tribes are banding together to fight against the Muslim herder tribes.
The politicians and religious leaders are not going to end this war. The people of CAR will have to end it on their own. From the point of view of Generational Dynamics, the only way that a generational crisis war can end is with an explosive climax. The climax could be literally explosive, as in the case of the firebombing of Dresden and Tokyo and the nuking of Hiroshima at the end of World War II. But more likely it's a genocidal explosion that's so horrific that both sides decide that they have to stop fighting. An example is the Rwanda genocide of 1994, when Hutus killed almost a million Tutsis in three months.
It's impossible to predict what sort of explosive climax will end the CAR war, or when it will occur. But it's likely to involve millions of people and be a bloodbath of a kind that's usually remembered for decades or even centuries. And increased international funding of peacekeepers will do nothing to affect it. Newsweek and United Nations and Anadolu
A United Nations situation report on Central African Republic (CAR) indicates that violence in CAR has been increasing steadily since October 2016, and has become increasingly widespread, affect more and more regions of the country. It's possible that this is building to some kind of explosive genocidal climax.
According to Tuesday's situation report:
"Since October 2016, violent clashes and inter-communal tensions fueled by armed groups have continuously increased in the Central African Republic (CAR). In the absence of an effective judicial system and basic services by the public administration, armed groups have continued to perpetrate violent and destabilizing acts, of which the civilian population is the main victim. The targeting of minorities, including women and children, has resurfaced, with killings and attacks against communities multiplying.Conflict and forced displacement is increasingly widespread and impacting previously unaffected parts of the country. Today, the CAR is one of the few countries in the world where almost one person out of two depends on aid to survive.
The number of people displaced has reached an ever-recorded high of 1.1 million people. As the crisis further expands towards the East and North West of the country, there are new massive displacements and there is a significant risk that the condition of people previously displaced that remain in camps will deteriorate. Nearly one family out of four has already been forced to flee. In July 2017, the number of IDPs exceeded 600,000, which represents an increase of almost 50 per cent since January."
Since 2013, we've described a number of bloody clashes between Muslims and Christians in different regions of CAR. Today, the most dangerous town in CAR is the southeastern town of Bangassou.
Bangassou is a Christian-controlled town of about 35,000. In May, Christian militias launched an assault on other armed groups, including pro-Muslim groups or militias from the Fula ethnic group. Seventy-six civilians and six peacekeeping troops were killed. Moroccan peacekeepers rescued about 2,000 people and brought them to the town's Catholic church compound. Since then, unidentified gunmen have been shooting at the church on an almost daily basis. About a million people have been displaced from their homes. All the businesses and buildings have been deserted.
Because there have been increased attacks on UN peacekeepers, in Bangassou and elsewhere, at a ceremony on Tuesday, Secretary-General António Guterres paid tribute to the peacekeepers:
"I want to say that we need to make sure that the world fully appreciates the heroic contributions of peacekeepers protecting civilians, sometimes in extremely difficult circumstances, like the ones we face in the Central African Republic."
It's a great sentiment, but as a practical matter, there have been few situations where peacekeeping forces have accomplished much. In CAR, peacekeeping forces have been able to keep the two sides apart in the capital city Bangui, but haven't been effective elsewhere.
The violence in Bangassou is being repeated in towns and villages all across CAR. Sometimes it's Muslims slaughtering Christians, or vice-versa, or sometimes it's one ethnic group slaughtering another, irrespective of religion. The current peacekeeping force's mandate expires on November 15. Guterres has urged the UN Security Council to add 900 troops to the 12,500 already there, to enable the force "to shape and influence security situations, rather than react to them."
In a country of 4.7 million people, in thousands of villages at war with each other, it's hard to see what 900 additional troops is going to accomplish. UN ReliefWeb and Gulf Times and AFP and United Nations
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 26-Oct-17 World View -- UN Secretary-General in Central African Republic begs for more funding thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(26-Oct-2017)
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Pneumonic plague (Black plague) spreads rapidly in Madagascar
by John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Health officials from around the world are converging on the island of Madagascar in an attempt to control an extremely dangerous and rapidly spreading epidemic of the Black Plague before it becomes an international threat.
Since August 1 until Monday, the World Health Organization has registered 1,365 possible case of plague, with about half of them confirmed or considered probable. Over 100 people have been reported killed by the plague.
There are actually two separate epidemics in progress, with different forms of the plague.
About 1/3 of the cases are Bubonic Plague. This form of the plague is fairly common in Madagascar, recurring each year but usually claiming few lives. This form of the plague is carried by rats and then transferred to humans by fleas that bite the rats and then bite the humans. This form is usually confined to remote rural areas, and is triggered by the wide-spread ‘slash and burn’ practice as rats which carry the fleas carrying the bacteria Yersinia pestis move towards habitation locations, thereby facilitating human infection through flea bites, according to the United Nations.
What's different this year is the rapid spread of the most virulent form, Pneumonic Plague or Plague Pneumonia. Unlike Bubonic Plague, Pneumonic Plague is spread through the air from person to person, and is highly contagious. Pneumonic Plague spreads rapidly through heavily populated urban areas, and there have been 846 possible cases registered by WHO so far, particularly the capital city Antananarivo, and two coastal towns of Tamatave and Mahajunga. If the infection is not diagnosed and treated immediately, death occurs within one-three days. The epidemic has not yet reached its peak, according to CDC officials.
The Black Death is thought to have killed around 25 million in Europe in the late 1340s, and 100 million people worldwide. CDC and United Nations ReliefWeb and The Sun (London)
Madagascar is an island nation off the southeast coast of Africa in the Indian Ocean. World Health Organization (WHO) officials are trying to prevent the epidemic from spreading to nearby nations on the African mainland.
Kenya has taken immediate action to prevent the spread, according to a statement from the Ministry of Health:
"The World Health Organization has notified the Ministry of Health of a confirmed ongoing plague epidemic in Madagascar. The cases have been reported from eighteen out of 22 regions in the country including traditionally non endemic areas.In view of the above information, it is necessary that the health care system in the country initiates preparedness and response measures to prevent spread to the country and to promptly detect, notify and appropriately manage any suspected cases in the community or in health facilities if the outbreak spreads to Kenya.
Specifically, all county health management teams, sub-county health management teams, hospital health management teams, health workers in hospitals and those at points of entry are asked to look out for patients with acute onset of fever, chills, headache, severe malaise, chest pain and difficulty in breathing."
WHO has classified the event as a Grade 2 emergency. Over 4,400 community health workers are carrying out contact tracing activities in Madagascar, being supervised by 340 medical doctors and students. Once a person is diagnosed with the infection, "contact tracing" refers to locating all people that the infected person had contact with. In addition, surveillance activities at airports and ports are being strengthened.
According to the WHO, there is a risk of regional spread due to the occurrence of frequent travel by air and sea to neighboring Indian Ocean islands and other southern and east African countries. This risk is mitigated by the short incubation period of pneumonic plague, implementation of exit screening measures in Madagascar, and scaling up of preparedness and operational readiness activities in neighboring Indian Ocean islands and other southern and east African countries. The overall global risk is considered to be low. Capital News (Kenya) and Citizen TV (Kenya) and World Health Organization
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 25-Oct-17 World View -- Kenya closes border with Madagascar as Black Plague epidemic spreads thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(25-Oct-2017)
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Xi Jinping presents 'Socialism with Chinese characteristics for a new era'
by John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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China's state media and even the international media are bubbling with excitement these days, after China's president Xi Jinping gave an extremely nationalistic 3-1/2 hour keynote speech at the 19th Chinese Community Party National Congress last week, in which he describe "Socialism with Chinese characteristics for a new era."
The phrase "Socialism with Chinese characteristics" has been around for a while, but Xi has added "for a new era" to make it his own. "Xi's Thoughts" will be a new ideology that will bring the "China Dream" to fruition, and by 2050 will make China the world leader militarily and economically, and in political and environmental issues, replacing the United States, and with Socialism replacing Capitalism as the economic system of choice for countries around the world.
Furthermore Xi's Thoughts will be made part of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) constitution, placing Xi Jinping on a par with Mao Zedong among China's great historic leaders.
What does Xi say China's new era will look like? Here are some excerpts:
"This is a new historic juncture in China’s development. ...The Chinese nation, which in the modern era has endured so much for so long, has achieved a tremendous transformation—it has stood up, grown rich, and become strong, and it now embraces the brilliant prospects of rejuvenation. ...
It will be an era that sees China moving closer to center stage and making greater contributions to mankind. ...
China’s development does not pose a threat to any other country. No matter what stage of development it reaches, China will never seek hegemony or engage in expansion. ...
No country can alone address the many challenges facing mankind; no country can afford to retreat into self-isolation. ...
China now leads the world in trade, outbound investment, and foreign-exchange reserves. ...
We will make it our mission to see that by 2035, the modernization of our national defense is basically complete, and that by the mid-21st century [2050] our people’s armed forces have been fully transformed into world-class forces. ...
A military is prepared for war. All military works must adhere to the standards of being able to fight a war and win a war. Our army is the people’s army; our defense is national defense. [We must] enhance the education on national defense education, consolidate the unity between the military and civilian, in order to achieve the Chinese dream of a strong military. ...
We have the resolve, the confidence, and the ability to defeat ‘Taiwan Independence’ in any form. We will never allow anyone, any organization or any political party, at any time or any form, to separate any part of Chinese territory from China. ...
Construction on islands and reefs in the South China Sea has seen steady progress."
These claims have to be viewed through the lens of the "24-Character Strategy" (24 Chinese characters) formulated by one of Xi's predecessors, Deng Xiaoping, in 1990:
"Observe calmly; secure our position; cope with affairs calmly; hide our capacities and bide our time; be good at maintaining a low profile; and never claim leadership."
In particular, the claim that China will have a "world class military" by 2050 should be viewed through Deng's strategy. China is spending many billions of dollars on the military, developing huge weapons systems, a large navy, space technology, and anything else that will permit China to fight a war against the United States long before 2050. If Xi claimed that China has a world class military today, he would be ridiculed by young Chinese, and he would alarm all the neighboring countries in Asia. The 2050 date is "fake news," and by proffering it, he does what's necessary to promote the "China Dream" while hiding his true intentions.
The Chinese have become almost completely delusional. Press reports indicate that many Chinese, especially young Chinese, believe that China's Socialism has already beaten the United States. They point to China's poverty in the 1970s, and claim that the reason that China has become so economically powerful today is because the Socialist dictatorship allows the CCP to force things to happen to prevent a financial crisis.
So the first part of the Chinese delusion is that they think that they've accomplished something that America hasn't. America has made huge economic gains since the 1970s, and developed new technologies in computers, medicine, weaponry, transportation, and in every other field. China has done nothing comparable, and in fact has had to steal technology from the West. The Chinese want to focus on the Nasdaq crash in 2001 and the Lehman crisis in 2008, but in fact the resilient Western economy has survived them and continued to thrive. And the Chinese should take note of the fact that our Federal Reserve central bank can unilaterally do many of the things the CCP can do to recover from a crisis. So China hasn't done anything that the West hasn't done, even if they nurture the delusion that they have.
The second part of the Chinese delusion is that they think that they're immune to financial crises in the future. China is in a huge debt bubble, and when a panic occurs, the bubble will implode much faster than the CCP can print money. Regular readers are aware that Generational Dynamics predicts a major global panic and financial crisis. Western nations will try to recover through monetary and fiscal policy, while China will try to recover through whatever dictatorial methods it can, but this will be a major generational panic and crisis, and neither China nor the West will be immune.
So Socialism has given China nothing that the West doesn't have, but has cost the Chinese people enormously. I sometimes muse what would happen to me in China's Socialist paradise. I write these Generational Dynamics analyses in Boston, and I feel free to criticize anyone in the world (and there's plenty to criticize). But I wrote exactly the same things in Beijing, the CCP's police would drag me out of apartment, throw me into a hole, and hang me by my thumbs. The CCP is increasingly using mobile phones to track everyone's movements and everyone's thoughts, and anyone violating CCP rules risks being thrown in jail. South China Morning Post and Quartz and The Diplomat
What's interesting about "Xi's Thoughts" and "Socialism with Chinese characteristics for a new era" is that there's no difference between them and Hitler's Thoughts and National Socialism.
I was in school in the 1950s-60s, I was repeatedly told that the difference between Communism and Nazism was that in Communism the government owned all the businesses (which was "good"), while in Nazism it was still a capitalist system (which was "bad"), but the government still controlled everything. That's exactly the economic system that China has today. It's pure National Socialism (Nazism).
Xi's Thoughts are actually about Nazism with Chinese Characteristics, and it's a very scary development because they provide an ideological framework to justify any military action at any time.
As I've written in the past, China is behaving in a highly emotional, irrational, panicky, nationalistic manner, issuing delusional and fabricated evidence to support claims that everybody knows are false claims. This is what makes China so dangerous
Xi Jinping and the CCP are international criminals for invading and annexing regions in the South China Sea belonging to other countries, in violation of international law, which is what Hitler did. China is building missile systems whose only purpose is to attack American cities, military bases, and aircraft carriers, just as Hitler built its air force to attack Britain. China is preparing to launch a war on its neighbors, as well as on America, which it believes it will win, just has Hitler did. This is all delusional.
Instead, China will cause a catastrophe to itself and the rest of the world. History will look back on China as the worst disaster to the world in history, worse than the Nazis and the Imperial Japanese combined. By 2050, China will be worse off than it was in 1950. Xinhua and BBC and China Daily
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 24-Oct-17 World View -- Xi Jinping's 'Socialism with Chinese characteristics' is identical to Hitler's National Socialism thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(24-Oct-2017)
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Japan's Shinzo Abe wins a 'super-majority' in Japan's lower house
by John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Japan's Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), led by prime minister Shinzo Abe, won a landslide victory in a snap election on Sunday, reaching a two-thirds "super-majority" in the lower house of Japan's parliament.
When Abe called for the snap election last month, many analysts considered it a high-risk gamble because his approval rating had been falling. (When Britain's Theresa May called for a similar UK election earlier this year, the result was political disaster.)
Abe's opponents accused him of calling the snap election to create a distraction from the corruption scandal he was facing, based on accusations that he had used his influence as prime minister to help a private university and an ultra-nationalist school in their business deals with the government.
Whatever the motivation, the gamble seems to have paid off in a big way. Abe denied that the scandals had anything to do with this actions. Instead, he took a nationalistic stance against North Korea's growing belligerence and threats. North Korea launched two ballistic missile tests, on August 28 and September 14, respectively, with the missiles flying over Japanese airspace.
On Saturday, Abe said to supporters:
"We can no longer let ourselves be fooled by North Korea. We cannot succumb to its threats. By taking advantage of our strong diplomacy, we have to make sure the North will have no other option but change its policy and return to the negotiating table."
Abe has also gained popularity by "Abenomics," a combination of generous government spending and central bank monetary easing.
The landslide win makes it likely that Abe, who took office in December 2012, will next year win a third three-year term as LDP leader and prime minister. Japan Times and BBC
Prior to Sunday's election, Shinzo Abe's LDP was able to muster a two-thirds "super-majority," when combined with its coalition partner Komeito. If the final vote count goes as expected, then the LDP will have a super-majority by itself in the lower house, though a coalition will still be required in the upper house. A two-thirds majority is required to amend the constitution.
Abe has said repeatedly that he'd like to amend the constitution to repeal Article 9, which says:
"CHAPTER II - RENUNCIATION OF WARArticle 9. Aspiring sincerely to an international peace based on justice and order, the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes.
In order to accomplish the aim of the preceding paragraph, land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained. The right of belligerency of the state will not be recognized."
Japan actually has very powerful land, sea and air forces, arguably in violation of Article 9. But they've never fired a shot at an enemy. They're known as "Self-Defense Forces" (SDF), and are currently forbidden from participating in any military action except on Japanese soil in case of foreign attack.
In 2015, Abe was able to get the parliament to reinterpret the self-defense clause to mean "collective self-defense." Under this interpretation, military action would be permitted anywhere in the world when an ally (such as the United States) is attacked. I discussed the meaning of "collective self-defense" in detail in 2014 in "5-May-2014 World View -- Japan debates 'collective self-defense' to protect America and Japan".
A lot of international media discussions of the election are blaming Article 9 on the United States, for imposing it on Japan at the end of World War II. It's true that American General Douglas MacArthur did require the self-defense clause to be included in Japan's post-war constitution, but that was 70 years ago. Japan could have amended its constitution at many points in the last seven decades, but chose not to. The self-defense clause has been very popular, not only because many people believe that it makes war less likely, but also because the Japanese people save a lot of money by just leaving it to the United States to provide military protection. Even the reinterpretation as "collective self-defense" was and is highly controversial.
For Shinzo Abe, amending Article 9 is personal, in that he's following in the path of his grandfather, Kishi Nobusuke, who served as prime minister of Japan from 1957-60. Kishi disliked the pacifism clause because it made Japan too dependent on the United States, and he wanted Japan to be completely self-reliant in national defense. For Abe, amending this clause would fulfill his grandfather's wish.
Earlier this year, in a statement commemorating the 70th anniversary of the constitution, Abe set a 2020 deadline for amending the constitution:
"I believe that we must establish the status of the SDF explicitly in the constitution during our generation's lifetime and leave no room for contending the SDF could be unconstitutional. I strongly wish to make 2020 the year that the reborn Japan will make a new start."
Ironically, it's been belligerent actions by China and North Korea that may have made it possible for Abe to get the constitution amended. In particular, the people of Japan (and South Korea) are no longer as certain as they were in the past that the United States would protect them. But with the United States increasingly concerned about protecting itself, Japan and South Korea are both now looking for ways to increase their own military capabilities, and not have to depend on the US as much. With the Japanese people becoming increasingly anxious, Abe may succeed in getting the constitution amended by 2020, despite the fierce opposition. Kyodo News and NBC News and South China Morning Post and CNN
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 23-Oct-17 World View -- Big election win for Japan's Shinzo Abe may mean end of pacifism thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(23-Oct-2017)
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Dozens of Egyptian police massacred in ambush by jihadists
by John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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In the largest terrorist attack against Egypt's security forces in decades, as many as 55 policemen were killed in a sophisticated ambush by militants on Friday evening. A large police convoy in four SUVs were traveling to the al-Bahariya Oasis in the vast desert expanse in Giza province southwest of Cairo, based on intelligence that there was a secret terrorist hideout there.
The whole thing was apparently a setup, as the militants were prepared for the arrival of the policemen. When the convoy arrived, dozens of militants opened up with heavy machine guns, recoilless grenades and mortars, and detonated roadside bombs. The Egyptian air force was not called in, leading to suspicions that the militants had penetrated Egypt's security forces.
Militancy has been growing and spreading in Egypt. In the past year, militants have killed hundreds of Egyptian security forces and judges, and have targeted minority Christian communities and bombed churches in Cairo, Alexandria and other areas. This insurgency has continued and grown, even as Egypt's military and police forces claim to have killed thousands of suspected terrorists. Daily News Egypt and AP and Washington Post and Debka
No one has claimed responsibility for Friday evening's ambush, but it's believed that the perpetrators were the Hasm Movement, which is believed to be the armed wing of the Muslim Brotherhood, although MB officials deny a connection. The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt was violent for decades, but renounced violence in the 1970s. If Hasm is linked to the Muslim Brotherhood, it would represent a return to violence for the organization.
"Hasm" in Arabic means "decisiveness" or "termination," but the name of the group may be also an acronym of Arabic phrase "Harakat Sawa'd Misr," which literally means "Arms of Egypt Movement". It first emerged publicly when it claimed credit for an attack on a police officer on July 18, 2016. Since then, the group has claimed credit for a number of deadly attacks on security forces and assassinations of public figures.
Egypt's president Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi has cracked down extremely harshly on Muslim Brotherhood members, jailing thousands of them and subjecting many to torture, since, as an army general, al-Sisi led an army coup overthrowing the democratically elected but incompetently governing Mohammed Morsi, and his Muslim Brotherhood ministers.
Although the Muslim Brotherhood still claims to be a non-violent political organization, there's little doubt that al-Sisi's harsh, bloody atrocities committed against Brotherhood members has radicalized some of the younger members, and that may be the genesis of the Hasm Movement, though that hasn't been proven.
Al-Sisi has hands full with the Bedouin-based Sinai terrorist group Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis (ABM - Ansar Jerusalem - Champions of Jerusalem), which changed its name to al-Wilayat Sinai (Province of Sinai) when it changed its allegiance in 2015 from al-Qaeda to the so-called Islamic State (IS or ISIS or ISIL or Daesh).
Al-Sisi has conducted a scorched earth counter-insurgency approach to ABM, which takes advantage of the deeply alienated Bedouin population. However, ABM's appeal among ordinary Egyptians has been limited because of its ruthless attacks on ordinary civilians.
The Hasm Movement has apparently learned from ABM's experience. Hasm have been avoiding attacks on civilians, and have been targeting policemen, security officials and government officials, so that they may be able to gain greater traction among the Egyptian people than ABM has been able to do. Deutsche Welle and Jamestown (21-Apr) and International Institute for Counter-Terrorism and Al-Jazeera
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 22-Oct-17 World View -- Egyptian police ambushed and killed by Muslim Brotherhood linked Hasm Movement thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(22-Oct-2017)
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Zimbabwe's people fear further starvation after food imports are banned
by John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Zimbabwe's president Robert Mugabe has banned the importation of fruit, vegetables and other horticultural products, in order to avert a further economic crisis.
According to Zimbabwe's agriculture minister Joseph Wade:
"His Excellency [president Robert Mugabe] has directed me and the Minister of Industry and Commerce to quickly stop the importation of horticultural products as they waste much needed foreign currency. This means that the importation of fruit and vegetables will be stopped immediately. We are finalizing on the exact list of foreign-produced fruits that are occupying shelves in shops.This must be a positive development for our farmers, we now want them to improve on their production capacity and also to produce quality produce. The foreign currency being wasted on the importation of carrots and grapes will now be utilized towards the purchase of more fertilizers and pesticides."
The reason that Zimbabwe's farm have such low production capacity is because their current owners are almost all from Mugabe's Shona tribe, and apparently are so incompetent that they don't know the difference between a plough and a tricycle.
Robert Mugabe is a genocidal psychopath, just like Syria's Bashar al-Assad. Mugabe is from the Shona tribe, and in the early 1980s, he launched a massive genocide and ethnic cleansing campaign against his traditional tribal enemies, the Ndebele tribe. During that campaign, known as Operation Gukurahundi, accomplished with the help of training by North Koreans, tens of thousands of people, mostly from the Ndebele tribe, were raped, tortured and slaughtered.
In 1999, Mugabe adopted his "indigenization" program. At that time, Zimbabwe was considered the breadbasket of Africa, second only to Kenya in food production. Mugabe threw all the white farm owners out of the country, and turned the farms over to his incompetent cronies in the Shona tribe. By 2003, Zimbabwe was starving, and the number of Zimbabweans dying of starvation continued to grow. By 2008, the official rate of inflation was 231 million percent. ( "24-Feb-2014 World View -- Mass murderer Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe has 90th birthday")
For 15 years, I've been writing these articles about what's going on in the world, and it just never ceases to amaze me about how psychopaths like Bashar al-Assad and Robert Mugabe can stay in power for years and decades, despite the unbelievable amount of destruction they cause. It's almost as if they have some magical hypnotic capability the keeps them in power, no matter how many atrocities are committed, no matter how many men are tortured, no matter how many women are raped, no matter how many millions of people become homeless or are simply slaughtered. It's just a source of unending astonishment how this goes on and on.
And now, food imports are banned, and Zimbabweans have to depend on Mugabe's incompetent Shona cronies to feed them, which will undoubtedly cause many more people to starve to death. Herald (Zimbabwe) and Reuters and AFP
Zimbabwe appears to be on the brink of an economic meltdown, after a currency panic that began on September 25, resulting in a 50% inflation of the new "bond note" currency, introduced in December of last year, supposedly to stabilize the economy.
In 2008, the inflation rate on the Zimbabwe dollar reached 231 million percent (231,000,000% inflation), essentially making the Zimbabwe dollar worth less than toilet paper. The US dollar and the South African rand became the official currencies. But Mugabe's destruction of the economy continued, as he extended his "indigenization" program to other businesses, shutting them down and turning them over to his incompetent Shona cronies.
Just as Zimbabwe used to be able grow enormous amounts of food, the country's economy should be bristling, thanks to its principal commodity exports, gold, platinum, tobacco, ferro chrome and diamonds. However, these businesses have been mostly turned over to Mugabe's incompetent Shona cronies. Thanks to government corruption and falling commodity prices, Zimbabwe's economy was in a liquidity crisis last year, due to a lack of available US dollars.
So to solve this problem, Zimbabwe introduced a new currency called "bond notes," each one of which is nominally the value of one US dollar. Zimbabweans were told that the value of the bond notes would be guaranteed by Cairo-based African Export–Import Bank (Afreximbank). The details of how that guarantee would be executed have never been explained, and many people have been suspicious that the bond notes have nothing backing them at all (just like Bitcoin.)
So there was a market panic starting on September 25 of this year, as people feared that the new "bond notes" were going to have the same type of hyperinflation as the old Zimbabwe dollar.
The bond notes lost 50% of their value and would have collapsed completely, except that Afreximbank stepped in and loaned Zimbabwe $600 million to stabilize the economy. $32 million of that money was used to pay off the electricity company Eskom, which was threatening to switch off electricity to the entire country for lack of payment.
The crisis appears to have eased, but bond notes are still suffering from inflation, with 1.3 bond notes now equivalent to one US dollar. And as long as Afreximbank is willing to continue pouring hundreds of millions of US dollars into Zimbabwe, the economy should remain fairly stable. Independent (Zimbabwe) and New Zimbabwe and Bulawayo (Zimbabwe)
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 21-Oct-17 World View -- Zimbabwe bans food imports as new 'bond note' currency crashes thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(21-Oct-2017)
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Examples of the 58 Year Hypothesis: Swine Flu, Iraq War, Israel-Hezbollah war
by John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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They're calling Monday, October 19, 1987, the "worst day in stock market history," it fell 22% in one day (equivalent to a fall of 5000 points today). Analysts and economists were on television all day on Thursday telling sad stories about how shocked they were on that day, but they were completely baffled about why it happened.
The development of generational theory and Generational Dynamics has revealed numerous important historical patterns generated by the regular changes in generations.
One of the most significant discoveries in the development of generational theory is an explanation of the stock market crash of Monday, October 19, 1987 -- why it occurred at all, why it occurred in 1987 rather than, say, in 1980 or 1990, and why the stock market recovered so quickly.
Here are some Thursday media excerpts offering explanations:
Jeff Cox of CNBC claims that, unlike today, "the 1987 [stock market] was stratospheric, doubling in about two years." This is the kind of nonsense you see from analysts who have no clue what's going on. In 1987, the S&P 500 price/earnings ratio index was 14, which means that stocks were fairly priced at the historic average. Today, the P/E ratio is 25, indicating that stocks are in a huge bubble.
If you want to figure out why the "the worst day in stock market history" occurred in 1987, then you have to ask what was unique about 1987 that made it different from 1980, 1985, 1990 or 1995?
If you look at the proposed explanations listed above, they explain nothing. Let's take one example: global tensions, and fear of a Mideast war. Well, just a few years earlier we had had the Iran hostage crisis in 1979, and the deaths of 300 American and French troops in the 1983 bombing of the Beirut, Lebanon, barracks by Hezbollah. If global tensions caused the panic in 1987, why didn't they cause a panic in those earlier years?
None of the other proposals explains why 1987 was a special year, as opposed to all the others.
But from the point of view of Generational Dynamics, what made 1987 a special year, different from all the others, was that it was 58 years after the crash of 1929. This leads us to one of the most interesting discoveries of generational theory -- the "58 Year Hypothesis." CNN and San Diego Union Tribune and CNBC and Market Watch
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So why did all the senior managers of financial firms panic on October 19, 1987, and join the stock market selloff that caused the market to fall 22% in one day?
If we assume that all of these senior managers were roughly 63-68 years old in 1987, they would have been 5-10 years old in 1929.
Now imagine that you're a 5-10 year old child in 1929, leading a happy life with parents who have plenty of money because they had taken advantage of the stock market bubble in the 1920s. Now imagine that, one day, your parents lose everything. Your whole life is turned upside down, and suddenly your family is living under a bridge and depending on soup kitchens to survive. This is something that traumatizes you and affects your entire life.
And here's the important part: It's not just you. It's every child your age. As you and your age cohort grow older, you share this common memory of the 1929 catastrophe -- something that younger children and younger people have no personal memory of.
So now move forward to 1987, and you're 63-68 years old, and something happens in the stock market that frightens you. It could be almost anything. You talk it over with your other 63-68 year old exec friends, and you realize that you all recognize the danger, but that managers younger than you have no idea, because they didn't live through it before. So you all tell younger people that you think there's going to be a repeat of the 1929 crash, causing a panic. But it's a false panic, because stocks are fairly priced, not in a huge bubble as in 1929.
This isn't the first time this has happened. In 1914, there was a similar false panic, occurring 57 years after the stock market crash of 1857. And, once again, the market recovered quickly from the panic, because stocks were fairly priced.
The 1914 panic had an enormous impact on investors because it ended so quickly, and kept investors from understanding the impact of the 1929 stock market crash. John Kenneth Galbraith's 1954 book The Great Crash - 1929, explained how the brief 1907 and 1914 panics contributed to the 1929 disaster:
"A common feature of all these earlier troubles [previous panics] was that having happened they were over. The worst was reasonably recognizable as such. The singular feature of the great crash of 1929 was that the worst continued to worsen. What looked one day like the end proved on the next day to have been only the beginning. Nothing could have been more ingeniously designed to maximize the suffering, and also to insure that as few as possible escaped the common misfortune.The fortunate speculator who had funds to answer the first margin call presently got another and equally urgent one, and if he met that there would still be another. In the end all the money he had was extracted from him and lost. The man with the smart money, who was safely out of the market when the first crash came, naturally went back in to pick up bargains. ... The bargains then suffered a ruinous fall. Even the man who waited out all of October and all of November, who saw the volume of trading return to normal and saw Wall Street become as placid as a produce market, and who then bought common stocks would see their value drop to a third or fourth of the purchase price in the next twenty-four months. ... The ruthlessness of [the stock market was] remarkable." (p. 108-109)
This analysis by Galbraith is the basis for what I call the Principle of Maximum Ruin: That a real financial crisis will ruin the maximum number of people to the maximum extent possible. The commonly heard phrase "buy the dip" describes what happens. Since investors don't believe that a real stock market crash is possible, they buy more stocks whenever prices dip. So they keep losing money until they lose everything. This is what happened in 1929, and it's what will happen in the coming panic and financial crisis.
I formulated the 58 Year Hypothesis over ten years ago when I accidentally noticed what seemed to be a remarkable coincidence.
I'm now referring to the "swine flu" panic of 1976. The public became hysterical over the possibility of a new flu pandemic that could kill millions of people, repeating the catastrophe of the Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918. Responding to public demands, the government prepared millions of doses of swine flu vaccine. President Gerald R. Ford authorized a mass inoculation program, and 45 million Americans -- more than 20 percent of the population -- were vaccinated. The whole thing was a fiasco because there was no epidemic, and because hundreds of people died from a negative reaction to the vaccinations.
The swine flu panic of 1976 was a false panic that occurred exactly 58 years after the Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918. Once again, the 58 Year Hypothesis explains why the year 1976 was unique. There was no similar flu panic in 1960, 1965, or 1970. It occurred in 1976 because it was 58 years after the Spanish Flu epidemic, and 5-10 year old children who had lost their parents and friends in 1918 panicked in 1976, when they were 63-68 years old, fearing that it would happen again.
Once I identified this "coincidence," I began looking for other possible examples, and it turns out that the 58 year time span occurs rather frequently in generational theory. It seems that when an entire society is traumatized by an unexpected event that was foreseeable but not foreseen, then there is a panic 58 years later that the event will happen again.
The Iraq ground war of 2003 is considered a mistake today, but in 2003 it was extremely populated because the entire country was anxious over Saddam Hussein's development and use of chemical weapons. It occurred 58 years after the use of nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. Why was the year 2003 unique? Saddam had been developing and using WMD's for 20 years, and there was no panic. But 2003 was unique because it was 58 years after 1945.
In 2006, Hezbollah abducted two Israeli soldiers near the Lebanon border. Israel went into a state of total panic, and launched the war in Lebanon within four hours, with no plan and no objectives. The war was a total disaster for Israel. There had been other prior confrontations with Hezbollah and Palestinian terrorists prior to 2006. What made 2006 special? It occurred 58 years after the genocidal war between Jews and Arabs in Palestine in 1948.
There's still plenty of research to be done on the 58 Year Hypothesis to determine exactly why it happens, what types of events trigger it, and what are other examples. But returning now to the false panic of 1987, go back and read the moronic explanations by mainstream economists and analysts, and you'll see that the 58 Year Hypothesis is the only one that actually makes sense. Jerusalem Post (30-Apr-2007) and LA Times (27-Apr-2009)
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 20-Oct-17 World View -- Economists baffled on 30th anniversary of 1987 stock market panic thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(20-Oct-2017)
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Italy accused of turning a blind eye to atrocities received by refugees in detention centers
by John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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A record 180,000 refugees crossed the Mediterranean from Libya to Italy in 2016, and Italian officials had been expect that number to increase in 2017. Instead, the number has fallen substantially, thanks to a series of deals that Italy's government made with Libya's tribes, warlords, and coast guard, even though the deals have been widely condemned by humanitarian and human rights organizations.
The number of crossings in July 2017 was half what it was in July 2016, and in August, 20 per cent of what it was a year earlier. Crossings were down from nearly 28,000 people in June to below 10,000 in August.
The reduction in the flow of refugees is attributed to a series of deals that Italy has made with various tribes and government officials in Libya during June to cut off the migrant flow. Many of the deals were with tribes along Libya's southern border, to prevent refugees coming from West Africa from entering Libya from Chad, Mali and Niger.
The initiator of the agreement was Italy's interior minister Marco Minniti. According to Minniti:
"But my conviction was the southern border of Libya is crucial for the southern border of Europe as a whole. So we have built a relationship with the tribes of southern Sahara. They are fundamental to the south, the guardians of the southern border, but they had been fighting one another and that meant the southern border was not controlled.On 31 March the tribes came to my office here in Rome. It was a very difficult discussion; 72 hours were needed to to try to find a solution and to build a peace that respected their independence. All this was very complicated, more complicated than you can imagine, but they were looking for a solution. My conviction is that at a certain point [when] these conflicts become unsustainable the important thing is to be ready when someone is looking for a solution."
That wasn't all. Minniti also made deals with the mayors of 14 cities in Libya:
"We discussed a pact. It was quite simple: engage yourself against the trafficking of human beings and we will help you to build an alternative economy. The problems at the moment is trafficking has been the only industry in Libya capable of producing an income revenue."
What was the alternative economy? The tribal militias in these cities had only one major source of income -- to become human traffickers and collect money from refugees to put them on boats, push the boats out into the Mediterranean, and hope that they'll be rescued by NGOs. In many cases, Italy has accused NGOs of being in telephone contact with these human trafficking militias, and paying off the militias to let them know when refugee boats were pushed out into the sea.
So Minniti offered to provide aid to these mayors to replace the funds received from human trafficking. According to Minniti:
"When I met a sultan of the tribes he said: ‘You have to help me so that my children so that can lead a different life from trafficking.’ We have taken these projects to the European commission. These people want to change and it is the duty of the international community to help in this reconversion."
In return for the aid, the militias are responsible for detaining the migrants and keeping them in refugee camps.
In August, Rome also signed deals with the Libyan coastguard to help it deal with people smuggling, and to permit Italy to perform naval operations in Libyan waters.
These deals are considered to be morally questionable, but their effect has been dramatic, in cutting the refugee flow to Italy and the number of drownings in the Mediterranean Sea substantially.
Italy's prime minister Paolo Gentiloni bragged about the results on Wednesday:
"Italy is proud to be a good example on the issue of migrants. We have reduced the number of people dying at sea and the number of irregular-migrant arrivals."
Gentiloni said that Italy was a model for Europe on how to reduce migrant arrivals. Reuters and Irish Times and Guardian (London)
The deals that Italy's government has signed with Libya's warlords, tribes, militias and coast guard have dramatically reduced the flow of refugees, but Italy is being accused of turning a blind eye to the abuse that refugees receive in "concentration camps," where they have been left hungry, brutalized, raped and tortured.
U.N. agencies have said that Italy's policies had trapped tens of thousands of people in dire conditions in Libya. This is particularly true in Libya's port of Sabratha, which Libyan human smugglers have long used as an operations base and a main port for their boats heading across the Mediterranean Sea. Last week, 4,000 migrants were found, trapped in various locations around the city, often starving.
Commissioner Nils Muiznieks of the Council of Europe Human Rights wrote to Italy's interior minister Marco Minniti, all but accusing Italy of violating human rights laws:
"The case law of the European Court of Human Rights is clear about this duty and I think it bears relevance for Italy’s operations in Libyan territorial waters. In light of recent reports on the current human rights situation of migrants in Libya, handing individuals over to the Libyan authorities or other groups in Libya would expose them to a real risk of torture or inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, ... [violating] Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights.Finally, the Commissioner requests information about the measures to ensure that search and rescue operations in the Mediterranean, including those conducted by non-governmental actors, can continue to be carried out effectively and in safety."
Muiznieks added, "The fact that such actions would be carried out in Libyan territorial waters does not absolve Italy from its obligations under the convention."
In fact, based on news reports, the evidence is that Minniti has taken no steps at all to prevent refugees from being exposed to atrocities. According to the deals, the Libyan warlords and militias detain the refugees, do not allow them to proceed to Europe, but instead lock them up in detention centers where any form of abuse can be performed on them with impunity. Deutsche Welle and Council of Europe-Commission of Human Rights and Deutsche Welle and BBC
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 19-Oct-17 World View -- Italy's deals with Libya's warlords substantially reduce flow of refugees thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
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(19-Oct-2017)
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North Korea nuclear missile crisis close to reaching a tipping point
by John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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On Sunday, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said that "diplomatic efforts will continue until the first bomb drops." When I first heard I immediately thought that he was being intentionally ambiguous, because he could easily have made it clearer whether he meant the first North Korean bomb or the first American bomb.
Tillerson was responding to a question about whether President Trump's tweets undermine him:
"Well, I think what the President is doing is he is trying to motivate action on a number of people's part in particular the regime in North Korea. I think he does want to be clear with Kim Jong-un and that regime in North Korea that he has military preparations ready to go and has those military options on the table and we have spent substantial time actually perfecting those. But be clear, the President has also made clear to me that he wants this solved diplomatically. He is not seeking to go to war.[Question: So he does think it is a waste of time?]
No, sir. He made it clear to me to continue my diplomatic efforts which we are. And we will - as I told others the diplomatic efforts will continue until the first bomb drops."
When we try to interpret what Tillerson and Trump mean by this we have to understand that the United States has run out of time. As Nikki Haley said last month, "We have kicked the can down the road long enough. There is no more road left." This means that one US administration after another have allowed North Korea to carry out their threats to develop a ballistic missile with a nuclear warhead.
Most analysts believe that North Korea will "soon" have the ability to target the United States mainland with a nuclear weapon equipped ballistic missile, where "soon" could mean several weeks to several months. Indeed, North Korean officials have repeatedly said that they are working non-stop to develop this nuclear missile capability, neither diplomacy nor sanction nor anything else will stop them. At that point, the North Koreans are expected to do something spectacular, like launch a nuclear missile to land in the Pacific Ocean halfway to the US mainland.
This will be a clear tipping point in the North Korean crisis. The North Koreans believe, possibly correctly, that once this point is reached, then they will be able to use nuclear threats to make demands of the US, South Korea, and Japan, such as demanding that all US troops be withdrawn. The North Koreans would then continue development, and would soon have an arsenal of ballistic missiles with nuclear missiles targeting the US mainland. This will also presumably make the Russians and the Chinese very happy as well.
Would the North Koreans actually carry out their nuclear threats? I keep going back to 2010, when the North conducted two acts of war targeting South Korea -- in May, North Korea torpedoed and sank the warship Cheonan, killing dozens of South Korean crew members, and in November, North Korea killed South Korean civilians by shelling Yeonpyeong Island. In both cases, the South Koreans chose not to respond, but it's pretty clear that they might have.
The North Koreans carried out those two acts of war because they correctly concluded that the South Koreans would not retaliate. Since the beginning of his term, President Trump has repeatedly made clear, through tweets and statements, that unlike the South Koreans in 2010, we actually would retaliate, and forcefully. But after three decades of empty threats by American administrations, the North Koreans may quite reasonably conclude that Trump's tweets are simply another empty threat.
And so we return to Tillerson's remark, and to the question: Why was it so carefully and meticulously ambiguous as to whether "the first bomb" would be dropped by the US or North Korea?
Will Trump and Tillerson permit North Korea get to the point where they have an arsenal of nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles pointed at the United States? These are two older men, Boomers, decisive, sharp businessmen who now have to make the most important and critical decisions of their lives. I certainly can't read their minds, but I find it hard to believe that they would just sit back and let North Korea develop a nuclear arsenal with impunity, and then have to lead a humiliated United States a year from now. CNN and AFP and Sputnik News (Moscow) and KCNA Watch (North Korea)
As tensions over the North Korea crisis rise almost on a daily basis, the above is the kind of question that a lot East Asians are asking themselves. Will the United States allow North Korea to develop a nuclear ballistic missile arsenal that would put Los Angeles at risk? Or will the US strike North Korea's nuclear capabilities and save Los Angeles, but risk a retaliatory North Korean attack on Seoul - or Tokyo?
After World War II, the United States took on the role of Policeman of the World, and in doing so, signed some sort of mutual defense treaty with many countries: Japan, South Korea, Israel, Taiwan, the Philippines, the Marshall Islands, the ANZUS agreement with Australia and New Zealand, a special treaty with Iceland, and the NATO agreement with all of Europe. The purpose was to discourage attacks on any of these allies that would otherwise have the risk of spiraling into World War III.
What we're seeing now is a kind of fatal flaw in the strategy behind these mutual defense treaties. The idea was that the United States would protect these countries, but today the United States is more concerned about protecting itself.
And because of the mutual defense treaties, neither South Korea nor Japan has a nuclear capability or nuclear deterrent, even though both countries are threatened with nuclear attack from North Korea (not to mention China), and even though they now feel unsure that they can depend on the United States to protect them.
Development of a nuclear capability Japan is deeply unpopular because of their experience in World War II. But according to Thomas Cynkin, a former U.S. diplomat in Japan, the Japanese have developed a "nuclear latency policy," which allows Japan to develop nuclear weapons very quickly. Cynkin says the country is estimated to have “9 tons of plutonium, enough for over 1,000 warheads,” as well as an advanced space industry, which provides easy access to ballistic missile technology.
There is no such easy path to nuclear weapons development in South Korea. Nuclear development is openly debated in South Korea, but would infuriate the Chinese and draw retaliation. The Chinese were infuriated by South Korea's deployment of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile system, which is purely defensive, and China retaliated with a harsh economic boycott that's still in place. Deployment of offensive nuclear weapons would dangerously provoke the Chinese.
North Korea's last major test was a ballistic missile test that occurred on September 14. The missile flew over Japan, landing in the Pacific Ocean far enough to have put the American base on Guam within range, raising international anxiety. It's been a whole month since that test, so international anxieties have subsided. But all it would take is another North Korean test of a nuclear bomb, or a long-range ballistic missile, or the two combined, and international anxieties will rise higher than ever, along with a new debate over deploying nuclear weapons in Japan and South Korea. The Diplomat and Washington Post and Cipher Brief and National Interest (5-Sep)
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 18-Oct-17 World View -- North Korea crisis: Would the United States sacrifice Los Angeles for Seoul? thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(18-Oct-2017)
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Kurds flee Kirkuk after Iraq army defeats them in complete rout
by John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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People in Erbil, the capital city of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), were shocked on Monday at the speed with which their supposedly legendary Peshmerga militias defending Kirkuk collapsed at the approach of Iraqi army forces and Shia militias, in what is seen as a total rout.
For several days, Kurdish forces were locked in an armed standoff Iraqi government troops and allied Iranian-backed paramilitaries known as Popular Mobilization Units (PMUs) on the outskirts of the city. Kurdish leaders were using the strongest rhetoric, saying that Kirkuk would be defended to the last Peshmerga, and that if Iraqi forces attack, they would be soundly defeated. So there's a lot of anger today among the Kurds about how this rout could have occurred so quickly, within about 15 hours.
The Kurds took control of Kirkuk in 2014, at a time when the country Iraq seemed to be falling apart, because the so-called Islamic State (IS or ISIS or ISIL or Daesh) defeated the Iraqi army quickly and took control of Mosul, making it ISIS headquarters in Iraq. ISIS also took control of vast swaths of land, including many villages, but it was Kurdish Peshmerga militias that prevented ISIS from taking control of Kirkuk as well.
The Kurds might have been able to retain Kirkuk as part of the regional KRG government, but Kurdish leaders decided to go further and hold a non-binding referendum on September 25 on the question of secession of an independent Kurdish state from Iraq. This referendum went ahead despite almost universal international opposition, as the United States, Turkey, Iran, and Iraq expressed concern that the referendum would create unrealistic expectations and destabilize the region. And that appears to be exactly what happened.
Once the referendum had passed, Iraq's prime minister Haider al-Abadi said that he had no choice but to order military action to capture Kirkuk and prevent a secession from taking place. The rapid advance of the Iraqi forces resulted in quickly seizing control of the city's airport, in addition to an oil field, the strategic K1 military base and the Taza Khormatu district southeast of Kirkuk. A convoy of elite Iraqi counter-terrorism unit forces took control of the governorate building in central Kirkuk in the afternoon, meeting no resistance. Iraqi forces also took control of the governor's office, which had been left deserted.
Al-Abadi said in a statement:
"It is my constitutional duty to work for the benefit of the citizens, and to protect our national unity that came under threat of fragmentation as a result of the referendum that was organized by the Kurdish region.The referendum came at a time where the country is fighting against terrorism that has come in the form of ISIS. We tried to urge (the Kurds) not to violate the constitution and to focus on fighting ISIS, but they did not listen ... They chose their personal interests over Iraq's interests."
By evening, there was an Iraqi victory parade in Kirkuk.
With the approach of the Iraqi forces, thousands of civilians fled Kirkuk, and headed for Sulymaniyeh and Erbil in the Kurdish region.
However, other civilians were seen cheering on the Iraqi forces as they entered Kirkuk's southern outskirts. That's because Kirkuk is a multi-ethnic city, with a population of a million people, roughly 30% Kurdish, 30% Arab, 30% Turkmen, and 10% Christian. Al Jazeera and Middle East Eye and Iraqi News
In an article that I wrote two weeks ago, I compared three different independence movements that are currently in the news -- -- in Catalonia from Spain, in the Anglophone Southern Cameroons from Francophone Cameroon, and in Kurdistan from Iraq. As I described, the Kurdistan case is substantially different from the other two. In the other two, there is a resurgence of the extremely vitriolic xenophobic attitudes that gave rise to previous generational crisis wars, and civilians were targeted by government forces. But we saw nothing like that between the Kurds and the Iraqis in the case of the Kurdistan separatist movement in Iraq.
Monday's events modify that assessment. There was a military clash between Iraqi and Kurdish forces, but it was quick and fizzled quickly. There were no reported atrocities, rapes or mass slaughters that are typical of clashes when vitriolic xenophobia is in play. In particular, Monday's military clashes did not target civilians.
Instead, what emerged is a major split among the Kurds themselves. There are two major factions in Kurdistan, the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), that were formed in the decades following WW II. During Iraq's last generational crisis war, the Iran/Iraq war of the 1980s, the KDP was often aligned with Iran, and the KDP and the PUK fought each other. The two parties have had several brief military clashes since then.
As political parties, the PUK and KDP are about evenly split in the population. With Monday's overwhelming defeat in Kirkuk, we are hearing vitriolic rhetoric in the form of the PUK and KDP accusing each other of "betrayal," and calling each other "traitors."
On Monday, Masoud Barzani, president of the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) and KDP leader, posted a tweet accusing the PUK of collaborating with Iran and with Iraq's Shia militias to defeat the Kurds in Kirkuk.
It seems pretty likely that the hostility between the KDP and PUK is going to grow following Monday's humiliating defeat in Kirkuk. Al Jazeera and BBC
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 17-Oct-17 World View -- Devastating defeat to Iraq in Kirkuk exposes major splits between Kurdish factions thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
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(17-Oct-2017)
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Stock market continues its huge bubble
by John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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The price of the international currency Bitcoin surged past $5,000 on Thursday, and reached $5,809 on Sunday, before falling back to $5,712.97. It started the year at a measly $966, and has risen meteorically all year, if you don't count the fact that it fell to $3226.41 on Sept 14 from $4950.72 on Sept 1.
I've been asked by several people recently about my recommendations for investing in Bitcoin. Investing in Bitcoin is the road to disaster. I literally cannot think of a worse investment today than Bitcoin, or the various copycat newcomers, such as Ethereum. Bitcoin is almost literally a Ponzi scheme backed by nothing but air.
Let's take a look at some other investments.
Suppose you want to buy an apartment building as an investment. You start by estimating the income -- how much money you'll be paid in rents. Then you estimate all the expenses -- mortgage payments, repairs, real estate taxes, and so forth. All of these income and expense amounts are spread out over time, usually over decades, so you have to perform "present value" computations for future income and payments. (If you're interested in the mathematical details, see my 2008 article, "A primer on financial engineering and structured finance")
So when you're finished, you get a number that represents the value of the apartment building for investment purpose. If the value is, say, $625,000, then you know that you should spend no more than $625,000 for the apartment building, because that's all it's worth.
Another investment is stock shares. A stock share is backed by the company that issues the shares, and the company's earnings are published in annual reports. The higher the earnings, the more the stock share is worth. This is usually measured by the "price/earnings ratio," which is the price of a share divided by the annual earnings per share. Historically, investors expect to earn about 7% return on investment in stock shares, which means that the P/E ratio should be around 1/.07, or about 14. Today, the average P/E ratio is 25, so stocks are way overpriced and in a bubble, as I'll discuss below.
Another investment is tulips. I'm referring here to the historic "Tulipomania bubble" that occurred in Holland in the 1600s, when the price of a single Tulip bulb rose to be higher than the price of a house. The bubble burst in 1637, causing a financial disaster across Europe.
In the fall of 1636, you could purchase a certificate guaranteeing to you a tulip bulb of a certain type and weight the following spring, and you could pay for it with a personal credit note. Edward Chancellor's 1999 book, Devil Take the Hindmost, a history of financial speculation tells what happened:
"By the later stages of the mania, the fusion of the windhandel with paper credit created a perfect symmetry of insubstantiality: most transactions were for tulip bulbs that could never be delivered because they didn't exist and were paid for with credit notes that could never be honored because the money wasn't there."
In other words, at the height of the bubble, there was this "perfect symmetry of insubstantiality": A person would buy a certificate representing a tulip, and give in return an IOU. The buyer could at least hope that the certificate represented an actual tulip, just as the purchaser of an apartment building knows that there is an actual apartment building somewhere.
But with Bitcoin there's nothing. If you spend money on a Bitcoin, and you don't get rid of it right away, then you have nothing that backs it up in any way.
Before proceeding, let me put on my Senior Software Engineer hat. The "blockchain" technology is what the Bitcoin is based on. This is a solid technology, and it's a major advance in programming data structures that goes far beyond currency in leveraging the power of the internet. The problem with internet transactions in general is that if you do something online then you have no way of proving what you did. If you buy a coat online then you may be able to prove through your bank (a third party) that you paid for it, but you can't prove that you bought a coat unless the merchant confirms that you did. That's fine in most cases, but blockchain technology allows you to make any sort of online transaction and prove that it occurred, without having to depend on a third party. This applies to such things as financial transactions, smart contracts, and even voting. So, whatever the value of Bitcoin is, the underlying technology is solid.
So now let me take my Senior Software Engineer hat off, and again put on my Prophet of Doom hat.
There's a concept in Bitcoin technology called a "hard fork." Technically, it simply means that the blockchain software is being updated to a new version where transactions might have a different representation. Ideally, everyone simply uses the new transaction format. But since the Bitcoin community is mostly a collection of airheads, it's possible to continue using both the old and new transaction formats, so that now there are two currencies where there used to be only one, and so there's the opportunity to create two bubbles instead of just one.
Bitcoin had a fork in August, and here's how a news story on Coindesk.com describes it:
"Yet it seems, investors believe the momentum is warranted given the results of the last hard fork in August, which split the network in two, but did so in a way that fairly safely created a new asset called bitcoin cash.Distributed to all bitcoin owners at the time of the fork, investors were suddenly given an equal amount of valuable cryptocurrency (bitcoin cash has held relatively steady around $300 per coin, but has traded for as much as $1,000). Far from a risky proposition, investors see that extra value as just created out of thin air and delivered to existing investors for free."
Anyone who reads these two paragraphs would have to laugh and think it's a joke. But not for these airheads. These investors think of a hard fork as "extra value as just created out of thin air and delivered to existing investors for free."
So the term "hard fork," which is really an obscure technical term for a software update, has taken on a magical, bewitching aura as something that makes free money out of thin air. And there's a new Bitcoin hard fork coming up soon, and these investors are looking forward to it, because they're going to get more free money.
By the way, Bitcoin competitor Ethereum is implementing a hard fork starting yesterday (Sunday), and investors are torn between hoping for a free money bonanza, and a total disaster.
One more point: The fact that bitcoin uses the internet is both its strength and its weakness. The internet is ubiquitous, making Bitcoin a globally universal currency. But in a regional or global crisis, or a war crisis, the internet is likely to be unavailable, making Bitcoin worthless. Guardian (London) and Coindesk.com and CNBC
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Bitcoin isn't the only investment that's in a huge bubble that could implode at any time. There are $8 trillion globally in in corporate and government bonds with negative yields, which means that you invest $1,000, but only get $990 when you sell the bonds. In other words, you don't earn money by investing -- you pay money to invest. But people do it anyway, because they perceive these bonds to be safe havens in which to store their money, and they're willing to pay a price for that safety.
But low or negative interest rates on bonds means that the prices of the bonds are astronomically high, so bonds are also in a huge bubble. If the Fed and other central banks start raising interest rates, which they say they're going to do, then the values of these bonds could come crashing down.
Watching CNBC this week, I learned that stock traders are unhappy because stock market volatility (measured by the VIX) has been extremely low. Traders love the chaos of high volatility, with stock prices jumping up and down, because they're good at making timed trades and making money from them. But with the markets so quiet and placid, traders are unable to make money.
Therefore, traders are hoping for a geopolitical crisis, like a North Korea nuclear crisis or a major Mideast war, to increase volatility so that they can make money.
Many people are crediting the large stock market rise of 19% as a "Trump rally," but taking credit for a stock market rally is extremely dangerous, since then you get the blame when the stock market falls.
According to Friday's Wall Street Journal, the S&P 500 Price/Earnings index (stock valuations index) on Friday morning (October 13) was at an astronomically high 24.55. This is far above the historical average of 14, indicating that the stock market bubble is still growing, and could burst at any time. Generational Dynamics predicts that the P/E ratio will fall to the 5-6 range or lower, which is where it was as recently as 1982, resulting in a Dow Jones Industrial Average of 3000 or lower.
There's actually been a lot of debate and discussion recently on whether a stock market crash is coming, much more discussion than I've heard in the past. One person comes on and talks about price/earnings ratios or other stock price measures to show that stocks are way overpriced. Then a kid comes on, who seems barely old enough to remember the financial crisis of 2008, and says that the American economy is resilient, and there are no signs of an impending crash, and no reason for one to occur at this time.
So I like to point out that no one has any idea why a stock market panic occurred on the particular day October 28, 1929, and why it didn't occur six months earlier or six months later. Even today, economists and analysts cannot give a reason why that was the day. Everyone understands that it had to occur because price/earnings ratios were astronomically high (as they are today). But whether it will occur tomorrow, next week, next month or next year is impossible to predict and, as in 1929, we may not even know why it happened. AP and Business Insider and Bloomberg
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 16-Oct-17 World View -- Bitcoin super-bubble surges through $5,000 and blasts even higher thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(16-Oct-2017)
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Syria demands 'immediately' pullout of Turkey's forces from Idlib province
by John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) says that Iraqi army troops and fighters from the Shia Popular Mobilization Unit (PMU, Hashd al-Shaabi) militias are massed on the border of the city of Kirkuk, which has been controlled by the Kurdish Peshmerga militias since 2014, when they evicted the so-called Islamic State (IS or ISIS or ISIL or Daesh) from the city. There have already been some conflicts between Iraqi troops and Peshmerga in villages south of Kirkuk in the last few days.
The KRG ran an independence referendum on September 25, and the vote among the Kurds for independence was above 90%. This referendum was internationally condemned before, during and after the vote took place because it created unrealistic expectations.
Now that the referendum has been successful, the Kurds want to be rewarded for all they did in defeating ISIS. They want independence and, in particular, they want to keep Kirkuk. They say they want it for its symbolic value, but it's more likely that they want it because it's sitting on a huge amount of oil. This oil is a big part of Kurdistan's economy. It's currently going through a pipeline through Turkey to the Black Sea, but Turkey, which doesn't want an independent Kurdistan, is threatening to close the pipeline.
With Iraqi army and Shia militia troops massed on the Kirkuk border, KRG says that Iraq's government has set a deadline of early Sunday morning for the Peshmerga to withdraw from positions being held in Kirkuk. As of this writing on Saturday evening ET, that deadline has passed.
The United States is keeping close watch on the situation by means of overflights. Both Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis have been urging both sides to keep focused on fighting ISIS, not each other. Mattis said on Friday:
"We have to work on this. The Secretary of State has the lead, but my forces are integrated among these forces, and they are working, too, to make certain we keep any potential for conflict off the table. ...We are trying to tone everything down and to figure out how we go forward without losing sight of the enemy, and at the same time recognizing that we have got to find a way to move forward.
Everybody stay focused on defeating ISIS. We can’t turn on each other right now. We don’t want to go to a shooting situation."
As everyone has been saying for months, all the various armies and militias fighting ISIS in Iraq and Syria would have nothing better to do than start fighting each other, once ISIS was defeated. In Iraq, ISIS has been evicted from Mosul and other major cities. The Kurds, the Iraqi army and the Shia militias achieved a great victory, and now they're going to celebrate by killing each other. AFP and Kurdistan 24 and Bloomberg and Rudaw (Kurdistan)
The eviction of ISIS from Raqqa, their former stronghold in Syria, is almost complete. The US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), consisting mostly of Syrian Kurdish fighters, are permitting dozens of buses to evacuate the remaining ISIS fighters and their families, along with about 400 civilians to be used as human shields. The SDF, backed by US warplanes, have been fighting ISIS in Raqqa.
According to the SDF, the buses will take the surrendered fighters further east to Deir az-Zour province, much of which remains under ISIS control.
The evacuation deal was pursued by the United States military as a way to allow the SDF to secure the last parts of the city, without requiring bloody house to house fighting that would kill hundreds of civilians. According to a US-led coalition statement:
"The arrangement is designed to minimize civilian casualties and purportedly excludes foreign Daesh [ISIS] terrorists as people trapped in the city continue to flee the impending fall of Daesh's so-called capital.People departing Raqqa under the arrangement are subject to search and screening by Syrian Democratic Forces."
With ISIS defeated in both Iraq and Syria, the analyst Sami Hamdi, editor of International Interest, gave a concise analysis of what can be expected next, in an interview on Al-Jazeera (my transcription):
"In Iraq you have the Popular Mobilization Units (PMUs) that terrify the Sunni population, who were marginalized in the first place, and whose villages constituted the haven in which ISIS operates.In Syria you still have a dictatorial regime hell bent on crushing its people's democratic desires.
You have the Kurdish who are pursuing independence. You have the Russians who are terrified of an American-leaning state. You have the Iranians who wish to establish hegemony in the region.
So we don't really see any reintegration. On the contrary, we see humanitarian crises in cities such as Mosul. We will see a humanitarian crisis in cities such as Raqqa.
There is nothing to suggest that there will be a reintegration of these communities into mainstream society. And this leads to one outcome -- a division within the region, new borders, a modern Kurdistan, and other areas seeking their own independent autonomous states.
When we talk about the defeat of ISIS we should be wary. ISIS on the ground will be defeated. Losing Raqqa will be a big blow to them. But ISIS in the political discourse will continue.
Because as long as there is an ISIS in the mainstream media and political discourse, Iran can justify keeping the Revolutionary Guards in Syria.
As long as there is an ISIS in Syria, Turkey can justify military force to restrict Kurdish movement.
As long as there is an ISIS, Russia can continue to keep its troops in Syria, on the pretext of fighting terrorism.
As long as there is an ISIS, the Popular Mobilization Units can claim legitimacy to stay as an ultra-violent military force outside of military control.
So ISIS will be defeated militarily, it might resort to guerrilla tactics, but politically in the discourse, it's not quite time for the international powers to shelve the topic of ISIS and pursue other interests."
In neighboring Deir az-Zour province, the army of the Syrian regime captured the ISIS stronghold of Mayadeen. Telegraph (London) and CNN
As we've been reporting in the last few days, Turkey has deployed tanks and troops into Syria's Idlib province, with the objective of bringing peace to the Idlib "de-escalation zone." Turkey's incursion is part of an agreement reached with Iran and Russia in Astana, Kazakhstan, in July.
However, now Syria's Foreign Ministry is demanding that Turkey withdraw its forces, something that almost certainly result in renewed fighting in Idlib, particularly between the al-Qaeda linked Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and other anti-Assad Sunni rebel militias, many of whom are opposed to the presence of HTS.
According to the Syrian statement:
"Syria condemns in the strongest terms the incursion of units of the Turkish army in Idlib province, which constitutes a flagrant aggression against the sovereignty and security of Syrian territory.The Turkish aggression is not tied in any way with the understandings that were reached between the guarantor states in the Astana process, but constitutes a violation of these understandings."
The Syrian government has in the past expressed opposition to the entire "de-escalation zone" agreement, but the agreement was forced on Syria's president Bashar al-Assad by Russia's government. Al-Assad has announced that he expects to regain control of all of Syria, and few people doubt that if given the opportunity, he would like to bomb all of Idlib province into oblivion, killing hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians, including women and children, as he did last year in Aleppo.
The Astana agreement is supposed to bring about a ceasefire throughout Syria, and bring peace. However, as the saying goes, "Peace is that brief, glorious moment in history when everybody stands around reloading."
As regular readers know, Generational Dynamics predicts that the Mideast is headed for a major regional war, pitting Sunnis versus Shias, Jews versus Arabs, and various ethnic groups against each other. Generational Dynamics predicts that in the approaching Clash of Civilizations world war, the "axis" of China, Pakistan and the Sunni Muslim countries will be pitted against the "allies," the US, India, Russia and Iran. Anadolu (Ankara) and Deutsche Welle and Russia Today
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 15-Oct-17 World View -- Armies and militias fighting ISIS in Iraq and Syria increasingly turn on each other thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(15-Oct-2017)
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The last UN peacekeepers leave Haiti after 14 years
by John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Haiti often appears to be a cursed nation. One of the poorest nations in the world, it has suffered one calamity after another.
The United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) was established in 2004 after armed conflicts that had spread across the country. Then, on January 12, 2010, the earthquake struck, killing 316,000 people and leaving more than 1.5 million people homeless, and 3.3 million facing food shortages. More UN peacekeepers were sent in the aftermath, including some of Nepal that infected the water with cholera. Haiti had previously been free of cholera, but now cholera is endemic.
There have been numerous attempts to help the Haitian people, including a Haiti Fund sponsored by former presidents Bill Clinton and George W Bush. The fund received some $54 million in donations, which was donated to small businesses in the form of grants and loans, with an emphasis on fish farming, architecture and nursing. All the money was spent in about 18 months. According to the fund spokesman, by the time the fund had closed down, it had directly created or sustained 7,350 jobs and affected more than 311,000 people in Haiti.
Now that the peacekeeping mission is being closed down after nearly 15 years, the descriptions of its accomplishments are only lukewarm. Sandra Honoré, the head of the peacekeeping force, says that Haiti has made significant progress since U.N. forces arrived in 2004 amid massive street protests and a bloody rebellion that toppled democratically elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide:
"The Haitian people enjoy a considerable degree of security and greater stability. Political violence has diminished considerably. Armed gangs no longer hold the population hostage. All three branches of power are in place with the executive and legislative branches restored to full functioning.However, [immediate improvements] have yet to be felt by the vast majority of the population, particularly in poor urban areas."
So with that relatively unenthusiastic endorsement, the stabilization effort is ending on Sunday, when the last peacekeepers will be withdrawn.
The final report on the effort, delivered to the UN Security Council, listed several achievements, but warned of some potential problems, eight months after Jovenel Moïse took office as president.
One issue is that elections to establish councils and assemblies at the municipal levels have been stalled. As regular readers are aware, this is a story that I've seen over and over, in country after country in a generational Awakening era, following a civil war. A political leader, usually on the winning side of the war, takes power and refuses to give it up, often using brutal tactics, including torture, jailings and rapes to suppress the opposition. This kind of brutal tactic hasn't occurred in Haiti, but Haiti has a history of such tactics, and the peacekeepers haven't left yet. It remains to be seen whether and when these elections will be held.
A second issue is that Moïse is building an army of 3,000 soldiers, to fill the security vacuum left by the departing peacekeepers, and he is taking direct control of the recruitment. Haiti has a history of the prime minister or president of using the army as a weapon against the opposition, in order to remain in power.
There's already a Haitian National Police which now has about 15,000 trained members, which was set up by the departing peacekeepers. But apparently Moïse would rather build his own army, with his own people in charge and under his complete control. Miami Herald and United Nations and Public Radio International and ReliefWeb and BBC (11-Jul)
Some 24,000 Haitians arrived in the United States following the January 2010 Haiti earthquake, and they were given "Temporary Protected Status" (TPS) by the Obama administration, allowing them to stay in the country and work, and send remittances back to their families in Haiti.
The TPS for Haiti was meant to last only 18 months, but it kept getting 18-month extensions under the Obama administration. When the last TPS extension expired in May, the DHS announced a final six-month extension. In a statement from DHS:
"The Department of Homeland Security urges Haitian TPS recipients who do not have another immigration status to use the time before Jan. 22, 2018, to prepare for and arrange their departure from the United States."
According to immigration rights activist Marleine Bastien:
"Thousands of Haitian TPS recipients have been living in the U.S. for an average of seven to 25 years. To deport them and force them to leave behind their U.S.-born children will be a catastrophe of great magnitude."
Bastien says that if Haitians are deported back to Haiti, they'll be facing famine and poverty. Many will go underground to avoid being deported.
Bastien is demanding that the TPS benefit be extended not just for another 18 months, but forever, or until a way is found to get Haitians off TPS, and grant them legal residency. Miami New Times and Miami Herald
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 14-Oct-17 World View -- Thousands of Haitians living in Miami scheduled for deportation in January thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(14-Oct-2017)
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Palestinian factions Fatah and Hamas announce unity agreement
by John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Iraqi forces along with Iranian-trained paramilitaries have been seen on Friday morning massing near Kurdish-occupied Kirkuk in northeastern Iraq. Iraq has rejected Kurdistan's independence referendum, and oil-rich Kirkuk has become a flash point.
It's not known whether the massing of Iraqi forces is simply a show of force, or is the prelude to a full-scale attack on Kirkuk. Kurdistan 24
Related: Kirkuk becomes the flash point after the Iraqi Kurdistan independence referendum (03-Oct-2017)
Egypt announced on Thursday that the Palestinian factions Fatah and Hamas had reached a reconciliation agreement, as an outcome of the Egypt-sponsored reconciliation talks being held in Cairo.
Thousands of Palestinians took to the streets across Gaza on Thursday in celebration of the agreement, with loudspeakers on open cars blasting national songs, youths dancing and hugging and many waving Palestine and Egyptian flags.
As expected, the agreement did not even attempt to address the two major issues splitting Fatah and Hamas:
As we pointed out yesterday, the average of Gaza's population is 16.9, and so the Izzadin Kassam brigades is undoubtedly heavily populated with teenagers who wouldn't be inclined to take orders from 82 year old Mahmoud Abbas anyway.
Nonetheless, this agreement was greeted with loud cheers from Gaza civilians, because it promises respite from heavy sanctions that have been imposed on Gaza by both Egypt and Fatah. Egypt rarely opens the Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt, and so it's impossible for Palestinians to leave Gaza or for supplies to be brought in. The agreement calls for the Rafah crossing to be controlled by the Fatah-Hamas unity government.
The other sanctions had been imposed by Fatah in the form of cutting the salaries of employees in Gaza, and cutting the electricity supply to Gaza. The unity government will restore the salaries and electricity.
The agreement supposedly transfers administrative control of Gaza to Abbas's Palestinian Authority (PA) as of December 1, subject to further negotiations in November.
The agreement also stipulates that legislative, presidential and national council elections should be conducted within one year of its signing. It's worth remembering that the open rift between Hamas and Fatah began in 2006 when Hamas resoundingly defeated Fatah in legislative elections. If there's a presidential election, then it's very likely that Mahmoud Abbas will be replaced by someone much younger and much less willing to compromise, and much more willing to fight a war with Israel. Al Ahram (Cairo) and Reuters and BBC
Related: Palestinian reconciliation talks ignore Hamas commitment to destroy Israel (12-Oct-2017)
The first convoy of Turkey's military forces crossed into Syria's Idlib province late on Thursday. This is the first deployment following Saturday's announcement by Turkey of a major military operation in Idlib province. The purpose of the operation is to establish a "de-escalation zone," as agreed in July by Turkey, Russia and Iran, meeting in Astana, Kazakhstan.
The primary objective of the de-escalation zone operation is to bring peace to Idlib, by protecting Sunni Muslims from Bashar al-Assad's forces and by keeping the different anti-Assad rebel groups from fighting each other. I had been expected that the Turkish forces would evict al-Qaeda linked Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) from Idlib in order to reach this objective.
HTS was not part of the de-escalation deal and opposed it. But HTS militias in the last few days have been seen escorting Turkish reconnaissance teams into Idlib, suggesting that Turkey and HTS have reached a peace agreement, or at least a ceasefire agreement, for the time being.
So for the time being, Turkey's incursion into Idlib has these objectives:
According to reports, Abu Mohammad al-Julani, the head of HTS, is deeply distrusted by moderate rebel groups (Failaq al-Sham, Nour al-Din al-Zinki brigades, and Ahrar al-Sham), who are eager to initiate a conflict with HTS.
Warplanes from Russia and al-Assad have been stepping up airstrikes on Syrian civilians, including women and children, striking hospital and schools. Civilians in Idlib, many of whom fled Aleppo, are reluctantly accepting the need for Turkish forces. According to one resident, "Turkey intervening may be the best solution to Syria's situation because Russia and Assad will stop at nothing to destroy the whole of Syria." Daily Sabah (Ankara) and Reuters and Syria Deeply and Middle East Eye
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 13-Oct-17 World View -- Turkey's tanks and troops cross border into Syria's Idlib thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(13-Oct-2017)
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Palestinian unity talks face disagreement on Hamas's 'resistance weapons'
by John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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The two major governing factions for the Palestinian territories -- Hamas, which governs the Gaza Strip, and Fatah, which governs the Palestinian Authority (PA) in the West Bank -- are meeting in Cairo, the capital city of Egypt, in order to try to find a way to form a unity government. The meeting comes at the invitation of Egypt's president Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi.
In 2005, Israel withdrew all Jewish settlements from the Gaza Strip, in order to promote peace with the Palestinians, and as a step in the so-called "peace process" between Israel and the Palestinians. The intention was that Fatah would govern both Gaza and the West Bank, and negotiations for permanent peace with Israel would proceed.
However, in 2006 the rival faction Hamas scored a landslide victory in parliamentary elections in the Gaza Strip, completely shutting out Fatah. Fatah tried to regain control of Gaza through military means in 2007, but was quickly defeated by Hamas. in a stunning surprise victory that shocked the entire Mideast.
Since then, there have been numerous attempts at a "unity government" between Fatah and Hamas, and all have failed spectacularly. And so, at the invitation of Egypt, why not give it another shot?
It's easy to believe that the Palestinians are homogeneous, all with the same world view and behaviors. That may have been true decades ago, but it's certainly not true today. The Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank have been physically separated from one another for several generations, and the two regions have grown into two completely distinct cultures.
There are even important demographic differences, according to the CIA World Fact Book: The average age in the West Bank is 20.8, and in Gaza it's 16.9. The average population growth rates are 2.3% and 1.8%, respectively. By way of contrast, the average age in the United States is 37.9, and the growth rate is 0.8%.
So if the average age in Gaza is 16.9, then Gaza is essentially a society of teenage children. Furthermore, the unemployment rate in Gaza is 43%, one of the highest in the world. So now tell this society of children with little education and no hope of a job that they're going to be governed by the 82-year-old PA president Mahmoud Abbas, and from that fact alone you can see what a fantasy the entire Palestinian unity and reconciliation process is.
Nonetheless, the Palestinian press says that the meeting in Cairo has a "positive atmosphere," and the talks were held “out of a sense of national responsibility and in response to the aspirations of the Palestinian people looking for an end to the division, achieve national unity and strengthen the steadfastness of our people.”
Egypt's president Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi said that the talks were a prelude to peace:
"Ongoing Egyptian moves to help our Palestinian brothers start a new stage of unity in the Palestinian ranks is preparation for a just peace between Palestinian and Israeli sides, and the establishment of an independent Palestinian state to meet legitimate aspirations of the Palestinian people for a secure, stable and prosperous life."
However, the two Palestinian factions decided to not even discuss the question of peace with Israel, but to appoint a new commission to study the matter.
The first detailed Generational Dynamics analysis that I wrote was in May 2003, after President George Bush offered his "Mideast Roadmap to Peace," which was to bring peace to the Mideast. The analysis, "Mideast Roadmap - Will it bring peace?", said that a Mideast peace was impossible, because the Jews and the Arabs would be re-fighting the 1948 war that following the partitioning of Palestine by the United Nations, and the creation of the state of Israel.
I wrote that a new war was being prevented by Ariel Sharon and Yasser Arafat, traumatized survivors of the 1948 war who would do anything to keep it from happening again. I wrote that when these two men died, and younger people were in charge, it was likely that war would begin again.
At the death of Yasser Arafat in November, 2004, the amount of international rejoicing was enormous. Everyone in the West believed that it was Arafat who had prevented the Israeli-Palestinian peace process from going forward. Actually, as I explained repeatedly, it was not Arafat preventing peace. It was the younger generations of Palestinians who were preventing peace. If Arafat had any role at all, it was to hold back the tide of a major new war.
Arafat was replaced by Mahmoud Abbas in January 2005, another survivor of the 1948 war. It's my belief that Abbas continued to prevent a major war with Israel, following the path of Arafat. It's worth noting that since then there has not been a war between Israel and the West Bank, although Israel has had two wars with Gaza, and one war with Hezbollah in Lebanon. Palestinian News Network (Pnn) and Times of Israel and Palestinian News Agency (Wafa)
According to Israel's Major General Yoav Mordechai, Hamas terrorists in Gaza are using lasers to blind Israeli soldiers on the other side of the border. In a statement he said:
"The leadership of Hamas leadership is not able to control its operatives, and will thus lead to an Israeli response against Hamas activists.This situation is dangerous because the continued provocative attempts to blind soldiers carried out by the terrorist operatives, even if not guided by their commanders, is likely to lead to escalation at this sensitive time of developments in the Palestinian arena; therefore, be warned.
The continuation of this phenomenon will lead to an IDF response."
This perfectly illustrates why there will be a major war between Palestinians and Jews long before there's any peace. Even if Hamas leadership and Hamas commanders wanted peace, the Gaza population, consisting mostly of children with an average age of 16.9, do not. This kind of thing is at the heart of any Generational Dynamics analysis.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected the Palestinian unity talks as a threat to the existence of Israel:
"We expect anyone talking about a peace process to recognize Israel and, of course, recognize a Jewish state, and we won’t accept faux reconciliations in which the Palestinian side reconciles at the expense of our existence.We have a very straightforward attitude toward anyone who wants to effect such a reconciliation: Recognize the State of Israel, dismantle Hamas’s military wing, sever the relationship with Iran, which calls for our destruction.
Hamas's military wing, Izzadin Kassam, may be a deal breaker in the Palestinian unity talks. Mahmoud Abbas has said that he would not accept a scenario in which Hamas’s armed wing, Izzadin Kassam, kept control of its weapons.
On the other hand, a spokesman for Hamas said:
"The resistance's weapons are legal. They are here to protect Palestinians and free their lands [from Israeli occupation]."
So apparently Hamas's spokesman agrees with Netanyahu -- that the unity talks present a risk to the existence of Israel. AFP and Israel National News and Jerusalem Post and Times of Israel and Tasnim News (Iran)
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 12-Oct-17 World View -- Palestinian reconciliation talks ignore Hamas commitment to destroy Israel thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(12-Oct-2017)
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Hundreds of ISIS fighters surrender as Iraqi town of Hawija falls
by John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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In a dramatic turn, hundreds of fighters from the so-called Islamic State (IS or ISIS or ISIL or Daesh) have surrendered en masse, following the recapture of the town of Hawija from ISIS occupation, suggesting that morale is collapsing among ISIS fighters.
However, they didn't surrender to the invading Iraqi Shia government forces, presumably out of fear of retribution. Instead, they fled to the city of Kirkuk, which is held by Peshmerga (Kurdish militia), and surrendered to them. According to one Kurdish security official:
"Approximately 1,000 men surrendered over the last week. Not all, however, are terrorists. It's fair to say hundreds probably are [ISIS] members, but that will be clear after the debriefs."
ISIS was effectively defeated in Iraq in July, when Iraqi forces captured Mosul, the group's de facto capital in Iraq, after a bloody nine-month battle. ISIS still holds some territory in western Iraq in a stretch of land along the border with Syria.
Iraq's Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi says that the rest of ISIS-held territory will be recaptured by the end of the year.
Russian state media have been somewhat schizophrenic about the situation. On the one hand, they've congratulated the Iraq government for the victory in Hawija. On the other hand, because some ISIS fighters have fled across the border into Syria, they've gone off the deep end by claiming that the United States is only "pretending" to fight against ISIS in Iraq. Very funny. Reuters and Sputnik (Moscow) and Al Bawaba and Russia Today
The fight against ISIS has unified many groups of forces -- the Iraqis, the Kurds, the Turks, the Russians, the Syrians, the Iranians, Hezbollah, and the Americans -- in a common goal of defeating ISIS. As ISIS continues to lose ground in both Iraq, all of these forces are increasingly turning their attention to fighting each other.
As we reported a couple of days ago, Kirkuk is becoming a flash point in northeastern Iraq. Since 2014, it was the Kurdish Peshmerga militia forces that have fought ISIS and prevented a takeover of Kirkuk, and now the Kurds expect to retain control of Kirkuk, especially as a result of the overwhelming passage of the September 25 Kurdistan referendum on independence from Iraq.
Turkmens are the third-largest ethnic group in Iraq, and claim to have been denied their rights since Saddam Hussein was overthrown in 2003. However, they've had their own internal problems because they've had their own sectarian split between Sunni and Shia Turkmens. However, the Turkmens in Kirkuk are united in that they do not want to be part of an independent Kurdistan.
Turkey and the Iraqi Kurds have been cooperating as long as the fight against ISIS in Mosul was progressing. But now, Turkey's government is opposed to an independent Kurdistan, and is particularly opposed to Kirkuk being part of Kurdistan.
Devlet Bahçeli, the head of Turkey's Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), says that contested regions of Iraq, such as Kirkuk and Mosul, are "the lands of Turkmens." There is a big Kurdish community in Turkey, including members of the terrorist group Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which has been conducting terrorist acts in Turkey for decades. Turkey fears that any sort of Kurdish independence in Iraq will energize the PKK in Turkey. Bahçeli says:
"The safety of Kirkuk is the safety of Ankara. If the land of Turkmens is put into the fire, Turkey will not be safe.The independence bid is an attempt to resurrect the Sévres [Treaty] and to fracture neighboring countries
“A rehearsal for Kurdistan will affect the future of the Republic of Turkey. It is a question of survival, a matter of sociological fragmentation."
Bahçeli referred to the 1920 Treaty of Sévres, which divided up Ottoman territory after World War I. Al Monitor and Daily Sabah (Ankara) and Hurriyet (Ankara)
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 11-Oct-17 World View -- Tensions between Turks and Iraqi Kurds grow as another ISIS stronghold falls thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(11-Oct-2017)
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Numerous controversies surround FIFA's award of World Cup 2022 to Qatar
by John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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I usually don't do sports stories, but this bizarre sports story has geopolitical implications.
A Sunday tweet by Lt. Gen. Dhahi Khalfan, head of Dubai Security for the United Arab Emirates (UAE) said:
"If the World Cup leaves Qatar, the crisis will go away ... because the crisis is created to break it."
The "crisis" refers to the land, air and sea blockade of Qatar that was imposed on June 5 by four Arab countries -- Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt and Bahrain. Nobody expected the blockade to last for more than a few days, but now four months have passed, and there's no end in sight.
The four countries listed 13 specific demands that would be necessary to resolve the crisis. The demands included: sever most ties with Iran; sever all ties to the Muslim Brotherhood; shut down al-Jazeera; terminate Turkey's military presence in Qatar; pay reparations and compensation for loss of life and other, financial losses caused by Qatar’s policies in recent years.
So now, a UAE official is saying that none of those demands was relevant. The purpose of the blockade was to force Qatar to give up hosting the 2022 World Cup, and that "if the World Cup leaves Qatar, then the crisis goes away."
The World Cup, or world football (soccer) championship, refers to what is probably the most prestigious sporting event in the world, exceeding even the Olympics. It's sponsored by the International Football Federation (FIFA, or Fédération Internationale de Football Association).
The UAE official did not say why the Gulf states were seeking to prevent Qatar from hosting the 2022 World Cup. Perhaps it's because Qatar defeated Saudi Arabia on November 26, 2014, to win the Gulf Cup of Nations that the Saudis had been favored to win. Since then, Saudi officials have complained frequently that Qatar won the competition to host the 2022 World Cup through bribery and corruption. AP and Gulf Times (Qatar) and Al Bawaba (Palestine) and Peninsula Qatar and Arab News (27-Jun)
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From the day in 2010 that FIFA awarded the 2022 World Cup to Qatar, it's been extremely controversial, and has had numerous scandals.
Qatar itself is not really a football (soccer) playing country. At the time of the award, FIFA ranked Qatar as 113th in the world. Today its rank is 109. The Qatar team has never reached the World Cup final.
A major scandal was that Qatar's proposal to host the World Cup apparently lied about the country's intentions for handling the summer heat. The event is supposed to take place in June or July, when Qatar's weather is sweltering, with high temperatures typically ranging from 105F to 120F. In its proposal, Qatar wrote the following:
"Each of the five stadia will harness the power of the sun's rays to provide a cool environment for players and fans by converting solar energy into electricity that will then be used to cool both fans and players at the stadia. When games are not taking place, the solar installations at the stadia will export energy onto the power grid. During matches, the stadia will draw energy from the grid.This is the basis for the stadia's carbon-neutrality. Along with the stadia, we plan to make the cooling technologies we’ve developed available to other countries in hot climates, so that they too can host major sporting events."
This was close to a science fiction fantasy. After Qatar received the award, it demanded that the dates of the World Cup be changed from June-July to November-December. FIFA finally agreed to the change over many objections from individual football clubs that they would be forced to make major changes to their own schedules.
Another major scandal has to do with the building of stadiums and other infrastructure required for the event.
By some estimates, the World Cup is going to cost Qatar approximately $220 billion, which is about 60 times the $3.5 billion that South Africa spent on the 2010 FIFA World Cup. This has always been an issue, but now with the Arab states' blockade on Qatar, Qatar's economy has been suffering, and this cost may be prohibitive.
Human rights have become an even more explosive issue. Qataris are the richest people in the world, on a per capita basis, because of the country's oil wealth, and so the Qatari people are used to a life of leisure, with servants drawn from the huge number of migrant laborers coming from countries like India, Nepal, Philippines, Sri Lanka, and Pakistan. There are said to be five migrant workers in Qatar for each citizen. Hundreds of thousands of those same foreign workers would be the laborers building the stadiums and other infrastructure.
Being a migrant worker in Qatar has been described as close to slave labor. A Qatari boss sponsors the migrant worker, and then has total control over him or her. The worker is not permitted to leave change jobs, or leave jobs, or return home, without the permission of the boss, and must work as much as 21 hours per day if required, with no overtime pay. An unpaid worker has little recourse.
This is known as the "Kafala system," used throughout the Gulf region. It's so abusive that it's described as a system of modern day national slavery. Because of the World Cup controversies, Qatar was forced to announce in December 2016 that it was abolishing the Kafala system, giving migrant workers additional rights to change jobs or leave the country, but the main abuses of the Kafala system are still in place.
A final major scandal were the allegations of corruption -- that Qatar was awarded the 2022 World Cup because of bribes paid to various FIFA officials. An independent investigation was conducted, but FIFA refused to release the final report when it was completed in September, 2014, only releasing a summary that said that Qatar was cleared of wrongdoing. In June of this year, the full report was finally released to the press. It raised a lot of questions, but did not prove wrongdoing.
Those are the major scandals. One minor scandal had to do with alcohol consumption, which is illegal in Qatar. Qatar has said that alcohol consumption by non-citizens will be permitted under strictly controlled circumstances. City AM (London, 25-Feb-2015) and BBC (8-Apr-2015) and Special Broadcasting Service (Australia) and BBC (13-Dec-2016)
Related: Migrant Indian workers in Saudi Arabia face starvation (01-Aug-2016)
The tweet by the UAE minister saying that the Gulf crisis was engineered to prevent Qatar from hosting World Cup 2022 may have been triggered by a report issued two days earlier by a British consulting firm, Cornerstone Global.
The report is entitled "Qatar in focus: Is the Fifa World Cup 2022 in danger?" and it says that thanks to pressure from the Gulf blockade, the chances have increased substantially that Qatar will not host the event. In particular, logistics costs for construction of the stadiums and other infrastructure have increased 20-25% because of the blockade. The report contains these excerpts:
"Western diplomats have privately stated they do not know whether or not the tournament will take place as planned.The reasons for this are many and include open allegations of corruption - both in the bidding process and in the infrastructure development.
Qatar is under greater pressure regarding its hosting of the tournament... the current political crisis has seen - or at least raised the possibility of - a Qatari opposition movement emerging.
This means an increased risk for those working on, or seeking contracts for World Cup 2022 infrastructure... with a risk of non-payment and no realistic ability to enforce any legal contracts.
Given the current political situation... it is certainly possible that the tournament will not be held in Qatar.
Any cancellation of Qatar hosting the World Cup 2022 will likely be abrupt and will leave contractors involved in a precarious situation that may not be easily resolved.
Construction sources in Qatar have informed us that companies working on the World Cup, whilst not panicking yet, are already feeling the impact of the sanctions, with logistics proving costly and challenging to re-organise in light of the border closures with its neighbours.
A group of five project managers working for a variety of small multi-national companies, all with government contracts related to World Cup construction, told us in July 2017 that their costs have increased by between 20 and 25% due to logistical problems. ...
Sources within the project have indicated that several members of the Qatar 2022 Supreme Committee have threatened to resign over excessive interference by senior officials on spending and allegations of corruption."
Qatar officials have responded by saying: "In the context of the current political situation we question the motives of an organization - which makes no secret of its affiliation to the countries blockading Qatar - of publishing a report based entirely on media reports and anonymous sources." BBC and Arab News
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 10-Oct-17 World View -- UAE official says Arab blockade was engineered to prevent Qatar hosting 2022 World Cup thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(10-Oct-2017)
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Turkey's success in Idlib is far from certain
by John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Turkey announced that it is beginning a military operation in Syria's Idlib province. It will follow the terms of an agreement made in Astana Kazakhstan by Turkey, Russia and Iran to create four "de-escalation" zones in Syria with the objective of ending the war. Turkey's military operations will be in the Idlib de-escalation zone, which includes Idlib, Latakia, Aleppo and Hama, and is bordered by Homs and Turkey itself.
The purpose of the operation will be to eliminate that al-Qaeda linked Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS). However, Turkey has an additional objective: To prevent the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG), currently controlling the city of Afrin north of Idlib near Turkey's border, from entering Idlib and thereby controlling a corridor in northern Syria along Turkey's border.
The terms of the operation are as follows:
Turkey's president Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced the deployment on Saturday and said that Turkey would not allow a "terror corridor" on its border with Syria, referring to Kurdish objective to establish the state of Rojava in northern Syria as a corridor along the border with Turkey. Erdogan said:
"There’s a serious operation in Syria’s Idlib today and it will continue. For now Free Syria Army is carrying out the operation there. Russia will be protecting outside the borders (of the Idlib region) and we will handle inside.Russia is supporting the operation from the air, and our armed forces from inside Turkey’s borders."
The phrase "from inside Turkey's borders" is interpreted to mean that Turkey's army will not (again) enter Syria, for the time being.
Erdogan also said that Turkey would not be "cornered by any threats from Syria and Iraq." He referred to the three million Syria refugees currently being hosted by Turkey, and said:
"We are not intervening in the domestic affairs of any country. We are just trying to secure our own home affairs... How safe we can be when there is chaos in Syria? ... Can we escape from the results of developments in Syria?"
There has already been a firefight between Turkey's troops and HTS. Early on Sunday, Turkey's military was removing sections of a border war between Turkey and Syria, and HTS began firing on a Turkish bulldozer. Turkish artillery returned fire.
Another major Turkish objective is to prevent the chaos of more tens of thousands of Syrian refugees fleeing into Turkey to escape bombing by Syrian and Russian warplanes, and joining the millions of Syrian refugees already in Turkey.
In a harbinger of things to come, on Sunday morning warplanes from the Syrian regime military struck a marketplace within the Idlib de-escalation zone, killing at least six people. Hurriyet (Ankara) and Anadolu (Ankara) and Reuters and Yeni Safak (Turkey)
Idlib province is currently under control of al-Qaeda linked Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS). However, there are also thousands of civilians, including many women and children, who fled from Aleppo last year when the Bashar al-Assad regime, with help from Russian airstrikes, was trying to make Aleppo uninhabitable.
There have been two jihadist groups formed in Syria following the brutal attacks by al-Assad's Shia/Alawite regime on peaceful Sunni Muslim protesters, starting in 2011, particularly following al-Assad's completely unprovoked attack on a Palestinian refugee camp in August 2011, killing many women and children.
That attack triggered the arrival of tens of thousands of young Sunni Muslim jihadists from over 80 countries around the world, from southeast Asia, from Africa and from Europe and Russia's Caucasus. Those jihadists formed the so-called Islamic State (IS or ISIS or ISIL or Daesh). In the last year, ISIS has been the target of all the other militias -- the Americans, the Syrians, the Russians, the Kurds, the Iranians, Hezbollah, and the Iraqis. The presence of ISIS allowed all these other entities to adopt a joint strategy of fighting ISIS, while keeping out of each other's way.
One difference in Idlib is telling the good guys from the bad guys. Since ISIS consists almost entirely of foreign fighters from over 80 countries, it's fairly easy to distinguish an ISIS fighter from an ordinary Syrian. But HTS is consists of Sunni Muslim Syrians, as does almost the entire population of Idlib province.
Even within the anti-Assad rebel groups, there are differences. HTS was formed from the merger of a number of rebel militias, after Jabhat al-Nusra (al-Nusra Front) broke off its allegiance to al-Qaeda, since many moderate rebel groups want to oppose al-Assad, but want nothing to do with al-Qaeda. This has caused clashes between the former al-Nusra militias with the moderate rebel militias, and there are reports that the moderate rebel militias are leaving HTS. This hugely complicates Turkey's job in evicting HTS, since it's far from clear what HTS is.
The fight against ISIS is coming to an end, and now all the entities now fighting ISIS are scrambling to gain control of as much territory as possible. In eastern Syria, almost everyone wants control of all the oil fields around Deir az-Zour.
In Idlib, Turkey wants to provide protection to all the Sunni Muslims living there, especially since Bashar al-Assad considers them all to be cockroaches to be exterminated. Although Idlib is a de-escalation zone, Bashar al-Assad has made it clear that he considers the de-escalation zones only a temporary solution, and when ISIS is defeated he plans to turn his military around and take control of the entire country, including Idlib. This scenario would result in the population of Idlib fleeing into Turkey, which Erdogan has said he will not permit.
Turkey has been promising for months that when its military operation in Idlib was completed, and HTS was evicted, then Turkey would build mass housing in Idlib, so that all the civilians will stay there, and not try to flee to Turkey.
I believe you can see, Dear Reader, the huge conflicts that are approaching as the fight against ISIS ends. Turkey will not tolerate the destruction of Idlib, and Russia has agreed with Turkey about that. Syria will not permit Turkey or anyone else to be in control of Idlib, and Russia has agreed with al-Assad about that as well, although it contradicts the previous agreement. Al-Assad promised last year when he destroyed Aleppo and made it uninhabitable that doing so would end the war, but there is no sign now that the war is anywhere near an end. Yeni Safak (Ankara) and Sputnik News (Moscow) and AFP and Al Jazeera
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 9-Oct-17 World View -- Turkey announces major military operation in Syria's Idlib province thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(9-Oct-2017)
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Jihadist ambush in Niger forces a review of military operations in Africa
by John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Four US troops, along with five Nigerien soldiers, were killed on Wednesday in an ambush in Niger near the border with Mali. This was the first time that US forces have died in Niger.
The 12-member US team was leaving a meeting in unarmored pick-up trucks, when they were lured into an ambush and began taking from small arms, machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades.
There were 50 attackers, believed to be part of a Mali jihadist group linked to the so-called Islamic State (IS or ISIS or ISIL or Daesh). The service members, including multiple Army Special Forces soldiers, exited the vehicles, ran for cover, and began returning fire, killing some of the attacking militants. In addition to the four deaths, two service members were injured, and were evacuated to a hospital in Germany.
Note: "Nigerien" refers to Niger, while "Nigerian" refers to Nigeria.
After the ambush, US officials realized that one of the US service members were unaccounted for, and it was feared that he might have been taken prisoner. A large-scale search-and-rescue operation involving US, French and Nigerien troops was launched, and US Navy SEALs were flown to a US military base in Sigonella, Sicily, in anticipation of a possible rescue attempt. However, they never went to Niger as the body of the fourth dead soldier was found on Friday.
No one has claimed responsibility for the ambush, but there are two major choices, one linked to al-Qaeda and one linked to ISIS. The first is the "Group for the Support of Islam and Muslims" (JNIM, Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslim) that we described at length several days ago. JNIM and its al-Qaeda predecessors have conducted many other operations in Niger, including kidnappings and suicide attacks.
However, the US military believes that this ambush was performed by “Islamic State in the Greater Sahara” (ISGS), which is linked to ISIS. Little is known about ISGS, since it's overshadowed by the al-Qaeda linked jihadists, and competes with them. They have links to Boko Haram in Nigeria, and their fighters are believed to be nomadic people, such as the Tuaregs. CNN and SOFREP and Long War Journal and Washington Post
In 2013, Barack Obama informed Congress that 100 troops would be deployed to Niger. They set up a drone base near Niamey to assist the French with surveillance and intelligence, and also began serving in a train, advise and assist role with Nigerien forces. The U.S. had already been providing the French with aerial refueling for its Mirage and Rafale warplanes. Since then, that number has grown to 800 troops.
On September 24, the Pentagon and AfriCom said armed U.S. drones had conducted several "precision strikes" on an ISIS training camp in Libya, killing 17 militants.
Despite these attacks on ISIS targets, Wednesday's ambush apparently caught the US military completely by surprise. Africom spokesman Colonel Mark Cheadle said:
"This was not expected. Had we anticipated this sort of attack we would have absolutely devoted more resources to it to reduce the risk and that's something we are looking at right now. ...It was not meant to be an engagement with the enemy. The threats at the time were deemed to be unlikely, so there was no overhead armed air cover during the engagement."
The American troops in Africa are there to train Nigerien troops in anti-terrorism tactics to battle violent extremists, including counterterrorism, intelligence and security techniques. But in this case they were carrying out a joint patrol with Nigerien forces, suggesting that they were taking part in military operations, and yet were unprepared for the ambush.
Cheadle added that Africom was reevaluating its force protection procedures for its advisory missions.
It's little reported, but the US military is increasing its presence in Africa, with counterterrorism operations in mind. The largest U.S. base on the continent is in Djibouti, in the Horn of Africa, which gives U.S. forces the ability to launch airstrikes and special operations raids into nearby Yemen and Somalia while also covering the critical Bab el-Mandeb waterway that leads into the Red Sea.
There are bases in Somalia and Kenya, for the fight against al-Shabaab. Tunisia has an American drone base that can strike al-Qaeda and ISIS offshoots in Libya. There are American forces in Chad and a drone facility in Cameroon, both helping the fight against Boko Haram. US involvement in Africa is slated to grow. Military.com and NPR and Reuters and Foreign Policy
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 8-Oct-17 World View -- Islamic State in Greater Sahara (ISGS) blamed for deaths of US troops in Niger thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(8-Oct-2017)
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Bangladesh builds huge refugee camp for 800,000 displaced
Rohingyas from Burma (Myanmar)
by John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Some 500,000 Rohingya Muslim refugees have crossed the border from Burma (Myanmar) into Bangladesh since August 25, when Burma's army launched a full-scale scorched earth ethnic extermination campaign on the Rohingyas in Burma's Rakhine state. According to Bangladesh authorities, some 4,000-5,000 additional Rohingyas were crossing the border each day, with 10,000 more waiting at the frontier.
Bangladesh had originally allocated 2,000 acres of land to set up a refugee camp to accommodate 500,000 refugees, but with the flood of refugees continuing, officials have set aside another 1,000 acres for the new camp, to expand the camp to house 800,000. Rohingyas have already set up 23 makeshift camps along the border, and Bangladesh will move them all into the new camp.
This is an extremely serious situation, as it has been "the largest mass refugee movement in the region in decades," according to the United Nations.
After several years of these atrocities by Burma's army, Rohingya activists have formed the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA), which conducted terrorist attacks on August 25 and triggered the current round of "clearance operations" by Burma's army. Burma's ethnic cleansing is radicalizing many young men in the Rohingya population, with plans growing for retaliatory attacks on the Burmese population and army.
Regular readers are aware that Generational Dynamics predicts that the world is headed for a Clash of Civilizations world war, pitting the US, India, Russia, Iran and the West against China, Pakistan and the Sunni Muslim nations. It's impossible to predict the exact scenario that will lead to that war, but today there are two clear crises that could escalate into world war: The North Korea nuclear missile crisis, and the enormous Rohingya Sunni Muslim refugee crisis. Guardian (London) and Reuters and NPR
For years, there's been a community of several thousand Rohingya Muslims living peacefully in India-governed Jammu and Kashmir. That number has increased by over 6,000 between 2008 and 2016. J&K is thousands of miles from their original homes, but the Rohingyas say that they were forced to be there, according to 35-year-old Mohammad Yusuf, the head of a camp for Rohingya refugees:
"We are in India because of some compulsions, and not out of choice. We know this is not our land. We will leave on our own once those compulsions are addressed by the global community and we get justice.We were boarded into a train and asked to embark at the last station when the whole train gets empty. We were not aware that it is Jammu. We came to know at the railway station that some Rohingyas were living here and met them. This is how we reached here."
The Rohingyas co-existed peacefully, and even received money and supplies from other residents last year when a large fire in the refugee camp destroyed all their belongings.
But apparently some residents harbored underground resentment of the Rohingyas, because this resentment suddenly exploded into full-scale xenophobia and hostility in April.
At that time, the Hindu nationalist Jammu and Kashmir National Panthers Party began putting up large billboards asking residents to "wake-up" and "save the history, culture, and identity of the Dogras". The billboard directed Rohingya and Bangladeshi refugees to "quit Jammu."
The National Panthers threatened to launch an "identify and kill movement" unless the government deported the refugees. They also demanded that any resident renting out a room to Rohingyas should be arrested and sent to jail under a law that allows detention without trial for six months.
The Rohingyas say that they're just trying to survive with their families. "We are not involved in any criminal activity and are doing odd jobs to make our living. Most of us work as wage laborers, rag-pickers, scrap-dealers and a few are working at railway stations as sweepers."
India has taken the side of Burma and supports Burma's atrocities, rapes, slaughter, and "clearance operations" of Rohingyas. Indian officials say that Rohingyas in Kashmir and elsewhere in India are being radicalized by terrorist groups from Pakistan, training the Rohingyas for terror attacks in India.
Pakistan has always taken the view that it's India that's committing atrocities against Muslims in Kashmir, and that the Rohingya crisis has now given India one more weapon to use against Pakistan in Kashmir.
It appears that the Rohingya crisis between Burma and Bangladesh has merged with the Kashmir crisis between India and Pakistan, resulting in a much larger crisis. As hundreds of thousands of Rohingyas are forced to leave Burma because of its ethnic cleansing program, the entire region is becoming more destabilized, with the possibility of triggering a war. Scroll (India, 8-May) and Pakistan Observer and First Post (India, 20-Aug)
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 7-Oct-17 World View -- Burma's Rohingya crisis merges with the Kashmir crisis, inflaming the entire region thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(7-Oct-2017)
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International Red Cross: Fighting in Syria worst since Aleppo
by John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Syria's president Bashar al-Assad promised last year that when his air force was finished killing as many people as possible in the battle of Aleppo, then the Syrian war would be end, because his opponents would have nothing left to fight for.
A report by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) indicates not only that the war has not ended, but that in fact the level of fighting across much of Syria has reached the levels of the battle of Aleppo.
Much of the fighting is around the eastern city of Deir al-Zour, which is one of the last strongholds in Syria for the so-called Islamic State (IS or ISIS or ISIL or Daesh). There are many groups fighting ISIS in Deir al-Zour: The Syrian army backed by the Russian military, Iranian-backed Hezbollah militias, and mostly Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which have been supplied weapons by the US military.
However, there is also fierce fighting in three "de-escalation zones" -- Idlib, rural Hama and eastern Ghouta -- that were set up in a series of "peace talks" held in Astana, Kazakhstan. The participants in the meetings were Russia, Iran and Turkey, but most noticeably did not include the Syrian regime, or any of the opposition groups to Bashar al-Assad. The result is that it appears that the de-escalation zones are unraveling, to no one's real surprise.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said at least 3,000 people, including 955 civilians, were killed during September, making it the deadliest month of the conflict so far this year. More than 70% of the civilians were killed in air strikes. Furthermore, as many as 10 hospitals have been damaged during the last 10 days, cutting hundreds of thousands of people off from access to basic healthcare.
In a separate development, al-Assad's air force is once again using Sarin nerve gas on civilians, based on laboratory analyses of samples taken from the north Syrian town of Ltamenah which was bombed by Syria's air force. The Syrian air force bombing injured around 50 people, although nobody was believed to have been killed. The finding was announced on Thursday by the by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW).
According to Nikki Haley, the US ambassador to the United Nations: "For years the Assad regime has used chemical weapons to murder and terrorise innocent Syrian civilians. Unfortunately, it’s clear that the Syrian regime not only lied about the extent of their chemical weapons programmed, but that they will continue to refuse to cooperate with watchdog organizations like the OPCW."
As I've written many times in the past, Bashar al-Assad is the worst genocidal monster so far this century. The Syrian war began in 2011 when al-Assad ordered his army and air force to attack peacefully protesting civilians, including women and children. Things really turned around in August 2011, when al-Assad launched a massive military assault on a large, peaceful Palestinian refugee camp in Latakia, filled with tens of thousands of women and children Palestinians. He dropped barrel bombs laden with metal, chlorine, ammonia, phosphorous and chemical weapons onto innocent Sunni women and children, he's targeted bombs on schools and hospitals, and he's used Sarin gas to kill large groups of people. He considers all Sunni Muslims to be cockroaches to be exterminated.
After the attack on the Palestinian refugee camp, thousands of young Sunni jihadists from 86 countries around the world traveled to Syria to fight al-Assad, and they formed ISIS. Thanks to al-Assad, millions of Syrians have fled to neighboring countries to escape the violence, and over a million have fled to Europe. The amount of global destruction that al-Assad has brought about is truly breathtaking.
As I've written many times, al-Assad is a delusional psychopath, and from the point of view of Generational Dynamics, his delusions are based on the experiences of his father, Hafez al-Assad.
Syria's last generational crisis war was a religious/ethnic civil war between the Shia Alawites versus the Sunnis. That war climaxed in February 1982 with the destruction of the town of Hama. There had been a massive uprising of the 400,000 mostly Sunni citizens of Hama against Syria's Shia/Alawite president Hafez al-Assad, the current president's father. He turned the town to rubble and killed or displaced hundreds of thousands. Hama stands as a defining moment in the Middle East. It was so shocking that it largely ended the war.
That worked because at that time, Syria was in a generational crisis era, and the destruction of Hama was the climax of the war. The reason for Bashar al-Assad's delusions is that he thought that the destruction of Aleppo last year would end the war in the same way that his father's destruction of Hama ended the war. But this is a generational Awakening era, and that kind of outcome doesn't work. The reason that it doesn't work is that there are many survivors who were shocked by the destruction of Hama in 1982, but are no longer shocked by similar actions since they've seen it all before. So the destruction of Aleppo did not end the war, as Bashar al-Assad delusionally hoped, and now the war is back in full force. BBC and International Committee of the Red Cross and Reuters and The National (UAE)
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As I've written many times, the war in Syria will never end as long as Bashar al-Assad is in power. Syria is in a generational Awakening era, with little desire for war, as the survivors of the 1982 are still war-weary from what happened at that time. This war would have ended long ago, except that Bashar al-Assad, along with Russia, Iran and Hezbollah, have forced it to continue. Bashar al-Assad is a delusional psychopath who will never allow the war to end, and apparently Russia, Iran and Hezbollah are willing to shed blood and treasure to support him.
Last year, al-Assad claimed that the battle of Aleppo was "history in the making":
"[The liberation of Aleppo was] history in the making and worthy of more than the word congratulations.History is being written in these moments. Every Syrian citizen is taking part in the writing. It started not today, but years ago when the crisis and the war on Syria began.
I think that after the liberation of Aleppo we’ll talk about the situation as ... before the liberation of Aleppo and after the liberation of Aleppo."
Well, that didn't happen.
Joshua Landis, from the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at University of Oklahoma, is an expert on Syria. He was interviewed on the BBC on Thursday, where he gave a chilling analysis of what's to come. Landis was asked why there's been a spike in violence in Syria (my transcription):
"In the south of Syria, near the Jordanian border, it has largely been controlled. But in the north of Syria, there is intense fighting around Deir az-Zour, major provincial capital, held by ISIS, both pro-US Kurdish forces and the Syrian army are trying to take that city, and trying to take the Euphrates, all the way down to the Iraqi border. And there's a scramble to destroy ISIS as quickly as they can, and to grab as much territory. This territory has lots of oil wells in it. It's very important for the future of both the Kurds and Syria. So this is causing a spike in the amount of deaths , because they're trying to go as quickly as they can, they're not being very discriminatory.Then in the west of Syria, the northwest, near the Turkish border, there's been a lot of fighting and a lot of bombing, by the Syrian air force and the Russian air force, of rebels, largely extremist Muslim rebels. and so this doesn't entirely put paid to the de-escalation zones, but on the other hand it shows how delicate they are, and that the war is far from over."
Landis said that the agreements that created the de-escalation zones are unraveling, and that Syria wants to destroy the hospitals that the Syrian air force has been attacking:
"This has unraveled. And there's a lot of fingers pointing to whose fault it is. There was an attack from Idlib province towards Hama, that gave the Russians and Syrians an excuse to go after these militias in the Idlib province, but now they've gone on for weeks, and they've bombed many hospitals in the region, and they've escalated far beyond a tit for tat basis.Well, a lot of those hospitals are being maintained by western NGO's, by Syrian charitable organizations and so forth, and I think the Syrian govt wants to destroy them in the northwest of Syria. Idlib province, a rebel-held province, has become a dumping ground for all kinds of rebel groups, and Syria, as well as the Russians, I think hope that they drive a lot of those rebels out into Turkey.
It wants to make the region uninhabitable, and inhospitable, to all groups, so that they flee, making it easier for the Syrian army to push back into the region."
If Landis is correct, this is really a dramatic development. It took months for al-Assad to make Aleppo "uninhabitable and inhospitable," and Landis says that al-Assad wants to do the same for all of Idlib province. Based on the Aleppo experience, this would involve months of extremely bloody fighting
Landis was asked: If ISIS is defeated in the east and in the north, can we expect the Syrian government and its allies to shift their focus to some of the opposition-held regions that are relatively peaceful right now?
"Absolutely. And this is a problem with these de-escalation zones. The United States I think has sold them as something that could be permanent, but Bashar al-Assad has said in no uncertain terms that he plans to take back all of Syria. And the Russians have said that they do not intend to partition Syria.So for both of them, deescalation zones are a temporary fix. It allows them to fight ISIS now, in the northeast of Syria, but as soon as that fight is finished, they're gonna swing back, and they're gonna begin to mop up rebel-held territory in other parts of Syria. So those truces are temporary, and some of them are breaking down, as you say today."
This is astonishing. According to Landis, al-Assad is going to "swing back and mop up" other parts of Syria, so that he can have control once again of all of Syria. I personally don't believe that this is even possible and that it's all part of al-Assad's delusion, but if it did happen, it would take years of bloody war, with continuing support from Russia, Iran and Hezbollah.
From the point of view of Generational Dynamics, pretty much the only way that a war can end is with an explosive climax at the end of a crisis war during a generational Crisis era. Examples are the 1982 destruction of Hama, or the 1945 nuking of Japan. Awakening era wars can only end with an armistice or peace agreement which is typically violated a few months later. With the delusional Bashar al-Assad in power in Syria, there is no chance at all that the Syria war will end any time soon. Al Jazeera
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 6-Oct-17 World View -- Syria's war resumes in full, as 'de-escalation' agreements unravel thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(6-Oct-2017)
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Maduro has 'plans A, B and C' if US imposes further sanctions
by John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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As Venezuela's Socialist paradise sinks into an ever deepening black financial hole, Russia's president Vladimir Putin must decide in the next few days whether to take on the hugely expensive financial long-term burden of continuously bailing out Venezuela's economy.
Venezuela has an estimated $63 billion of bond obligations. In the next two months, Venezuela has $3.5 billion in debt servicing payments due in October and November. About $0.6 billion of that will be owed to holders of Venezuelan government bonds, and $2.9 billion to holders of bonds issued by Venezuela's nationalized state oil and natural gas company, Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A. (PDVSA).
In the past, Venezuela's president Nicolás Maduro Moros or his predecessor Hugo Chávez would simply issue more bonds and borrow more money to meet debt obligations. (This is known as borrowing on your Visa credit card to make payments on your Master Card.)
However, that possibility has been blocked since August 28, when US president Donald Trump imposed sanctions that prevent further borrowing, either by the Venezuelan government or by PDVSA. Three days later, Fitch Ratings Service downgraded Venezuela's bonds from CCC down to CC, meaning that even if Venezuela could borrow more, the interest rates would be significantly higher.
One option available to Venezuela is to default on its bond payments, and turn to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for future loans. However, the IMF would demand significant economic reforms that the maniac Maduro would never agree to. It's thought that this option would require Maduro to step down, which could result in violence in the streets.
So the other choice is to get Russia to bail Venezuela out -- and not just today, but on a continuing basis. This would mean helping Venezuela make $3.5 billion in debt payments this year, $3 billion more in the spring, and another $3 billion more at the end of 2018.
Russia has helped Venezuela three times in the last 24 months to make billions in debt payments — in February 2016, October-November of 2016 and then again April-May of 2017. Then in August, Russia's nationalized oil producer, Rosneft, loaned $6 billion to PDVSA in the form of pre-payments for PDVSA crude and other products to be delivered in the future.
One unnamed Trump administration official says that the US is just going to sit back and watch to see what happens:
"Will they want to be throwing all sorts of money into a sinking ship. Frankly if they do, I’m not sure from a geopolitical perspective that we wouldn’t be happy to sit back and watch. For the Russians, it’s going to be bad money for them. It’s going to be a sinking investment that is going to derail Russia even more."
Maduro met with Putin in Moscow on Wednesday at the Russian Energy Week conference, and seemed to imply that the financial support would continue:
"I thank you for all the support, political and diplomatic, in difficult times which we are living through. I‘m very thankful for the agreement on grain, it has helped keep consumption in Venezuela stable."
The administration official adds: "Essentially, you [Russia] take ownership of the situation if you come in and rescue them now." Miami Herald and Deutsche Welle and Reuters and Latin American Herald Tribune (25-Sep)
The US administration supposedly has an “escalatory road map” that outlines a series of increasing sanctions that could be imposed, including the so-called “nuclear option” – oil sanctions – that could deprive the oil-dependent government of desperately needed cash.
In his speech to the UN General Assembly on September 19, president Trump suggested that plans are in the works for further sanctions:
"We have also imposed tough calibrated sanctions on the socialist Maduro regime in Venezuela, which has brought a once thriving nation to the brink of total collapse. The socialist dictatorship of Nicolás Maduro has inflicted terrible pain and suffering on the good people of that country.This corrupt regime destroyed a prosperous nation, by imposing a failed ideology that has produced poverty and misery everywhere it has been tried. To make matters worse, Maduro has defied his own people, stealing power from their elected representatives, to preserve his disastrous rule. The Venezuelan people are starving, and their country is collapsing. Their democratic institutions are being destroyed. The situation is completely unacceptable, and we cannot stand by and watch. ...
The United States has taken important steps to hold the regime accountable. We are prepared to take further action if the government of Venezuela persists on its path to impose authoritarian rule on the Venezuelan people. ... The problem in Venezuela is not that socialism has been poorly implemented, but that socialism has been faithfully implemented.
From the Soviet Union to Cuba to Venezuela, wherever true socialism or communism has been adopted, it has delivered anguish and devastation and failure. Those who preach the tenets of these discredited ideologies only contribute to the continued suffering of the people who live under these cruel systems. America stands with every person living under a brutal regime."
Speaking at the Russian Energy Week conference in Moscow on Wednesday, Maduro said that he doesn't fear further US sanctions on Venezuelan oil sales:
Big names are trying to negotiate at very high levels and avoid such decisions that are wrong and are quite unclear. Venezuela has its plan A, plan B and C, and other alternatives. ...Oil is tradable, and if there is some decision to go after the oil of my country, I think the same will happen to the consumers in the US. And the companies who are our counter parties and have been such for the last 50 years will probably also suffer.
The biggest companies in the world are interested in buying our oil and oil products. Naturally we will be creating the conditions necessary to cover the needs and demands of those companies. I'm quite firm about this."
It's amazing how thoroughly Socialism has destroyed Venezuela's economy. Venezuela is sitting on the largest oil reserves in the world, but oil production under the Socialist government has fallen almost 3% this year. The disastrous Socialist economy is in disarray, and its refineries run at less than 50% of the available capacity because debt-ridden PDVSA can’t afford proper maintenance.
In fact, PDVSA's own experts say that its refineries were running at 45% capacity in July, dropping to 44% in August, because seven out of 12 crude distillation units were out of service due to extended maintenance work. S&P Global Platts and Reuters (1-Aug) and Oil Price (27-Sep)
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 5-Oct-17 World View -- Russia considers taking on a huge financial burden - Venezuela thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(5-Oct-2017)
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JNIM (Group for Support of Islam and Muslims) takes credit for attacks
by John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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On September 24, jihadists attacked a convoy of UN peacekeepers in Kidal, in the region of Gao in Mali. The peacekeepers were all part of the UN peacekeeping force with the cumbersome name Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission (MINUSMA). The attack killed three Bangladeshi peacekeepers and injured four others.
This was just one of a surge of new jihadist attacks in the region, across Mali and into Niger and Burkina Faso. The surge in attacks threatens the entire United Nations peacekeeping strategy for Africa's Sahel (the strip of Africa just below the Sahara desert, separating the Arab north from Black Africa to the south).
The security situation in Mali has "significantly worsened," according to UN Secretary-General António Guterres. In the four months since June, extremist groups carried out 75 attacks: 44 against Malian forces, 21 against the UN’s MINUSMA operation and 10 against France's Operation Barkhane, mostly in northern Mali, with Mali's forces suffering most of the casualties. This rate of attacks is double those of the same period last year.
The United Nations has 13,000 peacekeepers in Mali, which ranks among its biggest and costliest missions. France has 4,000 troops serving across the Sahel region in five countries (Mauritania, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger and Chad) in Operation Barkhane, launched in 2014. France would like to withdraw its troops, and replace them with 5,000 soldiers and police in the "G5 Sahel Force, funded by the UN. However, "funded by the UN" means "mostly funded by the US," and President Trump vetoed the proposal.
Instead, the proposal was changed to consist of troops from the same five countries, with an annual budget of $496 million (423 million euros) a year. But so far only about $127 million (108 million euros) has been pledged.
So a shortage of funding for peacekeeping is being combined with a surge in jihadist attacks, putting the entire UN peacekeeping plan in jeopardy. According to the UN's Guterres, Mali’s peace process must be salvaged to prevent "a descent into a vicious cycle of violence and chaos, jeopardizing the future of Mali and its chances for lasting peace." United Nations (25-Sep) and Relief Web (28-Sep) and African Union (26-Sep) and Long War Journal
An al-Qaeda linked group formed early this year, the "Group for the Support of Islam and Muslims" (JNIM, Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslim) took credit for the August 24 attack in Kidal, as well as a number of other attacks, and released video as proof.
JNIM was formed by a merger of four Mali-based al-Qaeda linked groups, including Ansar Dine, Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), Al Murabitoon, and Katibat Macina (Macina Liberation Front).
These individual groups were responsible for a combined total of 250 al-Qaeda linked attacks in 2016, up 150% from 2015. Ansar Dine claimed over 80 attacks, while AQIM claimed 21. The majority were never claimed, but were attributed to the jihadists.
The surge in jihadist attacks in 2017 is being attributed to the rise of JNIM. JNIM has performed some large attacks, made possible because the members of the merged organization are able to take advantage of each other's resources. The JNIM merger is considered an ominous sign of things to come for all of West Africa.
Separately, many attacks in Burkina Faso are thought to be the work of Ansaroul Islam, a newly formed jihadist group led by an ally of Mali's Ansar Dine. Long War Journal (18-Mar-2017) and AFP and Long War Journal (18-Apr)
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 4-Oct-17 World View -- Jihadist attacks in Mali surge with rise of al-Qaeda linked JNIM thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(4-Oct-2017)
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Significant differences in the three recent independence movements
by John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Kurdistan has not yet declared independence from Iraq, but it may happen as a result of a September 25 independence referendum that passed overwhelmingly, according to Kurdistan president Masoud Barzani. However, Barzani says that at this time rather than declare independence, he wants simply to negotiate with the Baghdad. Nonetheless, if there is any violence in Kurdistan, it will be over Kirkuk.
Starting in 2014, Kirkuk has been under frequent attack by the so-called Islamic State (IS or ISIS or ISIL or Daesh), and ISIS has always been repelled by the Kurdish Peshmerga militia forces. Now that ISIS has been expelled from Mosul and the danger to Kirkuk from ISIS has passed, Kurdistan's leader Masoud Barzani is saying that Kirkuk belongs to a Kurdistan.
Iraq's parliament has responded by voting to give a mandate to Iraq's prime minister Haider al-Abadi to deploy troops in Kirkuk, and take control of the city from the Kurds. The deployment would be in response to the independence referendum, and the fear that Barzani would declare independence.
The commander of the Peshmerga units in Kirkuk says:
"We cannot agree with the decision of the Iraqi authorities to send troops to Kirkuk. If the Iraqi Army enters Kirkuk it will face our stiff resistance.The defense of Kirkuk has taken the lives of hundreds of Peshmerga fighters and city residents. Now, the Kurdish forces and civilians in Kirkuk are ready to continue defending the city. There isn’t such a force in the world that could take Kirkuk away from the Kurds."
Kurdistan produces over 600,000 barrels per day of crude oil, mostly from oil fields around Kirkuk, and this oil production forms the greatest part of Kurdistan's income. Kurdistan sells the oil through a pipeline that passes through Turkey. Turkey's president Recep Tayyip Erdogan has threatened to close the pipeline, but hasn't done so yet.
The fact that Kirkuk is oil-rich is just one of the reasons why it's become a flash point. The other reason is that, in addition to Kurds, the city is heavily populated with Arabs and Turkmens, and these populations do not wish to live under Kurdish control.
According to reports, Iraqi Shia militias loyal to Iran would like to go into Kirkuk and displace the Peshmerga militias. However, we've already seen this week how heavy-handed military forces in Catalonia have hardened the demands for independence, and the same thing would happen in Kirkuk. Since these Shia militias are controlled by Iran, al-Abadi may not be able to prevent them from attacking Kirkuk. Foreign Policy and Sputnik News (Moscow) and Oil Price and Quartz
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During the last few days, I've reported on three different independence movements -- in Catalonia from Spain, in the Anglophone Southern Cameroons from Francophone Cameroon, and in Kurdistan from Iraq. The Kurdistan case is substantially different from the other two.
In Catalonia, Spain's national police resorted to physical violence to keep people from voting. Video showed people being kicked and thrown and women pulled by their hair away from the polling stations. Reports from other parts of Spain suggest that many people outside of Catalonia say that the violence on Catalans was deserved.
In Anglophone Southern Cameroons, Cameroon's Francophone national police shot and killed at least seven people over the weekend and wounded dozens of others in an attempt to stop peaceful demonstrations. An official was quoted as saying, "What can the Anglophones do? If they don’t want to go to school, so much the worse for them."
In both of these cases, we clearly see a resurgence of vitriolic xenophobic attitudes that gave rise to previous generational crisis wars -- the Spanish Civil War in the late 1930s, and the bloody civil war in the Cameroon colonies in the late 1950s, respectively.
However, we're not seeing anything remotely like that in the Kurdistan separatist movement in Iraq. Nobody tried to prevent the independence referendum that took place in Kurdistan on September 25. Kurdistan president Masoud Barzani says that the referendum passed overwhelmingly, but Barzani says that rather than declare independence, he wants simply to negotiate with the Baghdad. Baghdad and Iran are sending troops to the Kurdistan border, but there's no sign that they plan to cross the border.
These are the kinds of things that one looks for when doing a Generational Dynamics analysis of a country or event. There is no apparent xenophobic vitriol between the Iraqi Kurds and the Iraqi Shias, as there was between the two pairs of groups in Spain and Cameroon, respectively. And, as usual, what's important in a generational analysis is not the behaviors and attitudes of the politicians, but the attitudes and behaviors of entire populations or generations.
So the most likely outcome of the independence referendum in Kurdistan, based on the information so far, is that there will be political posturing and threats, but no actual violence or military confrontation. Of course, this could change at any time, especially if Shia militias controlled by Iran invade Kirkuk to displace the Peshmerga. But without something like that, violence is not expected.
It's doubtful that the situations in Catalonia or Southern Cameroons will lead to independence either, but the difference is that we can expect to see more than political posturing, including actual violence. And if fact there's been violence already, and the level of violence is likely to grow. Daily Sabah (Turkey) and Rudaw (Kurdistan) and Tehran Times and Al Monitor
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 3-Oct-17 World View -- Kirkuk becomes the flash point after the Iraqi Kurdistan independence referendum thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(3-Oct-2017)
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Catalonia's leader says the region has 'won the right to statehood' from Spain
by John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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With separatist movements growing in Spain's Catalonia region and in Iraq's Kurdistan region, activists in the marginalized Anglophone (English-speaking) regions of Cameroon are demanding independence for Ambazonia, the name that the separatists give to the Southern Cameroons, the home of most of the Anglophone people of Cameroon.
Cameroon's majority Francophone (French-speaking) government has responded by sending in troops to into the Southern Cameroons to stop the protests with force. Over the weekend, soldiers shot and killed at least seven people and wounded dozens others in several cities in the confrontations.
Unrest began late last year when Anglophone lawyers protested that the legal and court systems are biased toward Francophones, with many laws passed without even being translated into English. Anglophone teachers also went on strike last year, protesting that all courses in the schools had to be taught in French, and that any use of English was forbidden.
The police and the army violently dispersed the demonstrators at that time. Several people were severely beaten, dozens of others were arrested and at least two people were shot dead, leading to riots.
On December 8, a pro-government rally was organized in the Anglophone regions, leading to violent clashes with local Anglophones. Four died, several were wounded and around 50 arrested. Demonstrators set fire to a police station, government buildings and vehicles. The government responded to the demonstrations by placing the region under military control. The violence continued with further incidents in January and February. Now violence is rapidly increasing once more.
The Southern Cameroons were originally a British colony ("British Cameroons"), while the remainder of the country was originally a French colony ("French Cameroun"). In 1961, after a bloody internal war, Cameroon became an independent country, containing both regions, under an agreement under which Anglophones and Francophones would would be equal. However, the Francophone majority has failed to keep many promises it made at that time, and they've increasingly made the Anglophones a disadvantaged and marginalized minority,
According to a recent report by the International Crisis Group and published two months ago:
"If a lasting solution is not found, the next resurgence of the Anglophone problem could be violent. The haughty attitude and cynicism of senior government officials, notably when they say that “as long as the Anglophones do not take up arms, the current strike does not worry [us] unduly”, could promote instability. ... “What can the Anglophones do? If they don’t want to go to school, so much the worse for them”, added a senior official. ... They are mistakenly relying on the strike losing impetus and the emergence of divisions among strikers, because although the campaign has weakened since May and even if it fizzles out, the fundamental problem will remain and people will continue to feel dissatisfied."
In the two months since the report was published, there has been a resurgence of the problem, and it has been violent.
The description of the "haughty attitude and cynicism of [Francophone] senior government officials" towards the Anglophone people reminds of the attitudes of the French towards the English during the Napoleonic period and during the War of the Spanish Succession. France and England were united against Germany during the two world wars, but over the centuries they never really have gotten along very well. The crisis in Cameroon seems more and more to reflect this ancient difference between the English and French cultures. AFP and BBC and International Crisis Group (2-Aug) and Crux Catholic News
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Spain's national police resorted to substantial violence on Sunday to prevent citizens of Catalonia from casting a vote in the poll for the independence referendum. Police smashed their way into polling stations, and used force to remove people from the buildings. Video showed people being kicked and thrown and women pulled by their hair away from the polling stations.
Catalonia's government is claiming that 90% of those who were allowed to vote were in favor of the referendum. Live interviews with Catalan people indicated that some who were opposed to the referendum voted in favor of it anyway, as a protest against the Madrid government's violent treatment of ordinary people who were simply trying to vote.
In a televised address, Catalonia's leader Carles Puigdemont said, "With this day of hope and suffering, the citizens of Catalonia have won the right to an independent state in the form a republic."
Left-wing activists and labor unions are planning a widespread strike on Tuesday. This crisis is far from over. BBC
Related: Catalonia referendum poised to go ahead despite Spain's harsh repressive measures (01-Oct-2017)
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 2-Oct-17 World View -- Cameroon police shoot and kill English-speaking protesters on Sunday thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(2-Oct-2017)
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Hundreds of Catalan families occupy school buildings in defiance of police
by John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Spain's government in Madrid is going to extraordinary measures -- some would say heroic measures, others would say abusive, paranoiac measures, depending on point of view -- to prevent Catalonia's independence referendum from taking place on Sunday.
Madrid has sent tens of thousands of national police into Catalonia. The police have gone from house to house confiscating vote record forms, ballot boxes, and almost ten million ballot papers, as well as and campaign leaflets. They've demanded that Google make the Catalonia voting app unavailable, and Google has complied, although many are now turning to encrypted communications with WhatsApp. The police stored Catalonia's parliament and government building, and arrested high-level Catalonian politicians for the crime of preparing for the referendum.
All of these measures have infuriated the Catalans, and the anger is so intense that even if the referendum is stopped, Madrid may lose control of Catalonia's political situation, and the government of Mariano Rajoy, who is already weak, may collapse.
If the referendum wins, then there are widespread fears that it will destabilize Spain and cause chaos in the rest of the European Union trying to deal with the backlash. A YES vote would probably mean that Catalonian leaders would declare independence, even if they currently claim that they won't. Catalan leaders would take steps to enforce the claim, like not forwarding taxes to Madrid, or not honoring Spanish courts, or dissolving the local parliament and calling for new elections. Madrid would be forced into military action. Violence is a distinct possibility, since Catalonia itself is sharply split, as many Catalans oppose independence. Ironically, the Catalans who oppose independence have said that they will boycott the referendum, making a YES vote all the more likely.
In Madrid on Saturday, thousands of people rallied in a central plaza to protest the independence referendum, shouting "Long live Spain!" and "Puigdemont to jail!", referring to Catalan regional President Carles Puigdemont.
A lot of this has to do with money. Catalonia contributes more in taxes to Madrid than it takes out in benefits, so of course Madrid doesn't want to permit independence. If Catalonia were getting more in benefits than it pays in taxes, then they wouldn't want independence, and Madrid would be happy to be rid of them. As an aside, money is also the issue in the Kurds' separatist referendum in Iraq, since the Kurds pay more to Baghdad than they receive. In the end, all the supposedly high-minded rhetoric is only about money. That's the way the world works.
The usual gang of international thieves is promoting independence, not because they care at all whether the Catalan people are alive or dead, but because they want to create chaos in the European Union. These include alleged rapist Julian Assange, hiding out in London's Ecuador embassy to avoid facing his rape victim accusers, and Edward Snowden, the American criminal traitor currently hiding out in Russia under the protection of the Kremlin. The Kremlin is the third member of the gang, meddling in the referendum election with trolls and massive amounts of with fake news to discredit Spain's government.
Even if the referendum fails, there may be chaos anyway. On Tuesday, the radical left separatist party CUP will be joined by some of the trade unions in a general strike , to protest against the state's repression and for civil liberties. Euro News and Business Insider and Atlantic and VOA and La Vanguardia (Barcelona) (Trans)
There are 5.5 million Catalans eligible to vote in Sunday's referendum. When an independence vote was held in 2014, only 40% of the eligible voters bothered to vote, effectively making the referendum irrelevant. This time, Madrid's harsh police tactics, particularly arresting Catalan politicians, have so energized Catalan voters, that many more may be inclined to vote. If over 50% voted and the referendum passed, the separatists would declare a victory.
The Madrid government is aware of this as well, which is why they've been confiscating ballot papers, shutting down Google apps, and arresting Catalan leaders.
There is one final battleground before the referendum: Catalonia's school buildings.
There are 2,315 polling places in Catalonia where people can go to vote, and most of them are school buildings. Madrid police are sealing these buildings off, with the objective of keeping people from voting at all.
Catalan families, including parents and children, have responded by holding parties in the schools all day Saturday, playing football, yoga sessions, picnics, board games, and ping pong in schools, and in to prevent the police from closing the schools. The partying will continue through the night, with the intention of continuing until the polls open at 9 am on Sunday.
Police have been told to forcibly evict anyone who refuses to leave, if the refusal has to do with the referendum vote. So according to reports, the game is played as follows: The police, who really have no desire to evict mothers and children, enter the school and ask if the board games and ping pong are related to the referendum vote. They are told that the parties are completely unrelated to the referendum, so the police have done their duty, and they leave.
The charade is supposed to end at 6 am Sunday morning. Police have delivered an ultimatum to families occupying the schools to leave by that time. Police have been told to use "minimum force" when evicting families from the schools. Washington Post and AFP and AP
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 1-Oct-17 World View -- Catalonia referendum poised to go ahead despite Spain's harsh repressive measures thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(1-Oct-2017)
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