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[Nasheman news] Two parallel peace processes on Afghanistan are underway. In Doha, Zalmay Khalilzad, US Special Representative for Afghanistan, has held extensive round of talks with Taliban leaders, spread over several days last month. The authorship of this process is, quite jealously, America’s. But on February 5 and 6, Taliban and other Afghan political groups also met in Moscow. A roadmap for the future, titled the Moscow Declaration, was announced. Among its nine points is one which also suggests coordination with the Doha process – there is no jealous guarding of ownership of the peace process here. Anyone interested in peace is the joint author. The Declaration was immediately rubbished by the Presidential Palace in Kabul. “Moscow declaration will not have impact on the peace process in Afghanistan,” said palace spokesman Haroon Chakhansuri.

There are, meanwhile, doubts in many capitals on whether the US is truly contemplating total withdrawal. To some extent these doubts are a function of Donald Trump’s confusing statements and tweets. Take his recent statement in Iraq. His troops in Iraq will enable him “to keep a check on Iran”, something way outside the US-Iraq agreement. In Afghanistan too, while Khalilzad is ploughing the furrow promising one kind of crop, his President makes a totally confusing statement. Trump says he will leave behind in Afghanistan “intelligence elements”. How many?

I have Russian estimates of five years ago. They may have changed, but in those days the Russians were convinced of 30 US bases in Afghanistan.

Of these, the ones at Bagram, Jalalabad, Kandahar, Helmand, Shindand (Herat) and Mazar-e-Sharif were, by the sheer volume of masonry and architecture, not temporary. These bases will remain. Are we then talking about a qualified departure?

If the US is actually planning departure, why would it build a consulate in the heart of Mazar-e-Sharif on a scale which would dwarf large embassies? Renaissance is the only reasonable hotel in Mazar-e-Sharif.

It does not take long for great powers to develop more than one point of interest once they have entered an area of strategic significance. It would therefore be fanciful to imagine an America-free Afghanistan in the foreseeable future. “All this blood and treasure was spent for what?” some Americans will ask. Also the chant in Kabul once was “We must remain in the vicinity to keep a watch on the world’s only Muslim nuclear state.”

After Obama announced in a speech delivered on December 1, 2009 US intention to leave Afghanistan in July 2011, I had argued in a paper for the Observer Research Foundation that Americans can simply not leave Afghanistan. I have been proved right so far. And now once again the “We are leaving” story has been let loose. True, this time the circumstances are different, but let us take a look.

Last July, Zalmay Khalilzad, and Morgulov Igor Vladimirovich, Russia’s Deputy Minister for Foreign Affairs, (who was behind the scene in the Intra-Afghan dialogue in Moscow on February 5 and 6) attended a high-power meet in New Delhi on Regional Issues.

In a more cooperative world order, one would have expected the representatives of the US and Russia to exchange notes on Afghanistan. What transpired was to the contrary. Vladimirovich made an allegation that startled the gathering. “ISIS fighters were being flown to Northern Afghanistan” from Syria. The Afghan air space is under the control of the US and the government in Kabul. “So, who is responsible?” Khalilzad offered a tepid denial. The denial lacked credibility because the Russian allegation had been preceded by another made by Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatullah Khamenei. In the course of his Friday address in January 30, 2018. Khamenei said: “The US transfer of IS terrorists to Afghanistan is aimed at creating a justification for its (US’) continued presence in the region.”

In countries surrounding Afghanistan, doubts about American intentions may be more muted but are quite as strong. It is deeply ironical that Jehadism, terrorism and Islamism manufactured in Afghanistan to fight the Soviets in the 80s may be returning to complete the circle. Indeed, there is a certain inevitability about Islamic militancy becoming a tool of American foreign policy. The triangular romance between Washington, Tel Aviv and Riyadh will ensure this state of affairs for as long as this romance lasts.

Let me explain the inevitability. When Animal Rights groups forced the famous annual fox hunt to stop in South India’s most Anglaise hill station, Ooty, I expressed my curiosity to the master of the Hunt: “What have you done to the hundreds of hounds of high pedigree trained diligently for the Hunt.” The lovely canines had been transferred to an expensive kennel from where dog lovers could acquire them.

So now we know what to do with redundant foxhounds of high pedigree. But what does a state like Saudi Arabia do with spare Islamic militants who have been heavily equipped and trained to kill at the cost of billions? They can only be relocated to newer theatres of conflict like Afghanistan. From here they can plague all the countries the US wishes to destabilize – Xinxiang in China, the Caucasus in Russia, Iran and Pakistan too if it does not behave according to the US diktat.

To make confusion worse confounded, Erik Prince, founder of the world’s biggest mercenary military company, which has mutated from Blackwater to Academi and Triple Canopy, is back in Afghanistan floating the idea of US troops to be replaced by Prince’s mercenary army. His plan that Afghanistan be administered by a “Viceroy” was shot down by National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster and Defence Secretary James Mattis. After the two were shown the door, Prince has been all over Afghanistan again in and Khalilzad’s notice. The only person who has refused to meet him in Kabul is President Ghani.

Nasheman News :Bangladesh Foreign Minister A K Abdul Momen will co-chair the Fifth Joint Consultative Committee meeting with External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj here on Friday, an official statement said.

Momen, who is on a three-day visit to India, will also call on Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday, it said.

It is the first high-level visit from Bangladesh since Sheikh Hasina’s victory in the parliamentary elections.

The two sides will also sign agreements during the visit. 

Nasheman News :  At least five people were killed and two others injured after a small plane crashed into a house in the US state of California, the media reported on Monday.

On Sunday, the twin-engine Cessna 414A came apart and caught fire mid-flight before crashing into the two-storey house in Yorba Linda, a suburb of Los Angeles, reports the BBC.

The flight went awry just minutes after taking off from an airport, 32 km from the city, according to police.

The victims comprised the pilot, who was the only occupant of the plane, and two men and two women inside the house.

Nasheman News : US President Donald Trump is planning to keep American troops in Iraq to monitor and maintain pressure on neighbouring Iran.

“I want to be able to watch Iran,” Trump said in an interview aired on Sunday on CBS. 

“We’re going to keep watching and we’re going to keep seeing and if there’s trouble, if somebody is looking to do nuclear weapons or other things, we’re going to know it before they do.”

Trump’s comments come as the US has quietly been negotiating with Iraq for weeks to allow American commandos and support troops now operating in Syria to shift to bases in Iraq and strike the Islamic State (IS) terror group from there, reports The New York Times. 

Military leaders are seeking to maintain pressure on the IS as the President fundamentally reorders policy toward Syria and toward Afghanistan, where peace talks with the Taliban are underway.

In response to Trump’s remarks, Iraqi MP Jawad al-Musawi said on Sunday night that “there will be an escalation in the opposition to them”.

“There is distrust of the American government – even if they say they are coming to protect us against the IS,” he said, adding “the real reason they will be coming is to hit Iran.”

American forces operate from several Iraqi bases across the country, with most of the roughly 5,200 troops based at Al Asad or in Erbil in northern Iraq.

A United States court has found Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s government culpable in the death of American foreign correspondent Marie Colvin, ordering a $302.5m judgement for what it called an “unconscionable” attack that targeted journalists.

In a verdict unsealed late on Wednesday night, US District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson concluded the Syrian military had deliberately targeted the makeshift media centre in the city of Homs where Colvin and other journalists were working on February 22, 2012.

Sustained artillery barrages against the apartment building housing the media centre killed Colvin and French photographer Remi Ochlik. 

“She was specifically targeted because of her profession, for the purpose of silencing those reporting on the growing opposition movement in the country,” Jackson wrote.

Colvin, a 56-year-old war correspondent working for Britain’s Sunday Times newspaper when she died, wore a signature black patch over her left eye after being blinded by a grenade in Sri Lanka in 2001. The 2018 film “A Private War” was based on her life.

Lawyers for Colvin’s family hope to recover the $302m settlement by targeting frozen Syrian government assets overseas.

“The challenge now is going to be enforcing the judgement,” said Scott Gilmore, lead counsel for the Colvin family. “The precedents show that it is possible to recover assets.”

‘Taking out journalists’

Gilmore said one of the main challenges of the lawsuit had been to prove that Colvin’s death wasn’t caused by standard “fog of war” battlefield confusion.

Lawyers included as evidence a copy of an August 2011 fax that they said was sent from Syria’s National Security Bureau instructing security bodies to launch military and intelligence campaigns against “those who tarnish the image of Syria in foreign media and international organizations”.

In her ruling, Jackson wrote that the day before the attack, an informant provided the location of the media centre to the Syrian government. That night, Colvin had given live interviews to the US outlet. 

There is evidence that Syrian officials celebrated after the attack, Jackson added.

The Syrian government was not involved in defending the lawsuit. 

Foreign governments are immune from jurisdiction in US courts through the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, but that immunity is lifted for alleged crimes against American citizens by governments classified as a “state sponsor of terrorism”.

Syrian government sued over US journalist Marie Colvin’s death

Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian is using a similar approach to sue the Iranian government, which jailed him for more than 500 days on an espionage charge.

Colvin’s sister, Cathleen, said she had initially assumed Marie’s death was a tragic accident, the kind that could happen to any journalist in a war zone.

She decided to pursue a lawsuit after speaking with Paul Conroy, a photographer who was working with Marie Colvin and was injured in the same shelling.

Conroy, a veteran of the British Army’s Royal Artillery, told her the media centre wasn’t hit by haphazard shelling but by “bracketing”, a recognised artillery technique used to locate a specific target.

“It was part of the government’s strategy in putting down the uprising,” Cathleen Colvin said. “They prioritised taking out the journalists.”

Colvin said she doesn’t know if the suit will ever succeed in retrieving any of that $302.5m. But she hopes it will at least be a long-term inconvenience and embarrassment to Assad’s government.

“I don’t have any illusions that this will have any effect on Assad’s life,” she said. “Hopefully, this will be some sort of thorn in his side for decades.”

“It’s a war and she came illegally to Syria, she worked with the terrorists, and because she came illegally, she’s responsible of everything that befell her,” Assad said.

Aljazeera

Nasheman News : Civil Defence forces say they rescued 271 people over the past four days, most of them in the al-Jawf region that borders Jordan. Several were also rescued in Mecca, Tabuk and the Northern Borders region.(Picture for representation)

Saudi Arabia says 12 people have died and more than 170 have been injured this week due to flooding from heavy rain in the northwest.

The Civil Defence said on Thursday that 10 people died in the area of Tabuk, one in Medina and another in the Northern Borders region. It did not say what caused the deaths.

Civil Defence forces say they rescued 271 people over the past four days, most of them in the al-Jawf region that borders Jordan. Several were also rescued in Mecca, Tabuk and the Northern Borders region.

Heavy rains have flooded desert valleys and forced schools to close. The English-language Arab News in Saudi Arabia posted video of water engulfing a street in the city of Medina, home to one of Islam’s holiest sites.

The Indian government has adopted attitudes similar to Myanmar’s towards the Rohingya.

Earlier this month, India sparked panic among its long-suffering Rohingya refugee population by deporting a family of five to their home country ofMyanmar, where they will most certainly face human rights violations and imprisonment. This expulsion came on the heels of the controversial forced repatriation of seven Rohingya men last October.

For Rohingya refugees currently residing in India, who the authorities claims are as many as 40,000, this second deportation seemed to harbinger a frightful pattern, especially as India’s far-right government had previously pledged to deport all Rohingya. Ruling party officials have made such threats despite international law prohibiting states from refoulement, sending persons to nations where they risk persecution. In Myanmar, such persecution is a near-certainty. More than 700,000 Rohingya fled to Bangladesh after an army crackdown more than a year ago.

UN officials have described the Myanmar military’s action as genocide and called for government officials to be prosecuted. The United Nations and many other rights groups and international bodies still deem Myanmar unsafe for repatriation.

In response to the latest deportation, Rohingya refugees eager to avert similar fates began pouring from India into Bangladesh. Bangladeshi authorities estimate that over 1,300 Rohingya refugees have left India and sought refuge in its territory within the last month.

Most recently, 31 refugees – including 16 children and 6 women – were left stranded in the barren “no man’s land” along the India-Bangladesh border for four days after Bangladesh denied them entry and the two nations failed to agree on what to do with them. Eventually, India arrested the group on January 22. Like others apprehended as “illegal migrants”, these detainees will likely face lengthy jail terms. 

Such imprisonment violates not only India’s own law but also international law prohibiting arbitrary arrests and detentions, as well as the customarily recognised right to seek asylum.

Yet, given the pattern of behaviour the current Indian government has displayed towards the Rohingya, it is hardly surprising that many Indian officials feel emboldened enough to routinely violate international and national legal norms with impunity when dealing with Rohingya refugees. 

BJP’s anti-Rohingya policies

The majority of India’s Rohingya came to India either prior to 2012 or following that year’s violence in Myanmar – all well before the 2017 genocide. At the time, Bangladesh was much less welcoming to refugees, but India appeared to offer great promise. 

“Most of us went to Bangladesh first, but with little or very bad work, and the government didn’t support us like it supports the refugees who are there now,” one Rohingya refugee,who had been residing in India for over five years told me. “People were saying that in India, there were better economic opportunities – real jobs for us.”

Unfortunately for many, upon arrival, those opportunities proved largely illusory. Still, they found India more peaceful and welcoming than Bangladesh. Although living conditions remained challenging and work scarce, the government did little to prevent refugees from pursuing better futures. At the time, more refugee children were allowed to attend school, and some areas even offered basic assistance.

In the years since, however, attitudes towards minorities – particularly Muslims – have shifted dramatically in India, devastating the livelihoods and prospects of many Rohingya living there.

In 2014, Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won the majority in parliament and its firebrand leader, Narendra Modi, became prime minister. 

Modi’s government made short work of vilifying Muslims and particularly Rohingya, recasting them as terrorists and “illegal Bengalis” (just like the Myanmar authorities do). The BJP has characterised Muslim refugees in India as threats to the very fabric of Indian society and used them as a tool to draw the country’s Hindu majority into their far-right movement. 

Indeed, over less than a decade, the Hindu-nationalist government and its supporters succeeded in drastically eroding many of the most fundamental human rights of the Rohingya refugees, including access to work, education, shelter, sanitation, healthcare, and basic human dignity, among others.

Most recently, Indian authorities ceased to recognise the UNHCR-issued refugee cards of Rohingya, effectively taking away the little amount of legal protection some 18,000 registered Rohingya refugees had in the country. At the moment, virtually all activities and services (including education, work, and healthcare) require a residency-based Aadhar card. According to Rohingya advocates and refugees, these were previously issued to some Rohingya who met the government’s criteria, but this practice has since ceased.

Rohingya also face increased surveillance, at times going as far as harassment, with officials repeatedly collecting biodata, fingerprints, and paperwork. In areas where the police are most hostile – like Jammu and Hiryana – refugees fleeing to other parts of the country or to Bangladesh report extortion, arbitrary arrests and detentions, and beatings are also on the rise. 

The government also bars Rohingya from owning property or building permanent structures. This limits them to either renting dirt patches in remote settlements and constructing jhuggis (slum-like shanties), or – for a fortunate few – renting urban flats from sympathetic landlords. Jhuggidwellers typically face the greatest hardships, as most work in rag picking (waste collection) or other irregular, poorly-paid labour. 

Rag picking in particular – perhaps the most common occupation among India’s Rohingya – poses serious health risks, as constantly handling and living amidst waste causes workers – including children as young as five – to frequently contract myriad unidentifiable maladies, while dire sanitation conditions further exacerbate widespread illness. In the squalid settlement of Faridabad, for instance, 180 refugees all working as rag pickers have no latrine in the entire camp, while nearly all residents’ income goes to healthcare.

Hate crime and extremist rhetoric

Since 2014, there has also been an uptick in hate crimes against Rohingya throughout India, with verbal and physical assaults becoming familiar occurrences for some. Last April, on the very night that an international Rohingya conference was held in New Delhi, the Kalindi Kunj jugghi settlement was burned to the ground. When its 226 residents relocated and rebuilt, their attackers attempted (though fortunately failed) to destroy their settlement again. 

Further, in 2017, as Myanmar’s Rohingya genocide escalated, fear of a massive Rohingya influx permeated the northern Jammu region, where most of Rohingya refugees in India reside. Extremist rhetoric grew especially venomous, with one Jammu official even advocating for an “identify and kill” movement. Extremists have since adopted this mantra, protesting to demand full deportations and using billboards and front-page advertisements to convey propaganda and threats to local Rohingya. 

In light of all these abuses, many Rohingya are trying their best to assimilate. Some managed to adjust their appearance and even learn Hindi well enough to pass as Indian, and as a result face relatively less harassment in their daily lives. Few others, who still hold Aadhar cards and have been able to secure steady, relatively reasonably paid work, also manage to get by. Yet even these relatively privileged Rohingya lack full protection, and they do not see a path towards citizenship or at least residency permit. 

Thousands of less privileged Rohingya, on the other hand, continue to live in a state of fear, deprivation and debilitating uncertainty while facing daily harassment, discrimination and persecution.

Recent deportations have drawn some attention to the serious dangers that still await Rohingya in Myanmar and encouraged the international community to take a stand against forced repatriations. However, the world also needs to pay attention to the plight of Rohingya still living in India. 

The Indian government appears intent on following dangerously in the footsteps of the Myanmar authorities: intentionally fomenting religious-nationalist fervour and placing thousands of already traumatised Rohingya in a state of constant fear and deprivation. If we don’t act now and pressure the Indian government to reverse its divisive rhetoric and dangerous policies, Rohingya will continue to be victimised by aggressive nationalism and Islamophobia in yet another country.

Agencies

[Nasheman news] Beijing Thomas Bach, president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), gave thumps-up to China’s vision of promoting 300 million people to winter sports and said he is very sure about the success of the Games during a visit to Beijing 2022 competition zones here on Tuesday.

“We can see the great progress, but what is even more important is we can see the plan raised by Chinese President Xi Jinping to make 300 million people familiar with winter sports obviously already works,” Bach told Xinhua after visiting the Zhangjiakou and Yanqing competition zones.

“We have met many children who love winter sports. We have seen athletes practicing winter sports. We have seen the halfpipe and other slopes which are already hosting the World Cups. The progress is really impressive,” he added.

Beijing 2022’s vision of giving 300 million people in China access to winter sports has already been visible. According to official statistics, by October 2018, more than 800 ski facilities have been built and about 50 million Chinese citizens have skied for at least once, influencing about 150 million to participate in winter sports directly or indirectly.

Beijing 2022 will utilise 24 competition and non-competition venues located in three competition clusters of downtown Beijing, Yanqing district and Zhangjiakou of Hebei province.

During the visit, Bach first went to the Zhangjiakou competition zone, which is located in Chongli district, about four hours’ drive from the capital. With a total of eight competition and non-competition venues, the zone will host two sports, six disciplines and 51 medal events.

All of the venue construction in the zone has started. Bach was impressed with the design concept of the National Ski Jumping Center, the venue for ski jumping and Nordic combined. 

At the Genting Snow Park, home to competitions of freestyle skiing and snowboarding, Bach interacted with Chinese snowboarders training at the halfpipe of Genting, among whom Li Fanghui just won bronze medal at the snowboard halfpipe World Cup held here last December.

Bach gave Li a pin of the Olympic rings and said, “I wish you good luck in 2020. When I get this (pin) back, I hope to give you a gold medal instead.” Li replied by saying she will do her best to win a gold medal in Beijing 2022.

Bach then visited Yanqing Zone of Beijing, which is situated in the mountainous area of Xiaohaituo Mountain. It has a total of three competition and non-competition venues.

A series of environmental protection measures have been carried out before and during the construction in Yanqing in a bid to deliver a “Green Olympics”. The venue construction includes the transplanting of trees in the mountains above 800 meters above sea level. 

To better protect the trees, experts from Beijing Forestry University conducted an ecological background survey on this area and worked out a protective transplant plan.

At the National Alpine Ski Center and National Sliding Center deep into the mountain, Bach encouraged engineers and builders to create architectures of its era.

“The organizing committee is doing excellent work. We see very thorough and detailed planning. We see all the schedules are respected so far. It’s the Chinese way. We are really very sure about the completion of the work at the right time and also the success of the Olympic Games,” Bach said.

Plan focuses on procurement, contracts and requires politicians to publicly declare their assets.

Malaysia has unveiled an ambitious five-year plan to clamp down on corruption in government, months after a multi-billion-dollar graft scandal brought down the previous administration.

The plan, launched by Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad on Tuesday, would involve sweeping changes to the appointment process for key posts, require legislators and ministers to publicly declare their assets, and introduce new laws to regulate political funding and lobbying.

Voters rejected Mahathir’s predecessor Najib Razak in an election in May last year, amid widespread public disgust over allegations that about $4.5bn has been stolen from 1MDB, a state fund set up by the former prime minister.

Najib, his wife and several high-ranking officials of his former administration are now facing dozens of criminal charges related to 1MDB and other government entities. All of them have pleaded not guilty.

Mahathir said Malaysia requires “all kinds of strategies, laws and restrictions” to curb corruption.

“This plan is a strong statement from the current government that we will track down and prosecute past offenders, while current and future offenders will be facing harsher action,” the prime minister said in a speech to launch the new approach to fighting graft.

The plan’s measures would target the government’s procurement process, law enforcement, the judiciary, politics and business, he added.

1MDB case

Officials studied the 1MDB case closely to design the new anti-corruption plan, said Abu Kassim Mohamed, the director-general of the Governance, Integrity and Anti-Corruption Centre, which drafted the anti-graft measures.

“When you have a top leader of the country allegedly involved in misconduct on such a mega scale, that has an impact on the public,” Abu Kassim told Reuters news agency on Monday.

Authorities in Malaysia and the United States allege that Jho Low, a financier with ties to Najib’s family, diverted funds from 1MDB and that about $1bn of it was eventually deposited into Najib’s personal bank accounts.

In July last year, Malaysian police seized designer handbags, luxury watches, jewellery and cash estimated at $273m from high-end properties linked to the former prime minister. 

It took three days, six cash counting machines and 22 officials from the central bank to count the cash, the then head of Malaysia’s commercial crime division, Amar Singh, said at the time.

Both Najib and Low, who is being sought by police, have denied wrongdoing.

The Malaysian government has also filed criminal charges against the US investment bank Goldman Sachs over 1MDB.

Its anti-graft plan addresses high-risk practices such as the selling of government contracts to third parties, and the appointment of political operatives to the board of state-linked companies, Abu Kassim said.

It also aims to strengthen the independence of investigating bodies such as the audit department and the anti-corruption commission, he added.

Political financing

New rules on political funding could affect opposition parties, particularly the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO), the party Mahathir led until 2003. Najib was head of the party for almost a decade before last year’s election defeat.

Having controlled every ruling coalition since independence six decades ago, UMNO had established a system of patronage to ensure support from the country’s majority ethnic Malays.

UMNO and PAS, a Malay Islamist party also in opposition, reportedly received funds from 1MDB when Najib was in power.

Malaysia was ranked 62 out of 180 countries in the Corruption Perceptions Index published by Transparency International last year.

[Nasheman news] New Delhi Facebook will launch transparency tools for electoral ads in India next month to help prevent foreign interference and make political and issue advertising on its platform more transparent.

Advertisers will need to be authorised to purchase political ads and the social networking giant will give people more information about ads related to politics and issues.

“We will create a publicly searchable library of these ads for up to seven years. The library will include information on the range of the ads’ budget, number of people they reached and demographics of who saw the ad, including age, gender and location,” Samidh Chakrabarti, Director of Product Management, Civic Engagement at Facebook, said in a blog post on Monday.

Facebook said it is planning to set up two new regional operations centres, focused on election integrity, located in its Dublin and Singapore offices.

“This will allow our global teams to better work across regions in the run-up to elections.A

“These teams will add a layer of defence against fake news, hate speech and voter suppression, and will work cross-functionally with our threat intelligence, data science, engineering, research, community operations, legal and other teams,” explained Katie Harbath, Global Politics and Government Outreach Director at Facebook.

The company said it will continue to expand its third-party fact-checking programme which covers content in 16 languages.

“We have rolled out the ability for fact-checkers to review photos and videos in addition to article links, because we know multimedia-based misinformation is making up a greater share of false news,” said Facebook.

The company said it will organise a series of workshops over the next six months in Singapore, Delhi, Nairobi, Berlin, New York, Mexico City and others, inviting experts and organisations who work issues such as free expression, technology and democracy, procedural fairness and human rights.