WHY DID A U.S. ENVOY MEET WITH THE HEAD OF A FASCIST MILITIA IN INDIA?

 WHY DID A U.S. ENVOY MEET WITH THE HEAD OF A FASCIST MILITIA IN INDIA?

The fact that India is well on its way to full-fledged authoritarianism hasn’t factored into the Biden administration's approach to the "world's largest democracy."

By Basav Sen | September 29, 2021

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited the U.S. recently, attending the UN General Assembly session and meeting with President Biden. In spite of his government’s reign of terror against religious and ethnic minorities and dissidents in India, his U.S. hosts remained strangely silent.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government led by Modi has committed egregious human rights violations against wide swaths of the Indian population. In just the two years since getting reelected in 2019, the government has changed naturalization laws to discriminate against Muslims and charged critics of this new law with sedition.

It has escalated the conflict in Kashmir, used pellet guns against peaceful protesters (which can cause serious eye injuries leading to blindness), and detained thousands (including children) without trial under cover of a complete news, landline phone, mobile phone, and internet shutdown that lasted seven months.

It has ignored the epidemic of horrific sexual violence in which Dalit women and girls (belonging to the lowest Hindu castes) are often targeted by upper-caste perpetrators.

Over the last year, the Indian farmers’ movement has made history as the largest protest movement ever. The government of India has responded by unleashing violence against the protesters, cracking down on journalists covering the protests, and targeting the Indian youth climate movement for its solidarity with the farmers.

Far from expressing any disapproval of these horrors, Biden joined Modi in a commitment to “advance the partnership between the world’s largest democracies.” The fact that India is well on its way to full-fledged authoritarianism didn’t factor into Biden’s remarks in the least.

The meaningless platitudes in the official statement could be mere diplomatic niceties between nation states. But there may be more sinister factors at play here.

The Ambassador and the Brownshirt

Until September 8, the U.S. Charge d’Affaires in India was Atul Keshap. Shortly before his return to the U.S., he met with the head of the oldest existing fascist militia in the world, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS).

This meeting wasn’t remotely justifiable as a part of Keshap’s duties. The RSS is neither a part of the Indian government nor a formal political party. It’s an extremist organization with a sordid history of instigating sectarian violence, a fact acknowledged by the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. The violent acts attributable to members of the RSS include the assassination of Gandhi.

Yet the ruling BJP openly admits its close ideological ties with the RSS.

None of this could possibly be unknown to Keshap. Why then did he meet with the head of the RSS? Was it poor judgment, or evidence of his own Hindu fascist leanings? Or did it result from a cynical political calculation at high levels of the U.S. foreign policy establishment that the RSS was the de facto ruling faction in India, so the U.S. may as well start dealing with them?

We’ll never know the answer unless there’s an investigation into Keshap’s motives. And if there’s no investigation, suspicion of approval of this ill-advised meeting by higher levels of the U.S. government will only deepen.

Corporate Interests Over Human Rights

India has the third highest GDP in the world (taking purchasing power into account). It’s also the world’s second most populous country, with about one-sixth of the world’s population.

For multinational businesses, this makes India a lucrative export market and an attractive target for foreign direct investment (FDI). This isn’t hypothetical — India has the ninth highest level of FDI in the world. The U.S. is India’s second largest trading partner, and the second highest source of FDI.

Here’s a question for Biden: By befriending the Modi government and ignoring its abuses, has your administration knowingly elevated the economic interests of U.S. corporations over the human rights of hundreds of millions of Indians?

Islamophobia and Sinophobia

The institutionalized Islamophobic policies of the Indian government are well-documented. Unfortunately, the U.S. is guilty of much the same.

Domestic surveillance programs in the U.S. targeting Muslims using “terrorism” as a pretext haven’t vanished under Biden; they have remained in place under four successive administrations since the enactment of sweeping new government surveillance powers in 2001. No one should be fooled by the mere absence of the overt Islamophobic rhetoric of the Trump era.

The convergence of security and counter-terrorism policies between the two countries is reflected in the commitment to a “shared fight against global terrorism.” This is a reaffirmation of pre-existing collaboration on “counterterrorism.”

It should be disturbing to anyone who cares about human rights that the country that invented the “war on terror,” which has entailed bombing several Muslim majority countries and spying on Muslims at home, is cooperating on “counterterrorism” with a country under an openly Islamophobic government.

Another arena of security cooperation between the two countries is the newly formed “Quad,” a grouping that also includes Japan and Australia. It’s evidently intended to counter China’s growing influence in the Asia-Pacific region. This represents yet another example of the Biden administration’s ongoing saber-rattling on China.

India has its own regional power rivalry with China, and clearly the U.S. sees value in enlisting India into its anti-China alliance.

This isn’t to say that the common enemies identified by the U.S. and India are angels. China and the Taliban, to take another example, have their own well-documented histories of human rights violations. But rhetoric about “strengthening democratic values and institutions” from the U.S. and India ring hollow in the face of India’s slide into fascism. And the U.S. isn’t a paragon of democracy either.

Another question for Biden : Do you seriously believe your own rhetoric from your joint statement with Modi, or are you merely making an expedient alliance with an authoritarian government for your geopolitical ends?

The Petrostate and the Coal Republic

There’s growing evidence that climate change can’t be tackled effectively without phasing out fossil fuel production. But the U.S. is the world’s largest oil and gas producer, and India is the world’s second largest coal producer. Any joint India-U.S. statement about “galvanizing global efforts to scale up climate action” have to be seen in this light.

While the Biden administration doesn’t engage in Trump’s crude denialism, it has continued offshore oil and gas leasing and refused to block harmful fossil fuel projects such as the Line 3 oil pipeline. The construction of Line 3 has faced determined resistance from Indigenous peoples defending their land, water, and culture. Governments from the local to the federal have responded with a violent crackdown.

The Modi government in India has waged its own repression against Adivasi (Indigenous) peoples resisting extractivism.

It has auctioned land for expanded coal mining, disproportionately in  majority Adivasi areas. It has promoted increased coal production as “self-reliance,” which I have noted elsewhere is “a possible prelude to characterizing opposition from the Adivasis and other impacted communities as acts of sedition.” That’s because Modi’s government has already (repeatedly) labeled dissidents and critical journalists as seditious.

Another question for Biden: Do the “shared values and principles” cited in your joint statement with Modi include digging up fossil fuels while paying lip service to climate action, and unleashing repression against Indigenous peoples who get in the way?

A Fundamental Continuity

In several areas, including relations with India, the difference between Trump and Biden is more stylistic than substantive. Unlike Trump, Biden doesn’t join Modi at Nuremberg-style rallies in Houston and Ahmedabad. But U.S. complicity in India’s human rights abuses continues, without Trump’s bluster.

For those in the U.S., there’s not much we can do directly to confront the RSS and its political front in India. But the least we can do is hold the U.S. government’s feet to the fire for aligning with one of the most dangerous authoritarian regimes in the world.

Basav Sen

Basav Sen directs the Climate Policy Program at the Institute for Policy Studies.

HELLFIRE WORLD Drones mean never having to say that you're sorry.

 

A HELLFIRE WORLD

Drones mean never having to say that you're sorry.

By Tom Engelhardt | September 28, 2021

Originally published in TomDispatch.

What a way to end a war! Apologies all around! We’re so damn sorry — or actually, maybe not!

I’m thinking, of course, about CENTCOM commander General Kenneth F. McKenzie, Jr.’s belated apology for the drone assassination of seven children as the last act, or perhaps final war crime, in this country’s 20-year-long Afghan nightmare.

Where to begin (or end, for that matter) when considering that never-ending conflict, which seems — for Americans, anyway — finally to be over? After all these years, don’t ask me.

Hey, one thing seems clear to me, though: Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley undoubtedly didn’t apologize for that last Hellfire missile attack — he, in fact, originally labeled it a “righteous strike” — or the endless civilian deaths caused by American air power, because he’s had so many other things on his mind in these years. As a start, he was far too preoccupied calling his Beijing opposite, General Li Zuocheng, to warn him that the president of the United States, one Donald Trump, might have the urge to start a war with China before leaving office.

Actually, had Milley called me instead, I would have assured him that I believed The Donald then incapable of doing anything other than watching Fox News, going bonkers over the election, and possibly launching an attack (nuclear or otherwise) on Joe Biden and the Democrats, no less Congress — remember January 6th! — or even his own vice president, Mike Pence, for certifying the vote. Maybe, in fact, Milley should have skipped the Chinese entirely and called Republican Representatives Liz Cheney and Anthony Gonzalez to warn them that, sooner or later, the president might go nuclear on them.

Of course, in our increasingly mad, mad world, who really knows anymore?

I do know one thing, however, mostly because I wrote it so long ago and it stuck in my mind (even if in no one else’s): ever since the presidency of George W. Bush, who reportedly kept “his own personal scorecard” in a White House desk drawer of drone-killed or to-be-killed “terrorists,” every American president has been an assassin-in-chief. No question about it, Joe Biden is, too. I don’t know why the label never caught on. After all, assassination, once officially an illegal act for a president, is now, by definition, simply part of the job — and the end of the Afghan War will do nothing to stop that.

I first labeled our future presidents that way in 2012, after the New York Times reported that Barack Obama was attending “Terror Tuesday” meetings at the White House where names were regularly being added to a “kill list” of people to be droned off this planet. The first such Obama assassination, as Jo Becker and Scott Shane wrote at the time, would, prophetically enough, kill “not only its intended target, but also two neighboring families, and [leave] behind a trail of cluster bombs that subsequently killed more innocents.” Sound faintly familiar so many years later when U.S. drones and other aircraft have reportedly knocked off at least 22,000 civilians across the Greater Middle East and Africa?

Killers on the Loose

OMG, apologies all around! There I go, in such an all-American fashion, droning on and on.

Still, it’s hard to stop, since it’s obvious that presidential drone assassinations will go on and on, too. Just think about the thrill of what, in the wake of Afghanistan, Joe Biden has started to call “over-the-horizon capabilities” (of the very sort that killed those seven kids in Kabul). In fact, it seems possible that this country’s forever wars of the last two decades will now morph into forever drone wars. That, in turn, means that our 20-year war of terror (which we always claimed was a war on terror) will undoubtedly continue into the unknown future. After all, in the last two decades, Washington’s done a remarkable job of preparing the way for such strikes, at least if you’re talking about ensuring that extreme Islamist terror groups would spread ever more widely across ever larger parts of this increasingly shambolic planet.

Here’s the thing, though: if, in 2021, you want to talk about assassins-in-chief who never feel the urge to apologize while putting so many in peril, you don’t have to head over the horizon at all. Take my word for it. You need look no further than former president Donald Trump or, at a state level, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and Texas Governor Greg Abbott, among others, or simply most Republican politicians these days. Once you refocus on them, you’re no longer talking about drone-killing foreign terrorists (or foreign children), you’re talking about the former president (or governor or senator or congressional representative or state legislator) assassinating American citizens. When it comes to being that kind of assassin, by promoting unmasking, super-spreader events (including unmasked school attendance), and opposition to vaccine mandates, among other things, you’re speaking of the murder of innocents right here in the U.S. of A.

Do you even remember how President Trump, returning from Walter Reed National Military Medical Center after his own case of Covid-19 had been treated, stepped out onto a White House balcony to rip off his mask in front of every camera in town? With 690,000 Americans now dead from the pandemic (and possibly so many more), one thing is clear: the simplest of precautions would have radically cut those numbers.

And if you don’t mind my droning on yet more about that crew of assassins (and you might throw in, among others, West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin who, in 2020, made $491,949 from his stock holdings in the West Virginia coal brokerage firm he founded years ago), what about all the politicians who have promoted the heating of this planet to what could someday be the boiling point? After all, if you happen to be on the West Coast, where the fire season no longer seems to end and “heat domes” are a new reality, or in large parts of the country still experiencing a megadrought of the sort never seen before in U.S. history, you’d have to say that we’re already living in the Pyrocene Age. And I’m not even referring to the recent U.N. report suggesting that, if things don’t change quickly enough, the temperature of this planet might rise 2.7 degrees Celsius (4.86 degrees Fahrenheit) by the end of this century. That would, of course, produce an all-too-literal hell on Earth (and mind you, such scientific predictions about climate change have often proven underestimates).

The U.S. left Afghanistan in a scene so chaotic that it captured media attention for days, but don’t for a moment imagine that such a sense of chaos was left behind at Kabul airport. After all, it’s clear enough that we now live in a world and a country in increasing disarray.

Of the two great imperial powers of the last century, the USSR and the U.S., one is long gone and the other in growing disrepair, not just abroad but at home as well. This country seems to be heading, however slowly, for the exit (even as its president continues to proclaim that “America is back!“). And don’t count on a “rising China” to solve this planet’s problems either. It is, after all, by far the greatest greenhouse gas emitter of our moment and guaranteed to suffer its own version of chaos in the years to come.

Downhill All the Way?

I mean, I’m 77 years old (and feeling older all the time) and yet, in the worst sense possible, I’m living in a new world as a pandemic rages across America and climate change continues to show off its all-too-visibly grim wonders. Just go to the New York Times website any day of the week and look at its global map of Covid-19 “hotspots.” What you’ll find is that the country our leaders have long loved to hail as the most extraordinary, indispensable, and powerful on the planet is now eternally an extreme pandemic “hot spot.” How extraordinary when you consider its wealth, its access to vaccines and masks, and its theoretical ability to organize itself! But give some credit where it’s due. America’s assassins have been remarkably hard at work not just in Afghanistan or Iraq or Somalia, but right here at home.

In those distant lands, we eternally used Hellfire missiles to kill women and children. But when you fight such wars forever and a day abroad, it turns out that their spirit comes home in a hellfire-ish sort of way. And indeed, those forever wars certainly did come home with Donald Trump, whose accession to the White House would have been unimaginable without them. The result: the U.S. is not only an eternal global hotspot for Covid-19 (more than 2,000 deaths a day recently), but increasingly a madhouse of assassins of every sort, including Republican politicians determined to take out the American democratic system as we knew it, voting law by voting law, state by Republican-controlled state. And that madness, while connected to Trump, QAnon, the anti-vaxxers, and the like, is also deeply connected to how this country decided to respond to the tragedy of 9/11 — by launching those wars that America’s generals and the military-industrial complex fought so disastrously but oh-so-profitably all these years.

By now, this country is almost unimaginable without its drone assassins and the conflicts that have gone with them, especially the one that began it all in Afghanistan. In the wake of that war (though don’t hold your breath for the next time an American drone takes after some terrorist there and once again kills a bunch of innocents), the Biden administration has moved on to far more peaceful activities. I’m thinking, for instance, of the way it’s guaranteed the Australians nuclear submarines and the U.S. military, with a mere 750 military bases around the planet, will, in return, get a couple of more such bases in that distant land.

Hey, the French were pissed (for all the wrong reasons) and even withdrew their ambassador from Washington, feeling that Joe Biden and crew had no right to screw up their own arms deals with Australia. The Chinese were disturbed for most of the right reasons (and undoubtedly a few wrong ones as well), as they thought about yet another set of undetectable nuclear subs in the waters off the South China Sea or the Taiwan Strait.

So it goes, as officials in Washington seem incapable of not having war of one sort or another, hot or cold, on the brain. And keep in mind that I haven’t even begun to describe our deathly new reality, not in a country where the Delta strain of Covid-19 has run wild, especially in states headed by gubernatorial assassins. Meanwhile, too much of the rest of the world remains an unvaccinated hothouse for potentially new strains of a pandemic that may be with us, if you don’t mind such a mixed metaphor, until hell freezes over.

But you know all this! You’ve long sensed it. You’re living it! Who isn’t?

Still, since I’m at it, let me just quote myself (the very definition of droning on) from that article I wrote a decade ago on the president as assassin-in-chief:

“But — though it’s increasingly heretical to say this — the perils facing Americans, including relatively modest dangers from terrorism, aren’t the worst things on our planet. Electing an assassin-in-chief, no matter who you vote for, is worse. Pretending that the Church of St. Drone offers any kind of reasonable or even practical solutions on this planet of ours, is worse yet. And even worse, once such a process begins, it’s bound to be downhill all the way.”

In 2012, the phrase “over the horizon” hadn’t yet become presidential, but “downhill all the way” seems like a reasonable enough substitute. And how sad it is, since other, better futures are genuinely imaginable. Just mask up and give it some thought.

Tom Engelhardt

Tom Engelhardt created and runs the website TomDispatch.com. He is also a co-founder of the American Empire Project and the author of a highly praised history of American triumphalism in the Cold War, The End of Victory Culture.  A fellow of the Type Media Center, his sixth and latest book is A Nation Unmade by War.

The UN Crisis by John Feffer

 THE UN CRISIS

This problem of rogue actors has long bedeviled the United Nations. But the rise of right-wing populists who insist on their sovereign right to do whatever they please poses an additional challenge to the international community.

By John Feffer | September 29, 2021

Jair Bolsonaro gave a speech at the UN General Assembly this month. It was full of the usual misstatements and exaggerations for which the Brazilian leader has become notorious. But the most noteworthy part of the speech had nothing to do with its contents. It was Bolsonaro’s refusal of take a COVID-19 vaccine, despite New York City regulations on public gatherings and the UN’s urging of all world leaders to do so.

The planet faces enormous threats at the moment. The pandemic is still raging throughout the world. Climate change is an immediate risk. Wars continue to devastate Yemen, Ethiopia, and Syria.

Given these crises, the United Nations is needed more than ever. And yet the body could not compel Jair Bolsonaro to get vaccinated or risk the fallout of preventing him from speaking to the General Assembly.

This problem of rogue actors has long bedeviled the United Nations. But the rise of right-wing populists who insist on their sovereign (and often selfish) right to do whatever they please poses an additional challenge to the international community.

Nation-states frequently use the principle of sovereignty—the exclusive authority to determine the rules within national boundaries—as a justification for their actions. The COVID-19 pandemic is only the most recent example of the shortcomings of sovereignty. With little regard for the common good, the richest countries made sure to secure more than their fair share of vaccines. The World Health Organization, UNICEF, and the World Bank tried to ensure access to the vaccine for poorer countries by setting up the Vaccine Alliance (GAVI). It was supposed to distribute 2 billion doses by the end of 2021. So far, it has managed to distribute only 240 million.

The problem has largely been one of supply, given the huge purchases of the vaccine by richer countries. But there is also the challenge of delivering doses to countries where medical infrastructure is weak. As a result, the Global Dashboard for Vaccine Equity reports that, as of September 21, just 3.31 per cent of people in low-income countries have been vaccinated with at least one dose, compared to 61.51 per cent of people in high-income countries.

Let’s face it: the rich run the world, and the United Nations just doesn’t have the power to change that.

Nor has the UN risen to the challenge of climate change. Here the problem is one of brokering effective compromises. The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change is the body responsible for convening the Conference of the Parties (COP) meeting every year. In Paris, COP21 did manage to produce a binding treaty on climate change. But the commitments made by all the parties to the agreement were not sufficient to reduce carbon emissions fast enough to prevent a catastrophic increase in global temperatures.

Moreover, the commitments were voluntary. The U.S. delegation insisted on this because it feared that the U.S. Congress would reject any binding pledges.

It’s no surprise, then, that carbon emissions are expected to rise this year by 5 percent, the second largest increase in history.

The fault here again lies mostly with the richest countries—China, the United States, Japan, Germany, South Korea, Canada, Saudi Arabia—that have been the biggest emitters of carbon. But rich countries have also refused to provide enough money to help poorer countries transition to cleaner energy. In 2009, rich countries promised to mobilize $100 billion by 2020 for this transition. A dozen years later, the fund is still $20 billion short.

Of course, many countries face another deadly scourge: war. Imagine how many lives would be saved, how much reconstruction could take place, and how waves of refugees could be reduced if the UN were able to conduct a peacekeeping mission in Afghanistan, establish an on-the-ground presence in Syria, and separate warring parties in Tigray province in Ethiopia. Instead, the UN is relegated the task of providing humanitarian assistance. Its program in Syria, with a target of $4.2 billion a year, is the largest in the world.

But humanitarian assistance is a never-ending drain in the absence of security on the ground. Most of the peacekeeping budget of the UN goes to the existing 13 missions. The Biden administration has promised to pay down the over $1 billion peacekeeping bill it owes the UN, but the UN is going to need a lot more than that to play an effective role in bringing peace and security to the most conflict-torn areas of the world.

For one thing, the UN doesn’t have a capability to respond quickly to emergencies around the world. An Emergency Peace Service could fill that gap. It has some support internationally, and it’s even come up twice as bills in the U.S. Congress. Without a permanent, professional corps of emergency responders, the UN will constantly be one step behind in dealing with crises around the world.

This is not an easy time for the United Nations. It is underfunded. Proposals to reform its governance have largely gone nowhere. It has been forced to cobble together ad hoc responses to the world’s biggest problems.

But perhaps the biggest challenge to the UN is the refusal of nation-states to delegate sufficient authority to international institutions. Right-wing populists like Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro attacked “globalists” on a daily basis. They have done as much as possible to destroy international agreements, but they’re not alone. Russia’s Vladimir Putin and China’s Xi Jinping have insisted that they have the right to do whatever they want within their own national borders. Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines is resisting any “interference” in his drug war as part of an investigation into his government’s human rights abuses. Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua has similarly pushed back against UN criticism of his human rights record. Most strong-arm leaders eye the UN skeptically.

Without a lot of money or institutional credibility and facing a strong anti-internationalist philosophy, the United Nations has a great deal of difficulty compelling its members to protect human rights, the environment, or the rule of law. Look how ineffectual it was in dealing with Jair Bolsonaro.

Without credible enforcement mechanisms, the UN will be incapable of making the Bolsonaros of the world behave responsibly. And unfortunately, the disease of Bolsonarism is spreading.

 

FOR AFGHAN WOMEN, THE FRIGHTENING RETURN OF ‘VICE AND VIRTUE’

The Taliban are going back on their promise to respect women’s rights. What can the international community do?

By Heather Barr | September 29, 2021

There is no better symbol for the disappearance of women’s rights in Afghanistan than the end of the Ministry of Women’s Affairs and the return of the Ministry for Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice. When the Taliban on September 7 announced their new interim government, the vice and virtue ministry featured on the list, with a cleric as its newly appointed minister. The Ministry of Women’s Affairs had disappeared, and there were no women in the new cabinet.

The situation has a feeling of impending doom as a largely unchanged Taliban comes into direct conflict with a generation of young women who grew up hearing about the abuses that the Taliban inflicted on their mothers and older sisters and seizing the opportunities those older women were denied. On a chat group of people who have worked many years in Afghanistan, a journalist friend wrote, “Does anyone else fear these protests are going to end in a massacre?” This possibility seems all too real.

The Ministry of Women’s Affairs was founded in 2001 with a mandate to “implement the government’s social and political policy to secure legal rights of women in the country.” The ministry has often struggled with a lack of influence and resources, but its existence was an important acknowledgment by and reminder to the government of its obligation under international human rights law to ensure gender equality. Afghanistan ratified the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women in 2003.

The Ministry of Vice and Virtue existed during the previous Taliban period, from 1996 to 2001, when it became a notorious symbol of arbitrary abuses, particularly against women and girls.

The ministry ruthlessly enforced restrictions on women and men through public beatings and imprisonment. The ministry beat women publicly for, among other things, wearing socks that were not sufficiently opaque; showing their wrists, hands, or ankles; and not being accompanied by a close male relative. It barred women from educating girls in home-based schools, from working, and from begging. Its officials also beat men for trimming their beards. An effort in 2006 to revive the institution was defeated, but these bodies have operated in recent years in areas under Taliban control.

These last weeks since Kabul fell to the Taliban have been a steady stream of bad news for women and girls. The Taliban, at their initial news conference on August 17, sought to reassure Afghans and the world that they would respect human rights, including women’s rights to gender equality. But even then these assurances were tempered by conditions — women’s rights would be respected “on the basis of our rules and regulations… within our frameworks of Sharia,” or Islamic law, they said.

The Taliban have yet to provide clarity on many questions about how they will rule, but every day brings further evidence that they are implementing a massive rollback of women’s rights:

• Women journalists have been pushed out of their jobs.
• Women have been advised by the Taliban spokesperson to stay at home and not go to work because Taliban fighters may mistreat them.
• Women who taught in boys’ schools and universities have been dismissed.
• Secondary schools are closed in at least some areas.
• New onerous restrictions have been imposed on women and girls’ participation in higher education.
• Services for women and girls experiencing gender-based violence have been targeted and closed.
• Women’s rights activists and high-profile women have been harassed and many are afraid and in hiding.
• Women’s sports are no longer permitted.

In the face of these attacks on their rights, women have been taking to the streets, protesting against their exclusion from the government and demanding their rights, including the rights to work and to study. Women have also been leaders in protests focused on other grievances including to support the Afghan flag and in solidarity with the forces fighting the Taliban in Panjshir province. The Taliban responded first by attacking, intimidating, and beating protesters and journalists covering the demonstrations, and then by banning unauthorized protests.

Women and girls are also in the crosshairs of a deepening crisis as Afghanistan faces a major economic collapse. The country’s health system and schools face collapse as donor funding, which paid for those services, has been cut off. Taliban policies on girls education and women’s freedom of movement could become beside the point if essential services no longer exist.

What can be done?

There are steps the international community should urgently take. The mandate of the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) expired on September 17. The United Nations Security Council should renew the mission’s mandate and bolster its capacity to monitor, investigate, and report on human rights abuses in the country, especially violations of the rights of women and girls. Donor governments should strengthen the ability of the UN to deliver lifesaving aid.

The Taliban have made their contempt for the rights of women and girls crystal clear. The question now is whether the international community will treat this situation like the emergency it is and rally to protect Afghan women’s lives.

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• Heather Barr

Heather Barr is associate women’s rights director at Human Rights Watch. 

How much Greens and Liberals will sacrifice for the next German government?

 

How much Greens and Liberals will sacrifice for the next German government?    By Markus Ziener, senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund With the centre strengthened and the fringes weakened, Germans decided to vote for political stability. This is good news and should not be underestimated if compared to other countries where the far-right and populist parties have gained much support in recent years. However, while putting up stop signs to radical parties on the right and left, voters also abandoned the two people’s parties: the conservatives (CDU) and the social democrats (SPD). Until last weekend, both saw themselves as the last Big Tent party standing. The illusion is now broken. In fact, voters handed the real power to two smaller parties, the Greens (Die Grünen) and the liberal FDP, who are now guaranteed to be part of almost any possible coalition. If they manage to find common ground, they could together wield great power. But the burning question is: are they able to compromise? Greens and Liberals are far apart on a whole range of issues. The most divisive one is a philosophical debate: what is the role of the state and to what extent should the state interfere in people’s individual lives? While the Greens are ready to draw numerous red lines and even fine citizens for overstepping boundaries, the Liberals reject excessive state intervention as an ill-advised approach. This divergence becomes most obvious in the way both parties want to tackle one of Germany’s most pressing issues: the fight against climate change. The Greens advocate clear caps for CO2 emissions and tight deadlines for the companies to meet. The Liberals prefer to use market-based tools, such as trade with emission certificates, to achieve the same goals. The FDP believes the market knows what works best and should be left alone to decide whether electric batteries or hydrogen will power industry and mobility. It is not the overall goal – climate neutrality – that is disputed but rather the means to get there. The two parties are also at odds on taxation and spending. The Liberals worry higher taxes might further damage Germany's image as a place for investment. The FDP fears another tax hike –  like the introduction of a wealth tax and a property tax as proposed by the SPD and Greens –  would scare off entrepreneurs and foreign investors. Even if it’s still difficult to see how the partners-to-be can bridge these major gaps, there is nevertheless common ground. Greens and Liberals agree that digitisation and education in Germany needs a do-over, and defend the modernisation and liberalisation of immigration policy. There is also considerable overlap on the role human rights should play in foreign policy. Both parties see China and Russia with a critical eye. The China question could spark significant conflict with Olaf Scholz and the German industry, which is heavily dependent on sales to and from Beijing. Volkswagen, for example, sells over 40% of its cars to China. The situation is similarly tricky regarding Russia. While the two small parties hold no punches when calling out President Vladimir Putin for turning the country into a de-facto dictatorship bereft of free speech, the Social Democrats pursue a much softer line. The SPD famously supports the construction of the controversial Nord Stream 2 pipeline. There is yet another commonality. Since both parties were largely supported by the youth, FDP and Greens represent an electorate that is here to stay while the SPD voters are older and much more traditional in their thinking. Still, the question remains whether all this common ground is sufficient to make up for the ideological divisions. The leaders, Christian Lindner of the FDP and Robert Habeck and Annalena Baerbock of the Greens, must hammer out a solid platform that will hold over four years. The SPD watches the rapprochement of the two potential coalition partners with suspicion. However, there is not much they can do. For them, practically no other coalition option is viable. And what about the so-called Jamaica coalition, putting together the CDU, Greens and Liberals? This is an option very unlikely to materialise given the scope of the conservative defeat. A potential Jamaica 2021 is not the same constellation as Jamaica 2017 that almost came to fruition when Angela Merkel, who had greater sympathy for the Greens, was running the show. These days, Germans clearly see Jamaica as the second-best scenario and show little appetite for it. This is partly because, after the last election, voters were already served the second-best option: the grand coalition between CDU and SPD, which was formed because no other alternative was in sight. This time around, Germans want just the first dish.

Will the Next German Chancellor Please Stand Up?

 Will the Next German Chancellor Please Stand Up?

It could take several months before a new government is formed in Germany. Optimists hope that a coalition government will be in place by Christmas.

by Rainer Zitelmann

27 September 2021 

It is still unclear who will succeed Angela Merkel as Germany’s next chancellor. The next government will either be led by the massively weakened Christian Democrats under Armin Laschet or by the Social Democrat Olaf Scholz. One thing is clear following the election in Germany on Sunday though: there will be no socialist government. This was a fear of many Germans, by entrepreneurs in particular, and was also a concern for Germany’s NATO partners and foreign investors. The election narrowly put paid to that potential outcome. The three left-wing parties, the SPD (Social Democrats), the Greens (left-wing environmentalist party) and radical leftist Die Linke (the former Communist Party of East Germany) won a combined total of 363 seats in parliament; but they would have needed 368 representatives to form a government. 

Social Democrats and Greens Make Big Gains 

The two biggest left-wing parties, the SPD (25.7 percent, up 5.2 percentage points from 2017) and the Greens (14.8 percent, up 5.9 percentage points from 2017) made significant gains, but the far-left party Die Linke lost 4.3 percentage points, coming in at 4.9 percent. Since there is a rule in Germany that a party needs at least 5 percent to enter the Bundestag, the extreme Left almost missed out entirely. However, there is a special rule that a party can still get into the Bundestag if it wins three direct mandates, which means that Die Linke has just about scraped into the German parliament. In terms of Germany’s foreign and security policy, it is crucial that the political influence of Die Linke is kept to an absolute minimum because the far-left party opposes NATO and all foreign military deployments. Throughout the election campaign, Die Linke ran on a platform of radical demands, including proposals for income tax rates of up to 75 percent and a wealth tax of up to 5 percent. 

The CDU/CSU used to be Germany’s conservative party, but it has moved in a moderately left-wing direction under Merkel; it lost 8.9 percentage points to come in at 24.1 percent. This is the worst result the party has achieved in the history of the Federal Republic of Germany. In 2013, they won 41 percent of the vote. 

One result of the CDU/CSU moving closer to the center-left policies of the Social Democrats and the Greens, combined with Merkel’s approach to the refugee crisis of 2015, was the birth of the right-wing AfD party. Although this party has moved significantly further to the right over the past four years, it yet again managed to win seats in the German Bundestag by scoring 10.3 percent. However, it did lose 2.3 percentage points compared with 2017, when it entered parliament for the first time. Nevertheless, none of the other parties are prepared to work with the AfD. 

The pro-market Free Democratic Party (FDP), led by Christian Lindner, came in at 11.5 percent, a gain of 0.8 percentage points over 2017. The FDP did particularly well among younger voters: 20 percent of voters under the age of thirty opted for the FDP. Only the Greens were more successful among younger voters, picking up 22 percent of the vote. The Social Democrats and the CDU/CSU, on the other hand, led the way among voters over the age of sixty. 

German Commentators Talk of “Jamaica” and “Traffic Light” Coalitions 

At this point in time, the identity of Merkel’s successor and Germany’s next chancellor remains unclear. Given the election results, it is possible that the current coalition government of the CDU/CSU and SPD could stay in office. That is an unlikely outcome but it cannot be ruled out entirely if other options fail. 

German political commentators have coined names for the most likely potential coalitions. There is the “Jamaica” coalition of the CDU/CSU, Greens, and FDP, which are the three parties that have the same colors as the Jamaican flag, and the green-yellow-red “traffic light” coalition of the SPD, the Greens, and the FDP. 

In a Jamaica coalition, Armin Laschet of the CDU/CSU would be chancellor; in a “traffic light” coalition, the Social Democrat Olaf Scholz (SPD), the current finance minister, would take the highest political office in the land. So, the eventual outcome depends almost entirely on what the free-market FDP and the left-wing environmental party the Greens decide. 

Although a left-wing government was averted, it is clear that Germany is drifting further to the Left The left-wing parties (with the exception of the ex-communists) increased their share of the vote. Above all, fifty “Young Socialists” will be taking up seats in the German Bundestag for the SPD, all of whom are closely aligned with the SPD left-winger Kevin Kühnert. In the past, Kühnert has spoken out in favor of nationalizing companies such as BMW and declared that only the state should be allowed to manage rental apartments. The SPD as a whole has also drifted further to the Left. Kühnert, the party’s vice chairman, is joined by the two chairpeople, Saskia Esken and Norbert Walter-Borjahns, on the left-wing fringes of the party. They only nominated the moderate candidate Olaf Scholz for chancellor so that he would win over former Merkel voters from the center of the political spectrum. Their calculation, which can only be described as voter deception, worked. 

Berliners Vote to Expropriate Rental Housing Companies 

At the same time as federal elections, state elections were also held in the capital Berlin. The three left-wing parties, the SPD, the Greens, and Die Linke, have already been governing in Berlin for the last four years and won a combined 54.3 percent of the vote. Last year, the three parties passed a law that forced landlords in Berlin to reduce apartment rents and banned rent increases for the next five years. However, the legislation was declared unconstitutional by Germany’s highest court. Now the anti-capitalists have made another attempt, this time via a referendum. On Sunday, voters in Berlin were asked to decide whether housing companies with more than three thousand apartments should be nationalized. The result: 56.4 percent of Berliners voted in favor of expropriating large housing companies. Berlin’s Green Party and Die Linke both supported the expropriation referendum. However, it is still unclear whether the referendum proposal will actually be enacted in law and, if so, whether any new legislation will stand up in court in the face of the many expected legal challenges. 

Alongside the relief that a socialist government has been averted on a national level, there are still concerns that the right to own property in Germany is no longer respected. In fact, some overseas real estate investors already refer to Berlin as “Little Venezuela.” 

It could take several months before a new government is formed in Germany. Optimists hope that a coalition government will be in place by Christmas. A coalition of CDU/CSU, FDP, and Greens would be the least of all evils. But the tasks facing a Jamaica coalition would be enormous. After all, Merkel has left Germany with a host of problems that will explode like time bombs over the next few years. 

She leaves it with “the world’s dumbest energy policy,” which is pursuing the simultaneous phase-out of coal and nuclear energy. 

Also, the country is still suffering from the fallout from uncontrolled mass immigration in 2015/2016 is far from resolved. 

Additionally, large parts of the German economy (energy industry, automotive sector) have been progressively transformed into a planned economy. 

Germany is struggling to adapt to the digital age and the pace of digital transformation is extremely slow by international standards. 

Social spending has exploded to over €1 trillion. 

A recent study from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development crowns Germany as the world champion when it comes to taxes and payroll deductions. Nowhere in the world do employees pay such high taxes and levies as in Germany.   

While the free-market FDP wants to cut taxes, the Greens and the SPD want to raise them. So forming a new coalition is certainly not going to be easy. 

Rainer Zitelmann is a German historian and sociologist. 

The Quad Meeting by Ali Tuygan

 

The Quad Meeting

Posted on September 29, 2021 by Ali Tuygan

September 29, 2021

On September 15, 2021, President Biden, Prime Ministers Morrison, and Johnson announced the creation of AUKUS.  On September 24, President Biden, Prime Ministers Morrison, Modi, and Suga convened in Washington in person as “the Quad” for the first time. Before the meeting President Biden and Prime Minister Modi delivered remarks to the media.[i] These remarks, choreographed  by the former,  almost matched the family warmth displayed during Trump-Netanyahu meetings at the White House. Thus, the concluding remarks of PM Modi were, “And I am quite — I’m absolutely convinced that under your leadership, whatever we do, it will be extremely relevant for the entire world. Once again, Mr. President, let me thank you profusely for this very warm welcome.”

This was followed by remarks by the four leaders.  Then came the “Joint Statement from Quad Leaders”. In remarks to the media and in the Joint Statement, there was no reference to China.

The Joint Statement mentions cooperation in response to Covid-19, climate change, cooperation in emerging technologies, terrorism, and North Korea’s nuclear program. But, as international observers agree, this was essentially a meeting about containing China.

The Statement says,

“Together, we recommit to promoting the free, open, rules-based order, rooted in international law and undaunted by coercion, to bolster security and prosperity in the Indo-Pacific and beyond. We stand for the rule of law, freedom of navigation and overflight, peaceful resolution of disputes, democratic values, and territorial integrity of states…

“… Towards that end, we will continue to champion adherence to international law, particularly as reflected in the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), to meet challenges to the maritime rules-based order, including in the East and South China Seas. We affirm our support to small island states, especially those in the Pacific, to enhance their economic and environmental resilience…” (Emphasis added)

In 2011, in remarks to the Australian Parliament President Obama said, “After a decade in which we fought two wars that cost us dearly, in blood and treasure, the United States is turning our attention to the vast potential of the Asia Pacific region.” He also expressed the desire to build a cooperative relationship with China.  He had said that all nations have a profound interest in the rise of a peaceful and prosperous China; that China can be a partner from reducing tensions on the Korean Peninsula to preventing proliferation; that the US would seek more opportunities for cooperation with Beijing, including greater communication between the militaries to promote understanding and avoid miscalculation.  And, he had added that the US would continue to speak candidly to Beijing about the importance of upholding international norms and respecting the universal human rights of the Chinese people.[ii]

Readout of President Biden’s September 9 call with President Xi Jinping also said that the two leaders discussed the responsibility of both nations to ensure competition does not veer into conflict.[iii] But looking at the developments which followed this call, one may conclude that Mr. Biden is moving ahead towards fulfilling President Obama’s pledge to pivot to Asia, perhaps with more emphasis on containment if not confrontation.

As I said in an earlier post, the phrase “rules-based international order”, according to the West, is the body of rules, norms, and institutions that govern relations. Among those are treaties, international law, formal structures and institutions and values that have developed around and through these such as support and promotion of democracy, equality, and human rights.

The problem is, the US and its Western allies on the one hand, and Russia and China on the other have different perceptions of the international order. While Russia and China put the emphasis on international law and the UN Charter, the US and its Western allies favor an expanded set of rules.[iv]

Whatever the differences of opinion on these rules, there are no external military interventions on China’s track record. On the contrary, there is what the Chinese themselves call “China’s Century of Humiliation”.

And whatever was said in remarks to the media and the Quad Joint Statement, India and Japan have their own perceptions of China’s emergence as a global power. Despite bilateral tensions, China is India’s top trading partner. And China-Japan relations have a long and complicated history and Tokyo is more likely to balance containment with engagement. In brief, Quad is not AUKUS. Such arrangements may help create a favorable balance of power in the region, but none of this changes the reality that none of today’s major powers are able to intervene decisively in the immediate periphery of the others.

How Washington’s NATO allies view the AUKUS and Quad developments, to what extent they were consulted, and how these developments would impact transatlantic relations remain questions. But with Germany entering the post-Merkel era and French presidential election only seven month away, Europe needs to put its house in order first, easier said than done.

As for Turkey, the announcement of AUKUS, developments in the Indo-Pacific, their implications for transatlantic relations are beyond our radar screen. All we can see with our blurred vision are the developments in Syria, Idlib, the PYD/YPG, all of which are mostly our own doing. On the one hand, the Idlib problem is coming to the forefront once again because Moscow, as could be expected, is getting impatient with the situation six years after its intervention in Syria. On the other hand, Washington, now turning to the Indo-Pacific, continues to see the YPG as a cost-effective tool for maintaining a presence in Syria. Thus, Ankara is under pressure from both sides and on good terms with neither.

The cost of our decline across the political/diplomatic/economic spectrum is rising by the day. And all we do is to complain about others. Because the Turkish  government loathes admitting mistakes. The best it can do is to say that it has been deceived or misled, that its goodwill has been abused. Tougher times ahead for Turkey.

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[i] https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2021/09/24/remarks-by-president-biden-and-prime-minister-modi-of-the-republic-of-india-before-bilateral-meeting/

[ii] https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2011/11/17/remarks-president-obama-australian-parliament

[iii] https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2021/09/09/readout-of-president-joseph-r-biden-jr-call-with-president-xi-jinping-of-the-peoples-republic-of-china/

[iv] https://diplomaticopinion.com/2021/05/10/the-rules-based-international-order/#more-1774