Category: Global

Where did the Taliban find funds to sustain themselves over a two-decade war with the US? With the Americans gone and the Afghan opposition collapsed, what military assets do the Taliban have?

In returning to power in Kabul over the weekend, the Taliban demonstrated both the success of a lightning military offensive against Afghanistan’s then government, as well as their remarkable resilience in the face of onslaughts by the world’s most powerful military for 20 years.

When they were driven out of Kabul in November 2001, the Taliban had been in power for a little over five years, and in existence for only seven. What makes them the fighting force that outlasted the United States in its longest ever war, and defeated the Afghans who received equipment and training worth over $80 billion from the Americans? Where have the Taliban found the funds to sustain themselves over a two-decade war with an adversary with almost limitless resources? Flourishing drug trade In a May 2020 report, the United Nations Security Council estimated that “overall Taliban annual combined revenues range from $300 million to upwards of $1.5 billion per annum”. It said that while the figures for 2019 were lower, officials “were careful to note that the Taliban used resources effectively and efficiently and were not experiencing a cash crisis”.

The primary source of the Taliban’s funds has been the drug trade, as report after report has shown over two decades. Their income suffered in recent years because of the “reduction in poppy cultivation and revenue, less taxable income from aid and development projects, and increased spending on “governance” projects”, the UNSC report said. However, “while heroin cultivation and production have provided the bulk of Taliban revenue for many years, the emergence of methamphetamine in Afghanistan is giving impetus to a major new drug industry with significant profit margins,” the report noted.

According to the report, “interdiction of methamphetamine was first recorded by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) in 2014 (9 kg) and has continued on a sharp upward trajectory, with 650 kg interdicted in the first half of 2019”. Methamphetamine, the report said, “was stated to be more profitable than heroin because its ingredients are low-cost and it does not require large laboratories”. The Taliban, it said, “were reported to be in control of 60 per cent of methamphetamine laboratories in the key producing provinces of Farah and Nimruz”.

The report quoted officials as saying “the system of heroin smuggling and taxation organised by the Taliban…stretched across eight of Nangarhar’s southern districts from Hisarak to Dur Baba, on the border with Pakistan”. “In each district, smugglers paid a tax to district Taliban commanders of 200 Pakistan rupees (approximately $1.30), or its equivalent in afghanis, per kilogram of heroin. Smugglers were provided documentation by each Taliban commander certifying payment of tax before proceeding to the next district and repeating the same process. Afghan officials stated that the smuggling routes thus helped to financially empower each district Taliban commander.”

In a report published last year, UNODC said “Afghanistan, the country where most opium is produced, which has accounted for approximately 84 per cent of global opium production over the past five years, supplies markets in neighbouring countries, Europe, the Near and Middle East, South Asia and Africa and to a small degree North America (notably Canada) and Oceania.” In September 2020, Radio Free Europe reported on a confidential report commissioned by NATO, which concluded that the Taliban “has achieved, or is close to achieving, financial and military independence”, which “enables [it] to self-fund its insurgency without the need for support from governments or citizens of other countries”. Besides the illicit drug trade — overseen by Mullah Muhammad Yaqoob, the son of Taliban founder Mullah Muhammad Omar, a shadowy figure who is expected to play an important role in the new government — the Taliban had “expanded its financial power in recent years through increased profits from illegal mining and exports”, the report said.

It estimated that the militant movement earned “a staggering US $1.6 billion” in the year ending March 2020. Of this, $ 416 million came from the drug trade; over $ 450 million from the illegal mining of iron ore, marble, copper, gold, zinc, and rare earth metals; and $ 160 million from extortion and taxes in the areas and on the highways it controlled. It also got $ 240 million in donations, largely from Persian Gulf nations. To launder the money it earned, it imported and exported consumer goods worth $ 240 million. The Taliban also own properties worth $ 80 million in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the report said. Weapons from Pak and loot The Taliban do not appear to have had any dearth of weapons to fight the Afghan and US forces. Support from Pakistan has always been key, but the Taliban did not rely on any single source of arms and ammunition.

Journalists such as Gretchen Peters, Steve Coll, and others have repeatedly pointed to the support of the ISI and Pakistan army to the Taliban, directly and through the Haqqani network, a sprawling Islamist mafia based in Pakistan’s tribal areas and in Afghanistan, comprising fighters, extremist religious schools, and shady businesses with powerful connections to Arab countries in the Gulf and in Pakistan. American leaders and generals have openly accused Pakistan of diverting to the Taliban funds that it received to fight against the fundamentalist movement.There are other players too. In September 2017, then Afghan Army Chief General Sharif Yaftali told the BBC that he had documents to prove that Iran was “supplying weapons and military equipment to the Taliban in western Afghanistan”.

A November 2019 report by the US Defense Intelligence Agency noted that since “at least 2007, Iran has provided calibrated support — including weapons, training, and funding — to the Taliban to counter US and Western influence in Afghanistan, combat ISIS-Khorasan, and increase Tehran’s influence in any post-reconciliation government”. Beyond these external avenues, the Taliban has also been able to arm itself with the weapons and ammunition that the US has provided to the Afghan forces over the years. America’s Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), a Congress-backed watchdog, noted in an analysis in 2013 that nearly 43 per cent of the firearms — 2,03,888 of the 4,74,823 — provided to the Afghan forces were unaccounted for. “Given the Afghan government’s limited ability to account for or properly dispose of these weapons, there is a real potential for these weapons to fall into the hands of insurgents, which will pose additional risks to US personnel, the ANSF, and Afghan civilians,” the analysis said.

US military assets with Taliban No figures are available for what kind of American military assets, and in what numbers, have fallen into Taliban hands. The US Government Accountability Office said in a report in 2017 that between 2003 and 2016 the US funded 75,898 vehicles, 5,99,690 weapons, 208 aircraft, and 16,191 pieces of intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance equipment for the Afghan forces. In the last few years, 7,000 machine guns, 4,700 Humvees, and over 20,000 grenades have been given to the Afghan forces, SIGAR data show. SIGAR’s July quarterly report mentioned that the Afghan Air Force had a total of 167 aircraft, including jets and helicopters that were “usable/in-country” as of June 30. This included 23 A-19 aircraft, 10 AC-208 aircraft, 23 C-208 aircraft, and three C-130 aircraft, besides 32 Mi-17, 43 MD-530, and 33 UH-60 helicopters.

On August 17, two days after the Taliban took control of Kabul, White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said, “We don’t have a complete picture, obviously, of where every article of defence materials has gone but certainly, a fair amount of it has fallen into the hands of the Taliban.” Stijn Mitzer and Joost Oliemans, conflict analysts specialising in modern-day weaponry and military tactics who have worked for websites such as Janes, Bellingcat and NK News, have used open-source intelligence to track the equipment that is proven to have fallen into Taliban’s hands. According to them, the Taliban now possess two warjets, 24 helicopters, and seven Boeing Insitu ScanEagle Unmanned Vehicles that were with the Afghan forces earlier. Additionally, according to them, between June and August 14 the Taliban captured 12 tanks, 51 armoured fighting vehicles, 61 artillery and mortar, eight anti-aircraft guns, and 1,980 trucks, jeeps, and vehicles, including over 700 Humvees.

All of this — in addition to the fact that the forces of the erstwhile Afghan government have surrendered everywhere in the country and the old Northern Alliance opposition is a shadow of its former self — makes the Taliban more powerful than it ever was. It is now “much more militarily powerful”, Jonathan Schroden, a military operations analyst who directs the Countering Threats and Challenges Program at the CNA Corporation, a nonprofit, nonpartisan research and analysis organization based in Arlington, Virginia, told The Indian Express. “It effectively converts them from a lightly armed guerrilla movement to a pseudo-conventional army.” According to Dr Schroden, among the military equipment that the Taliban now has, the D-30 howitzers are probably the most lethal. “It is concerning both as a waste of US taxpayer money and as a potential source of weapons for the myriad terrorist groups that have ties to the Taliban,” he said. And “there is a non-zero possibility of groups like al-Qaeda or the Pakistani Taliban getting their hands on some of the weapons.”

The United States is willing to work with the Taliban if they respect “basic rights” of its people – of women and girls, specifically – and do not harbor terrorists, secretary of state Antony Blinken said in an interview to CNN on Sunday.

Missing from the list is the insistence on a peaceful, negotiated settlement after the Taliban’s swift return to power. “A future Afghan government that upholds the basic rights of its people and that doesn’t harbour terrorists is a government we can work with and, and recognise,” Blinken said in response to a question if the Biden administration would ever consider recognising the Taliban-led government.

“Conversely, a government that doesn’t do that, that doesn’t uphold the basic rights of its people, including women and girls… that harbors terrorist groups… that have designs on the United States… that’s not going to happen,” he said.

When and if in government, they might need assistance from the international community and support of the international community, the secretary said, adding, “none of that will be forthcoming, sanctions won’t be lifted, their ability to travel won’t happen” if they are not sustaining the basic rights of the Afghan people and if they revert to supporting or harboring terrorists who might strike the US.

A negotiated, peaceful and political settlement has been a key part of the world’s wishlist – certainly for the US, India and the UN Security Council – for recognizing and working with the Taliban, along with respect to basic rights and severing all ties with terrorists.

During a visit to India in July, Blinken said at a news conference, “There’s only one path (for the Taliban to seek international recognition), and that’s at the negotiating table to resolve the conflict peacefully and to have an Afghanistan emerge that is governed in a genuinely inclusive way and that’s representative of all its people.”

A US representative to the UN Security Council was more forthright during a briefing of the body on August 6. “We will not accept a military takeover of Afghanistan,” said Ambassador Jeffrey DeLaurentis of the US permanent mission to the UN.

Six months after seizing power from the elected government, Myanmar’s military leader on Sunday, August 1st declared himself prime minister and said he would lead the country under the extended state of emergency until elections are held in about two years.

“We must create conditions to hold a free and fair multiparty general election,” Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing said during a recorded televised address. “We have to make preparations. I pledge to hold the multiparty general election without fail.”

He said the state of emergency will achieve its objectives by August 2023. In a separate announcement, the military government named itself “the caretaker government” and Min Aung Hlaing the prime minister.

The state of emergency was declared when troops moved against the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi on Feb. 1, an action the generals said was permitted under the military-authored 2008 constitution. The military claimed her landslide victory in last year’s national elections was achieved through massive voter fraud but offered no credible evidence.

The military government officially annulled the election results last Tuesday and appointed a new election commission to take charge of the polls.

The military takeover was met with massive public protests that has resulted in a lethal crackdown by security forces, who routinely fire live ammunition into crowds. As of Sunday, 939 people have been killed by the authorities since Feb. 1, according to a tally kept by the independent Assistance Association for Political Prisoners. Casualties are also rising among the military and police as armed resistance grows in both urban and rural areas.

Moves by The Association of Southeast Asian Nations to broker a dialogue between the military government and its opponents have stalled after an agreement at an April summit in Jakarta to appoint a special envoy for Myanmar.

Min Aung Hlaing said that among the three nominees, Thailand’s former Deputy Foreign Minister Virasakdi Futrakul was selected as the envoy.

“But for various reasons, new proposals were released and we could not keep moving onwards. I would like to say that Myanmar is ready to work on ASEAN cooperation within the ASEAN framework, including the dialogue with the ASEAN special envoy in Myanmar,” he said. ASEAN foreign ministers were expected to discuss Myanmar in virtual meetings this week hosted by Brunei, the current chair of the 10-nation bloc. Myanmar is also struggling with its worst COVID-19 outbreak that has overwhelmed its already crippled health care system. Limitations on oxygen sales have led to widespread allegations that the military is directing supplies to government supporters and military-run hospitals.

At the same time, medical workers have been targeted by authorities after spearheading a civil disobedience movement that urged professionals and civil servants not to cooperate with the government.

Min Aung Hlaing blamed the public’s mistrust in the military’s efforts to control the outbreak on “fake news and misinformation via social networks,” and accused those behind it of using COVID-19 “as a tool of bioterrorism.”

It’s not often that a line-item foreign policy budget decision can be low-cost, high-impact, and send positive ripple effects throughout the international system. Fortunately, the Biden administration is currently facing just such an option, nested within debates over UN reform and the UN Development System. Specifically, a $34 million annual commitment would signal a new era of U.S. global leadership engagement toward ending the COVID-19 pandemic, tackling climate change, and promoting inclusive and resilient national recovery strategies in more than 160 countries around the world.

The context is the recently renovated UN Resident Coordinator (RC) system, which supports country-level coordination of the UN family of 34 distinct organizations­—ranging from the World Health Organization to UNICEF to the World Food Program—working with 162 countries, mostly emerging markets and developing economies. As the UN Development System’s most senior representatives in each country, reporting directly to the UN secretary-general, RCs are responsible for driving integrated UN support to local efforts tackling the interwoven economic, social, and environmental challenges of sustainable development.

When current UN Secretary-General António Guterres and Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed took office in 2017, one of their foremost priorities was to streamline efforts across the vast network of development-focused UN agencies, funds, and programs helping countries pursue the Sustainable Development Goals, the Paris Climate Agreement, and other key global accords. In 2018, UN member states agreed to a new strategy for integrating UN support in relevant countries, anchored in a pivotal update of the UN Resident Coordinator role. Previously, the RC function was managed by the United Nations Development Program, one of the larger UN entities. As of 2019, the RC role was repositioned to lead more independently between UN entities, under the auspices of the secretary-general and oversight of the deputy secretary-general.

By most accounts, the initial years of the overall reform process have registered some important successes. A recent independent assessment highlighted the new RC system as a particularly important step forward, especially in the context of ensuring integrated UN country team responses to the COVID-19 crisis. There are also early signs of improved support to help countries tackle the longer-term practical challenges of advancing sustainable development.

Despite the progress, there is one key problem. The new system is not properly funded.

In 2018, Secretary-General Guterres proposed an annual RC system budget of $281 million, including $154 million of “assessed” contributions, meaning funding commitments that countries agree to make mandatory and to share based on ability to contribute. The United States, for example, currently funds 22 percent of the UN secretariat’s assessed contributions, as the largest national contributor. A 22 percent share of $154 million would imply roughly $34 million of predictable U.S. annual support for the RC system serving 162 countries.

These numbers are tiny in the context of the aggregate UN system budgets, which add up—when counting all forms of contributions—to more than $56 billion per year. This multi-billion aggregate is in turn modest again when mapped to a global scale of 8 billion people: it works out to roughly $7 per person per year for the entire UN system.

Amid its own multi-trillion dollar domestic recovery budgets, why wouldn’t the U.S. government support such a targeted effort to improve multilateral efficiency on shared global interests like ending the pandemic, tackling climate change, and promoting inclusive economic recovery for all? The quick history is that the previous administration made “voluntary” contributions to the initiative, but rejected discussion of any increase in assessed UN contributions, whatever the purpose. The current administration has signaled a much stronger desire to support UN efforts, especially on issues aligned with its own priorities, but the RC system does not yet seem to have risen to the front burner of U.S. political attention.

It’s a timely moment for this to change. It is widely understood in UN circles that a shift in U.S. policy stance could unlock the global stalemate and help deliver effective and reliable development system reform. More broadly, it would send a vivid signal to American allies and potential partners that the country is willing to pay its fair share to help update multilateral efficiencies in advancing local sustainable development priorities in countries around the world. This is entirely consistent with the administration’s theme of “Building Back Better.” It also promotes U.S. security interests, by directly helping the UN reduce many underlying risks for conflict across diverse geographies.

The consequences of a lack of U.S. support also need to be considered. Not only would it put key UN reforms in jeopardy at a crucial moment. It would also risk signaling to the world that, even under the most fiscally progressive of administrations, the U.S. is no longer willing to work with other countries on relatively low-cost, high-impact international reforms to help other countries promote their own sustainable development ambitions. This would be penny-wise, pound-foolish policy symbolism in the extreme. In the end, this is about the kind of values-based multilateralism that should characterize U.S. and American leadership. If the U.S. doesn’t close this gap, others might—with quite different motivations for making this type of commitment.

As a final point, the U.S. has impressive partners leading the UN system right now. Over the past four and a half years, the UN secretary-general and deputy secretary-general have carried a major weight on the world’s behalf to keep the embers of international cooperation burning. They have both just signed on to a second five-year term. We applaud their dedicated ongoing leadership as humanity stands at a pivotal moment in charting the future of global cooperation. The U.S. can demonstrate support of this leadership team and make a relatively easy—yet decisive—contribution by committing to fund its ongoing fair share of the RC system. This can form a keystone in modernizing multilateral efforts toward sustainable development for all.

From an international humanitarian perspective, the first half of 2021 has been disappointing. We’re no further ahead in ending the conflict in Syria and Yemen. From the fledgling democracy that it had become, Myanmar has descended into what most of its people had hoped was a bygone era of military rule. And in Ethiopia, where its Prime Minister, Ably Ahmed, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019, armed conflict in Tigray is preventing the 2020 winners of the very same prize, the World Food Programme, from delivering the food needed to stop at least 350,000 Ethiopians from starving to death.

These are not the only conflicts raging in 2021. There are many in Africa and a few still linger on in Asia and South America. And once again, Afghanistan, the country that defied Alex the Great, the Brits, the Russians and now the Americans and NATO, is set to move center stage on the humanitarian front.

Since its founding in 1945, Canada has always looked to the United Nations to head off armed conflict and to alleviate the human suffering that it causes. That includes preventing the use of hunger as a weapon of war. Canada’s contribution to UN peacebuilding has dropped considerably since 1970, when its proposal for 0.7% of a donor country’s GNI was accepted as the target for foreign aid. Nevertheless, it is still among the top five donors to the World Food Programme. Canadians expect the UN to do its job.

UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres and WFP Executive Director, David Beasley, have repeatedly warned that unless war and armed conflict is ended, people could starve to death in several countries. They have appealed to the leaders of opposing sides and those fighting proxy wars to let UN humanitarians and their NGO partners do their job. In early February 2021, soon after the fighting started in Ethiopia’s Tigray Region, David Beasley visited Addis Ababa.

He was assured that immediate access to Tigray would be granted for WFP and other humanitarian workers, as well as safe passage for its convoys of food aid trucks. Well, that didn’t happen for months. The first WFP plane with humanitarian workers only landed in Makelle, Tigray’s capital, on July 22. As for the convoys of WFP food aid trucks, they’re frequently attacked or blocked en route and don’t have anything like free passage.

So why is the UN so ineffective at ending conflicts, or even getting access granted for humanitarian supplies? It’s all to do with the principles on which the UN was founded: noninterference in the internal affairs of sovereign States. So, are UN humanitarians just supposed to stand by when a government decides to attack and kill off some of its citizens, or let large numbers starve to death when famine looms? No, not since the World Summit of 2005, when governments unanimously adopted R2P or the Responsibility to Protect.

In the aftermath of the 1994 Rwanda genocide and the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan insisted that the traditional notions of sovereignty had been redefined: “States are now widely understood to be instruments at the service of their peoples”, he argued. In his report “We the People” on the role of the United Nations in the 21st Century, he posed the following question: “If humanitarian intervention is, indeed, an unacceptable assault on sovereignty, how should we respond to a Rwanda, to a Srebrenica – to gross and systematic violations of human rights that offend every precept of our common humanity?”

Yet despite the widespread human suffering in Syria, Yemen, Myanmar and Ethiopia, the Responsibility to Protect has not been invoked. More work needs to be done on R2P, including an expansion of its scope. So too on “humanitarian intervention”, which does not always require the deployment of foreign forces to mitigate human suffering.

And the voluntary agreement by P5 Security Council members (Britain, China, France Russia and the United States) to withhold their veto power when resolutions to stop genocide and crimes against humanity are being considered is another ad hoc effort to prevent the wholesale slaughter of humankind. But with more and more ordinary people around the world standing up and making it known to their governments that crimes against humanity and dying from starvation is not acceptable, it is clear that the piecemeal approach that we’ve cobbled together over the last half-century falls well short of today’s expectations. A total overhaul and reorganization of the UN humanitarian system is required as a first step.

In September, when the UN General Assembly reconvenes, Antonio Guterres will be reconfirmed as UN Secretary General. For the next 5 years, he will have the opportunity to bring about some the changes to the UN System that he keeps speaking about without having to worry if any of the P5 will oppose his second term in office. He will have to move fast on Agenda 2030, the 17 Sustainable Development Goals, or SDGs. With less than a decade to go, these are far from being attained. We must reduce inequality; it’s a major cause of conflict.

Covid-19 is the biggest challenge the world has faced since the Spanish Flu, a century ago. It has affected everyone and everything we do. It has increased the number of food insecure people around the world by149 million, according to WFP; so close on 1 billion of us now go to bed hungry. And despite anti-Covid vaccines having been developed in record time, variants will keep emerging and we’ll be playing catch-up for years to come.

Climate change, an even bigger challenge, is already on us and is set to intensify. Extreme weather has devastated parts of north-western America and neighbouring Canada this Spring resulting in unbearably high heat and wildfires. Abnormal floods in China and Germany have resulted in unusually high mortality and devastated towns and cities in both countries.

So, while 2021 will end up as a disappointing year for multilateralists, the challenges that lie ahead in 2022 and beyond will be even greater. Despite the odds, UN humanitarians and their NGO partners have already saved many lives in 2021. But years of experience show that a revamped United Nations System is critical if we are to deal effectively with the challenges of the 21st century.

Trevor Page, resident in Lethbridge, Canada, is a former Director of the World Food Programme. He also served with the UN refugee agency, UNHCR and what is now the UN Department of Political and Peace Building Affairs.

India’s External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar presented the Indian view at a meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation. He said the world is against the ‘seizure of power by violence and force’ and wouldn’t ‘legitimize such actions’ Earlier, and he called on members of the grouping to act against terrorism and financing. Jaishankar and Atmar discussed the latest developments in Afghanistan shortly after arriving in Dushanbe. They also discussed the fight against terrorism and for stability throughout the region. The meeting provided the two sides with an opportunity to discuss security issues.

India has presented a three-point roadmap for an end state in Afghanistan. It includes cessation of violence and attacks and political dialogue for a settlement. External affairs minister S Jaishankar presented the Indian view at a Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) Contact Group meeting. Although Mr. Jaishankar has been at the same venue as the Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi at least twice in the past few months, the SCO meeting marks the first time he will be in the room with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, since the two met in Moscow last September, when they agreed to de-escalate tensions at the Line of Actual Control.

However, the agreement has yet to be fully implemented on the ground. The MEA declined to comment on whether Mr. Jaishankar and Mr. Wang will have a separate meeting at either of the two venues that both will travel to. The focus of both meetings is expected to be the deteriorating security situation in Afghanistan and regional solutions for the country in the wake of the U.S. and NATO troops pull-out, said organizers. The statement will be of particular importance as the Taliban has stepped up violence in the country, and Taliban militants claim they are taking over more towns and cities from the Afghan forces, which led to India pulling all its staff out of the Kandahar Consulate on Saturday. Afghanistan was high on the agenda of Mr. Jaishankar’s meetings in Tehran and Moscow last week as well.

In Tashkent, Uzbekistan President Shavkat Mirziyoyev will make a greater push for trade connectivity between South and Central Asia, including discussing the importance of the Chabahar project with India and signing a transit trade agreement (TTA) with PM Khan that will give Uzbekistan access to Pakistani ports, benefitting trade with Afghanistan as well. “Afghanistan is not just a neighbor, but a part of our region. Presently it is seen by some as a source of problems and threats, but it is also a source of possibilities, and the President feels that the foremost purpose of this conference is to strengthen connectivity, including through Afghanistan,” Uzbekistan Ambassador to India Dilshod Akhotov told The Hindu in an interview. He added that Afghanistan would be included in the Uzbekistan-India-Iran trilateral in the future, and plans for a Preferential Trade Agreement (PTA) with India were also under consideration.

“The most important goal is for Uzbekistan, which the only double landlocked country in the world other than Liechtenstein, to build a bridge to the South Asian region. Through our southern neighbors we want to access the seas, and the closest is the Indian ocean,” Mr. Akhotov added. At the conference entitled “Central and South Asia: Regional Connectivity, Challenges and Opportunities”, Mr. Mirziyoyev will project Uzbekistan as the Central Asian fulcrum and key country in the Intra-Afghan peace process, that has, in the past, hosted Taliban delegations for talks.

Mr. Ghani and Mr. Khan will participate together at the inaugural session of the Conference on Friday, which will be addressed virtually by UN Secretary General Guterres, and followed by a plenary session with speeches by Mr. Jaishankar, Chinese FM Wang Yi, Russian FM Sergey Lavrov, and ministers and senior officials from other Central Asian countries, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka (virtually), Gulf States, the U.S. and the European Union. Afghanistan’s foreign minister has said the world is against ‘seizure of power by violence and force’ Jaishankar also offered suggestions for the future course of negotiations to find a settlement in Afghanistan. He said there would have to be a compromise between approaches involving Qatar, Russia, and Turkey.

New Delhi’s foreign secretary said ‘peace negotiations in earnest is the only answer’ Jaishankar met with his counterparts from China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyz Republic, Pakistan, Russia, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. Additionally, the meetings were attended by countries with observer status with SCO.

President Joe Biden on Monday called protests in Cuba “remarkable” and a “clarion call for freedom,” praising thousands of Cubans who took the streets to protest food shortages and high prices amid the coronavirus crisis — one of the island’s biggest antigovernment demonstrations in recent memory.

The pandemic’s blunt impact on Cuba’s economy, already struggling under the Trump-era tightening of sanctions, has brought the island to the brink of its worst food shortages in 25 years. Empty supermarket shelves, the crippling pandemic and recent access to social media allowing Cubans to openly share their outrage all helped lead to Sunday’s rare protests against the communist regime. Thousands marched in Havana and other cities to protest the lack of food and COVID-19 vaccines, with many demanding an end to the 62-year-old dictatorship, chanting “Freedom!” and “Enough!” Social media posts showed some protestors overturning police cars and looting supermarkets. Cuban security forces cracked down, arresting more than 80 people, including some well-known activists and dissidents.

In a televised address to the nation on Monday, Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel, who took over the presidency from his mentor Raul Castro in 2018, blamed the demonstrations on the U.S.’s “policy of economic suffocation” and accused the “Cuban-American mafia” of provoking social unrest in the country. In the heart of Miami’s Cuban-American community on Sunday, more than 5,000 people demonstrated in solidarity with the protestors, with Mayor Francis Suarez calling for a U.S.-led intervention.

Díaz-Canel’s response to the protests is “straight out of Fidel and Raul’s playbook, by accusing these people of being mercenaries, and saying we need to get our counter-protestors out into the streets,” says Paul Hare, a former British ambassador to Cuba. “But this couldn’t have happened a few years ago. This coordinated, island-wide protest…is the first real Internet age, social media challenge that he’s faced.”

President Joe Biden lent his support to the protestors on Monday, but he did not mention the U.S. sanctions on the nation that he pledged to review during his campaign. “We stand with the Cuban people and their clarion call for freedom and relief from the tragic grip of the pandemic and from the decades of repression and economic suffering to which they have been subjected by Cuba’s authoritarian regime,” Biden said in a statement. The White House declined to detail any potential policy changes towards Cuba.

While Cuba’s socialized health care system first appeared to cope with the pandemic better than many of its wealthier neighbors, dispatching its highly trained doctors to other countries, the economic fallout was severe. The island’s crumbling state-run economy, already hurting from former President Donald Trump’s toughened trade embargo, shrank 11% last year. As tourism dried up, and with it the hard currency many had come to depend on, the country suffered its worst food and medicine shortages since the fall of the Soviet Union. With the lack of foreign currency limiting access to fuel and fertilizer, this year’s harvest of sugar, an important export, barely reached two-thirds of the planned production, the smallest crop in more than a century. Widespread power outages have left many Cubans with increasingly severe blackouts. Meanwhile, COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations have surged.

“It was only a matter of time. Frustration and despair had accumulated, and this Sunday the streets exploded,” dissident Cuban blogger Yoani Sanchez wrote, describing how the “spark from San Antonio de los Baños,” where the protests began, had “ignited in the dry grass of social anger.” On Instagram, Cubans across the world shared an image that said in big white and red letters “Asking for help isn’t a crime, denying it is.”

The fast escalation has put a spotlight on the Biden Administration’s drawn-out review of U.S. Cuba policy, and apparent reluctance to reverse Trump’s measures. Biden was Vice President when President Barack Obama and Raul Castro agreed to re-establish diplomatic relations in 2014, leading to the first face-to-face discussion between leaders of the two countries in half a century. The historic detente also eased or lifted many restrictions on business with and travel to Cuba. When direct flights to Cuba reopened in 2016, American tourists flooded the island. Most Cubans welcomed the valuable influx of U.S. dollars, which benefited drivers to restaurant owners to average families who were able to rent out rooms to tourists. Internet usage rapidly expanded with the rise in income, and in 2018 Cubans were able to get full online access on their mobile phones for the first time.

But the relationship quickly deteriorated under Trump. Citing his campaign promise to reverse Obama’s measures, which he said empowered and enriched Cuba’s communist regime, his Administration put in place 240 sanctions and economic measures, including a ban on American cruise ships stopping in Cuba, prosecution of foreign companies that do business with the country, and a blacklist of several Cuban companies. The latter included Fincimex, the financial institution used by Americans to send vital remittances to their families on the island.

In 2017, after alleged sonic attacks left more than two dozen Americans stationed in Havana with mysterious brain injuries, the Trump Administration also drastically cut U.S. diplomatic staff. (Cuba has denied responsibility for the injuries, whose cause has not yet been determined.) The State Department followed with a travel warning telling Americans to avoid traveling to Cuba. According to Cuban officials, all of Trump’s measures cost the island more than $20 billion. “The damage to the bilateral relationship during this time has been considerable, and the economic harm to Cuba immense,” Johana Tabalada, a senior foreign ministry official, said in January 2021.

“We stand with the Cuban people and their clarion call for freedom and relief from the tragic grip of the pandemic and from the decades of repression and economic suffering to which they have been subjected by Cuba’s authoritarian regime,” Biden said in an earlier statement Monday. “The Cuban people are bravely asserting fundamental and universal rights.”

Kurt Campbell, White House coordinator for the Indo-Pacific, gave a briefing and participated in a conversation with the Asia Society Tuesday morning that provided the clearest picture yet of the Biden administration’s approach to Asia. In a wide-ranging discussion with Asia Society President and CEO and Asia Society Policy Institute (ASPI) President Kevin Rudd, ASPI Vice President Wendy Cutler, and ASPI Vice President for International Security and Diplomacy Daniel Russel, Campbell spoke at length about U.S. strategy toward the Indo-Pacific and toward China, which he said represented a departure from the approach favored by former U.S. President Donald Trump.

Campbell explained that a “new cold war” was a not a suitable way to frame the U.S.-China relationship, even though it has adversarial aspects. “There will be periods of uncertainty — perhaps even periods of occasional raised tensions,” he said. “Do I believe that China and the United States can coexist peacefully? Yes, I do. But I do think this challenge is going to be enormously difficult for this generation and the next.”

 One potential flashpoint in this challenge is Taiwan, which China views as an irrevocable part of its territory. Campbell stressed that the Biden Administration stands by the “One China Policy” and does not recognize Taiwan as an independent country — but he explained that the island should not be ignored by the international community or shut out of multilateral collaboration where it can make contributions. “We fully recognize and understand the sensitivities here,” he said.  The conversation also covered trade policy, where the U.S. is “quietly exploring” trade initiatives in Asia; China’s bullying approach to Australia, and fielded questions on how the imminent withdrawal of the U.S. military from Afghanistan will play out in the region.

The in-depth conversation underscored the Biden administration’s deep commitment to engagement with Asia. “For the first time in our history, the Indo-Pacific will be the center of our regional focus,” Campbell said. But, he added, the Biden administration’s top priority was domestic renewal here in the United States, a polarized country still emerging from the COVID-19 pandemic. “When people ask what the most important thing to do in Asia or in the world is, it sounds tired but is in fact the case: to recover at home,” he said.

A hundred years ago, sometime in July 1921, 13 young men gathered in the Chinese city of Shanghai to found a tiny political grouping: the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Today that party rules a quarter of humanity, presiding over the second biggest economy and second-best funded military in the world. What stands out in the history writing project in China is that the same party, over the course of a 100 years of its existence, has approached the history of China and that of its own differently at different moments in time.

According to Rana Mitter, an analyst and expert on China, “The combination of factors that the CCP has brought together in today’s China has no exact parallel in history.” He says, the first factor is authoritarian government. The CCP has never been keen on liberal democracy, but in the past decade it has been explicit that it regards its one-party state as a meritocratic alternative to liberal democracy, not a stepping stone toward it. In the past year, the party has drawn attention to its successful suppression of Covid-19 in China under its own political system, and contrasted it with what party-aligned voices have called the democratic West’s failure to respond.

The second is the creation of a consumerist lifestyle. Back in the Cold War, then-US Vice President Richard Nixon and Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev clashed in the “kitchen debate” over which system, capitalism or communism, could create a better lifestyle for ordinary people. In that case, most people might say the US has been the clear winner. But today, China’s emerging middle class can point to a lifestyle that is far beyond anything their parents or grandparents might have imagined. They have some of the world’s most sophisticated mobile phones, they go on vacation to glamorous locations within China (the tropical paradises of Hainan or Dali), and they live in some of the fastest-growing cities on earth.

Of course, this is still just one part of the population. There is plenty of poverty all over China, and even for well-paid urbanites, there are many problems ranging from expensive mortgages to lack of pensions. But the creation of the party’s idea of the “Chinese dream” is a reality for many of the new middle class. The third element the CCP has brought to bear is its global ambition. Back in the 1980s, Deng Xiaoping, the paramount leader who followed Mao Zedong, advised that China should lie low and bide its time, getting rich first and only seeking global glory later on.

Thirty years later, today’s party general secretary and national president, Xi Jinping, has made it clear that the CCP needs to make a splash in the world. The party’s global ambitions take many forms. They include the Belt and Road Initiative — the label given to the plan to provide loans for infrastructure development across Asia, Africa, and even Latin America. China also has sought more influence at the United Nations, including in key institutions such as the World Health Organization. Trade agreements are also part of the plan. The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership is a free-trade agreement that puts China at the heart of an economic network across the Asia-Pacific; the US is not a member.

Finally, but perhaps most significantly, the CCP is using technology to change society both at home and abroad. China spent 2.4% of its GDP on research and development in 2020, and the technology produced by this investment has both military and civilian uses: For instance, artificial intelligence can be used by the security services to pinpoint dissidents via specific technologies like facial recognition, but it can also turn up consumer insights from the vast e-payments system that is making cash more and more outdated in China.This serves the party’s purposes, giving people everyday convenience while generating huge amounts of data that, many predict, will allow for unprecedented political control.

In 2012, soon after he became General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), Xi Jinping gave a speech at a foreign press briefing on what he sees as the road ahead for China. Ironically, in an address dedicated to the future of China, it was history that stood out as the focal point. Xi pointed to China’s “five thousand years and more of evolution as a civilization” in which the nation had made “indelible contribution to the progress of human civilization”. He also spoke about the hardships and sufferings endured by China in modern history and how “since its founding, the Communist Party of China had made great sacrifices and forged ahead against all odds.”

The role of history has been paramount in a China led by the Communist Party. Journalist Ian Johnson in his essay, ‘The presence of the past- A coda’ (2016), takes stock of this when he writes, “Communism itself is based on historical determinism: one of Marx’s points was that the world was moving inexorably towards Communism, an argument that regime builders like Lenin and Mao used to justify their violent rise to power.”

The CCP has succeeded in holding onto power because it is an unashamedly nationalist party. It believes that China was weakened in the 19th century because it did not have a clear idea of what kind of state it wanted to be. The CCP fiercely guards its territorial boundaries, and it regards criticism of its internal actions as “interference” with its sovereign rights. In the past year, there has been global alarm at the constraining of rights regarding free speech and democratic activism in Hong Kong under the National Security Law of 2020, as well as the detention of Uighur citizens in what the government terms “re-education” camps in the western province of Xinjiang. (The party also maintains the stated goal of reuniting Taiwan with mainland China and has laid controversial claims on disputed territories in the South China Sea.)

“What’s interesting with the CCP is that you see from a very early stage, a very conscious decision that artists and intelligentsia, or cultural production of which history writing is a part, had to serve the interests of the party,” says Arunabh Ghosh, historian of Modern China at Harvard University. He explains this relationship between the professional historian and the state historically, when he suggests that there exists a 1000-year-old history in China of employing bureaucrats through a meritocratic exam. “What that means is that intellectuals have been employed in the imperial project in a systematic way,” he says, adding that the legacy of this system has affected the relationship between the intellectual and the state right down to the present government under Xi.

What also stands out in the history writing project in China is that the same party, over the course of a 100 years of its existence, has approached the history of China and that of its own differently at different moments in time. As the party evolved, so did its relationship with the past. What was marginalized under Mao is now glorified by Xi, critical moments of CCP’s history suppressed or recovered to suit the party, while leaders, once crucial to the party, are now deemed as uncomfortable faces in its memory. While on one hand discussing episodes such as the Cultural Revolution and the Tiananmen Square protests is almost taboo, on the other hand important leaders of the CCP who later fell out with the party like Gao Gang and Liu Shaoqi are erased from history text books.

The significance of Mao in the history of modern China can never be overemphasized. Mao to China was what Stalin was to the Soviet Union. He was the founder of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1949, and yet under him the country experienced some of the bloodiest and most controversial episodes in its history. After coming to power, Mao consolidated his control over the country through campaigns against landlords and counter-revolutionaries. His anti-rightist campaign between 1957 and 59 is known to have led to the execution of hundreds and thousands of critics of the party. The Great Leap Forward, an economic and social campaign initiated by Mao in 1958 to reconstruct the Chinese agrarian economy according to a Communist model resulted in what is believed to be the greatest famine in the history of the country.

Then came the Cultural Revolution, a movement that lasted for 10 years and led to unprecedented class violence and destruction of cultural artefacts. A 1994 report in the Washington Post suggests that Mao was responsible for more than a 100 million deaths, caused by the dozen or so campaigns launched by him between 1949 and 1976 when he died. The year 1989 is yet another landmark moment in the history of modern China. A student protest that began on account of the sudden death of CCP general secretary Hu Yaobang, soon turned into a movement centered on broader issues such as corruption, democracy, freedom of the press and the like. Thousands of students marched down to Tiananmen Square and as the protests kept developing the administration responded with both placatory as well as hardline tactics. On June 4, the government declared Martial Law and an estimated 300,000 troops of the PLA were called in to suppress the protest. Estimates of the number who died range from 1000 to 3000 and several others were wounded. The suppression of the Tiananmen protests was widely condemned by the global community.

This period of domestic turmoil received a further shock when the Soviet Union disintegrated between 1988 and 1991. “The message that a lot of the CCP leaders took was that if this can happen to the Soviet Communist Party, then this can happen to us, and how do we then prevent it from happening,” says Ghosh. One of the things that the party did very consciously after the crackdown at Tiananmen is to change the content of education. Thereafter, one of the campaigns it mounted in the early 1990s is the Patriotic Education Campaign. The primary goal of the campaign was to construct a historical memory of China in which the CCP had played a major role in the country’s independence and the influence that foreign countries had on it.

Scholars agree that what began in the 90s, has reached new heights under the Xi Jinping years. One way of doing so for the party is to promote itself aggressively as the defender of Chinese culture and traditions. Interestingly, till the 90s, most of these traditions were labeled as ‘feudal superstitions’. The glorification of China’s ancient past is best illustrated by Xi’s embrace of Confucius, the sixth century Chinese philosopher. Ironically, the party under Mao, had tried to uproot Confucian thought from Chinese society as they believed it to be a feudal leftover that hindered the growth of socialism. Xi, in contrast, visited the hometown of Confucius soon after taking over the role of president, and pledged to read Confucian texts. The following year, he became the first Communist Party leader to commemorate Confucius’ birth anniversary.

In recent years, China has emerged assertive in its territorial claims, for instance, over the East and South China Seas. At the same time it is also interested in shaping international organisations. For that effect the CCP uses the narrative of the war and its defeat of Japan to claim an elevated place in the postwar global order. As Mitter notes, Chinese thinkers argue, “China, like the United States, should be able to draw on its own record as one of the victorious allied powers to define its own vision of the region. Like other allies, China also seeks to legitimise its own behaviour and give itself prestige by virtue of its contributions to the wartime victory.”

EbrahimRaisi ,Iran’s president-elect staked out a hard-line position in his first remarks since his landslide election victory, rejecting the possibility of meeting with President Joe Biden or negotiating Tehran’s ballistic missile program and support of regional militias. The comments by EbrahimRaisi offered a blunt preview of how Iran might deal with the wider world in the next four years as it enters a new stage in negotiations to resurrect its now-tattered 2015 nuclear deal with global powers.

When asked about Iran’s ballistic missile program and its support of regional militias, EbrahimRaisi described the issues as “non-negotiable.” Judiciary chief EbrahimRaisi also described himself as a “defender of human rights” when asked about his involvement in the 1988 mass execution of some 5,000 people. It marked the first time he’s been put on the spot on live television over that dark moment in Iranian history at the end of the Iran-Iraq war.

Tehran’s fleet of attack aircraft date largely back to before the 1979 Islamic Revolution, forcing Iran to instead invest in missiles as a hedge against its regional Arab neighbours, who have purchased billions of dollars in American military hardware over the years. Iran also relies on militias like Yemen’s Houthis and Lebanon’s Hezbollah to counterbalance against enemies like Saudi Arabia and Israel, respectively.

Raisi, a protégé of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has been sanctioned by the U.S. in part over his involvement in the mass executions. His victory in the balloting last Friday came amid the lowest turnout in the Islamic Republic’s history. Millions of Iranians stayed home in defiance of a vote they saw as tipped in Raisi’s favor.Of those who did vote, 3.7 million people either accidentally or intentionally voided their ballots, far beyond the amount seen in previous elections and suggesting some wanted none of the four candidates. In official results, Raisi won 17.9 million votes overall, nearly 62% of the total 28.9 million cast.

Raisi’s election puts hard-liners firmly in control across the government as negotiations in Vienna continue to try to save a tattered deal meant to limit Iran’s nuclear program, at a time when Tehran is enriching uranium at 60% its highest levels ever, though still short of weapons-grade levels. Representatives of the world powers party to the deal returned to their capitals for consultations following the latest round of negotiations on Sunday. Top diplomats from nations involved in the talks said that further progress had been made Sunday between Iran and global powers to try to restore a landmark 2015 agreement to contain Iranian nuclear development that was abandoned by the Trump administration. They said it was now up to the governments involved in the negotiations to make political decisions.

Raisi’s election victory has raised concerns that it could complicate a possible return to the nuclear agreement. The international efforts to bring Iran back in compliance with the 2015 nuclear deal that came apart after former US President Donald Trump abandoned continued in Vienna on Sunday even as the world powers brace for a more hardline administration in Tehran.

Senior diplomats from China, Germany, France, Russia and Britain met at a hotel in the Austrian capital for the final meeting of the sixth round of talks in Vienna. Iran’s deputy foreign minister for political affairs said that almost all documents pertaining to the nuclear deal have been negotiated and that the diplomats would return to their home countries for further consultations with their governments and take a final call. But apprehension remains over the incoming Iranian president of EbrahimRaisi, who won an election that offered only a veneer of choice to the public.

Raisi is the first Iranian president sanctioned by the U.S. government even before entering office, over his involvement in the 1988 mass executions, as well for being the chief of the Iranian judiciary, which has a penchant for capital punishment and disdain for due process. Israel’s new Prime Minister Naftali Bennett warned Sunday that Raisi’s election was “the last chance for the world powers to wake up before returning to the nuclear agreement and to understand who they’re doing business with”. “These guys are murderers, mass murderers,” he added.

Biden administration officials are insisting that the election of a hard-liner as Iran’s president won’t affect prospects for reviving the faltering 2015 nuclear deal with Tehran. But there are already signs that their goal of locking in a deal just got tougher. Optimism that a deal was imminent faded as the latest talks ended Sunday without tangible indications of significant progress. And on Monday, in his first public comments since the vote, incoming Iranian President EbrahimRaisi rejected a key Biden goal of expanding on the nuclear deal if negotiators are able to salvage the old one.

At the same time, Raisi is likely to raise Iran’s demands for sanctions relief in return for Iranian compliance with the deal, as he himself is already subject to U.S. human rights penalties. “I don’t envy the Biden team,” said Karim Sadjapour, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace who has advised multiple U.S. administrations on Iran. “I think the administration now has a heightened sense of urgency to revise the deal before Raisi and a new hard-line team is inaugurated.”

The long and divisive reign of Benjamin Netanyahu, the dominant Israeli Prime Minister who led the nation for a long dozen years, officially ended, as the country’s Parliament gave its vote of confidence to a precarious coalition government stitched together by widely disparate anti-Netanyahu forces. Benjamin Netanyahu’s record 12-year run as Israel’s prime minister ended on Sunday, June 13th with Israeli Parliament approving a new “government of change” led by nationalist Naftali Bennett, an improbable scenario few Israelis once could have imagined. Israel’s Parliament, the Knesset, approved the new government by just a single vote — 60 to 59, with one abstention. Naftali Bennett took the oath of office as prime minister.

Under the coalition deal, Bennett, a 49-year-old Orthodox Jew and high-tech millionaire, will be replaced as prime minister in 2023 by centrist YairLapid, 57, a popular former television host. With his far-right Yamina party winning only six of parliament’s 120 seats in the last election, Bennett’s ascension to the premiership was a political jaw-dropper.They lead an eight-party alliance ranging from left to right, from secular to religious, that agrees on little but a desire to oust Mr. Netanyahu, the longest-serving leader in the country’s history, and to end Israel’s lengthy political gridlock.

Meanwhile, reports here suggest, Israel’s fragile new government has shown little interest in addressing the decades-old conflict with the Palestinians, but it may not have a choice.Jewish ultranationalists are already staging provocations aimed at splitting the coalition and bringing about a return to right-wing rule. In doing so, they risk escalating tensions with the Palestinians weeks after an 11-day Gaza war was halted by an informal cease-fire. Prime Minister Naftali Bennett’s best hope for maintaining his ruling coalition — which consists of eight parties from across the political spectrum — will be to manage the conflict, the same approach favored by his predecessor, Benjamin Netanyahu, for most of his 12-year rule. But that method failed to prevent three Gaza wars and countless smaller eruptions.

That’s because the status quo for Palestinians involves expanding settlements in the occupied West Bank, looming evictions in Jerusalem, home demolitions, deadly shootings and an array of discriminatory measures that two well-known human rights groups say amount to apartheid. In Gaza, which has been under a crippling blockade since the Hamas militant group seized power in 2007, it’s even worse. “They talk about it being a government of change, but it’s just going to entrench the status quo,” said Waleed Assaf, a Palestinian official who coordinates protests against West Bank settlements. “Bennett is a copy of Netanyahu, and he might even be more radical.”

Bennett said little about the Palestinians in a speech before being sworn in on Sunday. “Violence will be met with a firm response,” he warned, adding that “security calm will lead to economic moves, which will lead to reducing friction and the conflict.” Environment Minister Tamar Zandberg, a member of the dovish Meretz party, told Israeli television’s Channel 12 that she believes the peace process is important, but that the new government has agreed, “at least at this stage, not to deal with it.”

The government faces an early challenge on JabalSabeeh, a hilltop in the northern West Bank where dozens of Jewish settlers rapidly established an outpost last month, paving roads and setting up living quarters that they say are now home to dozens of families. The settlement, named Eviatar after an Israeli who was killed in an attack in 2013, was built without the permission of Israeli authorities on land the Palestinians say is privately owned. Israeli troops have evacuated settlers from the site three times before, but they returned after an Israeli was killed in a shooting attack nearby early last month.

Clearing them out again would embarrass Bennett and other right-wing members of the coalition, who already face fierce criticism — and even death threats — for allying with centrist and left-wing factions to oust Netanyahu. Meanwhile, Palestinians from the adjacent village of Beita have held regular protests against the settlement outpost. Demonstrators have thrown stones, and Israeli troops have fired tear gas and live ammunition. Three protesters have been killed, including 17-year-old Mohammed Hamayel, who was shot dead Friday. Initial reports said he was 15.

“I always taught him you should stand up for your rights without infringing on the rights of others,” his father, Said, said at a mourning event attended by dozens of villagers. He described his son as a popular teenager who got good grades and was a natural leader. “Thank God, I’m very proud of my son,” he said. “Even in martyrdom he distinguished himself.” Israel captured the West Bank, east Jerusalem and Gaza in the 1967 Mideast war, territories the Palestinians want for a future state. The settlements are seen by the Palestinians and much of the international community as a major obstacle to peace because they make it nearly impossible to create a contiguous, viable state of Palestine alongside Israel.

Every Israeli government since 1967 has expanded the settlements, and this one is unlikely to be an exception. Bennett briefly served as head of a major settler organization, and his party is one of three in the coalition that strongly support settlements.

The upcoming G7 Summit in Cornwall, UK from June 11 to 13 is perhaps the first international event, in the backdrop of the continuing Covid pandemic, when the leaders from the worlds wealthiest countries — the US, Japan, Germany, the UK, France, Italy and Canada — will be meeting with leaders from India, Australia, South Africa and South Korea face to face for the first time in the last one-and-a-half year.The leaders from the most advanced nations of the G7 meet regularly to try to determine the course the world will follow, with their own interests taking a backseat.

Expectations from the summit

There is a lot of optimism ahead of the gathering in Cornwall. US and UK government sources have briefed that the G7 will demonstrate that “the West ain’t over just yet”. The optics are bound to be promising. For the US it’ll give a chance to prove that ‘America is back’, while for the UK it’ll help to give a boost to its ‘Global Britain’ strategy.On the agenda are the autocratic challenge from Russia and China, climate change, the global vaccine rollout and trade. In addition Myanmar, Indian democracy and its minorities, instability in Sahel region, Israel-Palestinian conflict and change of guard in Israel are also expected to occupy the agenda.

A move, spearheaded by US President Joe Biden, to set a minimum global corporate tax rate to help states reclaim resources lost to tax havens seems promising. Also the British proposal to transform the G7 into a “D10” of democracies has been achieved, the participation of guests from India, Australia, South Korea and South Africa will reinforce a sense that the West is open to alliance-building again.Meanwhile, the G7 finance ministers reached a “historic” deal on taxing multinational companies, last week in London. They agreed to counter tax avoidance through measures to make companies pay in the countries where they do business., besides ratifying a global minimum corporate tax rate to counter the possibility of countries undercutting each other to attract investments. UK Chancellor Rishi Sunak described these as “seismic tax reforms” and said that it will help create a fairer tax system fit for the 21st century.

Preparations for the summit

The foreign ministers from D-10 met face-to-face for the first time in two years in May earlier, following a coronavirus-extended pause, to prepare for the summit and in the communique issued after the meeting listed 82 points which will try to grab the attention of G7 or D10 leaders. In addition the issues discussed were NATO’s withdrawal from Afghanistan, Iran, China and the threat posed by Russia.Meanwhile, Britain’s Foreign Office has said a key part of the June summit will be plans to boost girls’ education and women’s employment after the Covid pandemic would be a key topic.

G7 nations are expected to sign up to new global targets that aim to get 40 million more girls into school in low and lower-middle-income countries by 2026. The aims also include getting 20 million more girls reading by the age of 10. The countries are setting up a $15-billion fund, to be administered by developing countries over the next two years.However, the trade unionists and the wider environment movement in the UK have sounded the bugle against G7’s inability to take any concerted action on climate change. In a statement they asserted that the vaccine apartheid response to the Covid threat might be replicated in their approach to the climate crisis.

They further assert that if the world’s wealthiest countries continue to move too slowly to curb their own carbon emissions, continue to invest in and boost fossil fuel energy and production, fail to make a just transition at home while denying the global South the resources it needs to deal with climate impacts, their pretensions to “global leadership” will fail the test.A $100 billion a year transfer to the developing world to make transition possible was pledged at Copenhagen and built into the Paris Agreement to be met by 2020. But it has not been done.They further assert that this commitment is a tiny fraction of the $3.8 trillion that global banks have invested in fossil fuels since the Paris Agreement, and less than a tenth of the combined G7 military budget of $1,043bn last year.

Post-summit scenario

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson plans to use the G7 Summit to increase cooperation between the world’s democratic and technologically advanced nations. Between them, the 10 leaders represent more than 60 per cent of the people living in democracies around the world.The UK will also host several meetings throughout the year between government ministers from the G7, both virtually and in different locations across Britain. These meetings will cover economic, environmental, health, trade, technology, development and foreign policy issues.

Observers are of the view that post-summit the western world may be transformed into one where it may lose its supremacy and China may pull ahead of the West technologically and economically, secondly the West could reassert itself by investing in green industries to renew its economies and societies in the backdrop of the lessons learnt from the Covid pandemic and thus China might be neutralised, thirdly a more Eurasian Europe may emerge, due to the eclipse of both the US and UK and it’ll be drawn towards Asia’s growing economic influence. For India, the summit offers a chance to further reinforce its relationship with the UK by signing a trade treaty and for Mr Modi to establish a rapport with Biden to ensure a fruitful bilateral relationship, and to some extent this seems possible. (IANS)

China is hosting foreign ministers from the 10 ASEAN countries on Monday and Tuesday, with Beijing pushing for closer economic cooperation and aligning COVID-19 recovery efforts even as it looks to push back against the recent regional outreach of the Quad grouping. Chinese officials have in recent weeks stepped up criticism of the Quad — the informal India, Australia, Japan and United States grouping — and of Washington in particular. During recent visits to Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, China’s Defence Minister called on both countries to reject “military alliances” — a term that some Beijing are using to describe the Quad, but a label that the group rejects.

China’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said in a statement the China-ASEAN foreign ministers meeting, in the city of Chongqing, would mark the 30-year anniversary of relations and also “focus on combating COVID-19, promoting economic recovery, [and] better dovetail[ing] strategic plans.” A vaccine passport connecting China and ASEAN countries is also being discussed. China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi will hold bilateral meetings with all the visiting ministers, and also chair a meeting of the Lancang-Mekong Cooperation (LMC) with Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam.

Deepening economic cooperation, particularly following the signing of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) trade deal, would be China’s focus, analysts in Beijing said, even as it grapples with disputes over the South China Sea. Recently, China and the Philippines have clashed over the presence of Chinese vessels near a disputed reef, while Malaysia alleged the intrusion of 16 Chinese aircraft into its airspace.The Communist Party-run Global Times on Monday blamed the U.S. for those tensions rather than China’s moves that prompted the protests from the Philippines and Malaysia. Countries “see clearly that quarrels on South China Sea are not the biggest threat to regional stability; it is the U.S., whose warships frequently sail through the sensitive waters and try to force ASEAN countries take sides to confront China,” the newspaper wrote.

After the first Quad leaders’ summit held in March and the announcement of a regional vaccine initiative, many Chinese analysts framed ASEAN as a key space where Chinese and Quad initiatives may rub up against each other.China “cannot rule out the possibilities that Quad members will further rope in ASEAN members to counter China as Southeast Asia is of great significance to the US’ Indo-Pacific Strategy,” wrote Yuan Zheng, senior fellow of the Institute of American Studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. “Yet ASEAN will not easily take sides.”

The framing of the Quad as “an Asian NATO” by Beijing has been criticised by the group’s members. India’s External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar in April described the using of words such as “Asian NATO” as “a mind game which people are playing”.ProPublica: Many of the uber-rich pay next to no income tax

While Bennett and his new partners, headed by opposition leader YairLapid, still face some obstacles, the sides appeared to be serious about reaching a deal and ending the deadlock that has plunged the country into four elections in the past two years.

With the announcement by a former ally of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that he would seek to form a coalition government with the Opposition,Israel’s longest serving Isreali’s leader’s regime may come to an end, media reports here suggested/ The ultra-nationalist leader Naftali Bennett said his party would join talks to form a governing coalition with centrist party leader YairLapid. The dramatic announcement by Naftali Bennett, leader of the small hardline Yamina party, set the stage for a series of steps that could push Netanyahu and his dominant Likud party into the opposition in the coming week.

“It’s my intention to do my utmost in order to form a national unity government along with my friend YairLapid, so that, God willing, together we can save the country from a tailspin and return Israel to its course,” Bennett said.Bennett, 49, who leads the Yamina party, made his announcement in a televised address. “Mr Netanyahu is no longer trying to form a right-wing government because he knows full well that there isn’t one. He is seeking to take the whole national camp, and the whole country, with him on his personal last stand,” he said. “I will do everything to form a national unity government with my friend YairLapid.”

While Bennett and his new partners, headed by opposition leader YairLapid, still face some obstacles, the sides appeared to be serious about reaching a deal and ending the deadlock that has plunged the country into four elections in the past two years.They have until Wednesday to complete a deal in which each is expected to serve two years as prime minister in a rotation deal, with Bennett holding the job first. Lapid’sYeshAtid party said negotiating teams were to meet later Sunday.

Bennett, a former top aide to Netanyahu who has held senior Cabinet posts, shares the prime minister’s hard-line ideology. He is a former leader of the West Bank settlement movement and heads a small party whose base includes religious and nationalist Jews. Yet he has had a strained and complicated relationship with his one-time mentor due to personal differences.Bennett said there was no feasible way after the deadlocked March 23 election to form a right-wing government favored by Netanyahu. He said another election would yield the same results and said it was time to end the cycle.

“A government like this will succeed only if we work together as a group,” he said. He said everyone “will need to postpone fulfilling part of their dreams. We will focus on what can be done, instead of fighting all day on what’s impossible.”If Bennett and Lapid and their other partners can wrap up a deal, it would end, at least for the time being, the record-setting tenure of Netanyahu, the most dominant figure in Israeli politics over the past three decades. Netanyahu has served as prime minister for the past 12 years and also held an earlier term in the late 1990s.

In his own televised statement, Netanyahu accused Bennett of betraying the Israeli right wing and urged nationalist politicians not to join what he called a “leftist government. A government like this is a danger to the security of Israel, and is also a danger to the future of the state,” he said. Netanyahu is desperate to stay in power while he is on trial. He has used his office as a stage to rally his base and lash out against police, prosecutors and the media.

Despite his electoral dominance, Netanyahu has become a polarizing figure since he was indicted on charges of fraud, breach of trust and accepting bribes in late 2019. Each of the past four elections was seen as a referendum on Netanyahu’s fitness to rule, and each ended in deadlock.In order to form a government, a party leader must secure the support of a 61-seat majority in the 120-seat Knesset, or parliament. Because no single party controls a majority on its own, coalitions are usually built with smaller partners. Thirteen parties of various sizes are in the current parliament.

While Bennett’s Yamina party controls just seven seats in parliament, he has emerged as a kingmaker of sorts by providing the necessary support to secure a majority. If he is successful, his party would be the smallest to lead an Israeli government.Lapid already faced a difficult challenge, given the broad range of parties in the anti-Netanyahu bloc that have little in common. They include dovish left-wing parties, a pair of right-wing nationalist parties, including Bennett’s Yamina, and most likely the Islamist United Arab List.Although Arabs make up some 20% of Israel’s population, an Arab party has never before sat in an Israeli coalition government.

Israeli media reported that under the proposed terms of the deal, Mr Bennett would replace Mr Netanyahu, 71, as prime minister and later give way to MrLapid, 57, in a rotation agreement. The arrangement has not been officially confirmed. The proposed coalition would bring together factions from the right, the left and the centre of Israeli politics. While the parties have little in common politically, they are united in their desire to see Mr Netanyahu’s time in office come to an end.

The prime minister, who is on trial for fraud, fell short of a decisive majority at a general election in March. It was the country’s fourth inconclusive vote in two years – and again Netanyahu failed to secure coalition allies. After Netanyahu’s failure to form a government, Lapid was then given four weeks to cobble together a coalition.YohananPlesner, president of the Israel Democracy Institute, said Netanyahu will try to undermine those efforts until the end. Even if Lapid and Bennett manage to put together a government, Netanyahu is unlikely to disappear, Plesner said.Netanyahu could remain as opposition leader, working to exploit the deep ideological differences among his opponents to cause the coalition to fracture. “History teaches us it would be unwise to write him off,” he said.

India’s External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar has offered India’s support to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres for his re-election during a meeting in New York at which they discussed a range of issues from Covid-19 vaccines to terrorism.In a tweet after the meeting May 25, Jaishankar said that he told Guterres that India “values” his leadership and conveyed its support for his election to a second term. The global crisis of the Covid-19 pandemic featured prominently in their discussions.

Jaishankar tweeted that they emphasized the importance of finding “urgent and effective global vaccine solutions” and the critical need to ramp up the vaccine supply chain to “ensure greater production and fairer distribution.”With India set to assume the rotating presidency of the Security Council in August, their meeting covered a wide range of issues.In a series of tweets on the meeting, Jaishankar said that they talked about “regional challenges in India’s neighborhood” and “shared our concerns about ensuring that the gains of the last two decades in Afghanistan are adequately protected.”

U.S. President Joe Biden is pulling out the nation’s troops from Afghanistan after a 20-year deployment even as terrorist activities continue raising fears of regional instability.In his tweets Jaishankar said, “Countering terrorism and radicalization remain priorities for the entire region.”Jaishankar said that he “highlighted India’s constructive role” in the Security Council and “conveyed priorities of our presidency in August.” He added, “Maritime security and technology for peacekeeping address the needs of the day.”

A spokesperson for India’s UN Mission said that India planned to hold high-level meetings on those topics during its presidency. Jaishankar also noted that Guterres expressed “appreciation of India’s peacekeeping operations including at Goma, DRC (Democratic Republic of Congo) recently.”India peacekeepers based in Goma have been involved in rescue operations after the eruption of the Mount Nayargongo volcano displaced several thousand people in the region last week. Several hundred people are also missing following the calamity.

Climate change, a topic that Guterres gives top priority to, also was discussed, Jaishankar tweeted. “Greater resources are essential for larger ambitions (in setting goals for combatting climate change). Financing will determine our seriousness and credibility,” he added.The spokesperson for India’s UN mission said that Jaishankar “apprised the Secretary General of India’s efforts to meet its Paris commitments (on curbing greenhouse emissions), enhance renewable energy goals, as well as its leadership role in the International Solar Alliance and Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure.”

Jaishankar “underlined our strong development partnership with Africa, Small States and Small Island Developing States,” the spokesperson said. “The Secretary-General conveyed his appreciation for the consistent role played by Indian peacekeepers in support of international peace and security. Their response in aiding the people of Goma in the Democratic Republic of Congo following the volcanic eruption was recognized,” the diplomat added.In the discussion of fighting Covid-19, they felt that “the proposal by India and South Africa for a temporary waiver of vaccine patents “can also contribute to greater production and more equity,” the spokesperson said. The U.S. has agreed to the waiver, but it is facing opposition from several countries including Germany.

Guterres’s spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said that they “discussed a number of issues relating to peace and security” but said he had no further details on those topics. He also said that they discussed the Covid situation and the development of vaccines.Guterres is running for re-election with no credible opposition and in the election India gets two votes, one in the Security Council and another in the General Assembly. A Canadian of Indian descent, Arora Akanksha, has declared she is running for the office, as have at least five others, but lacking a government sponsorship, their candidacy has not so far been accepted officially.

The current crisis between Israelis and Palestinians in East Jerusalem, between Arabs and Jews in cities inside Israel, and between Israel and Hamasunravelling has its roots in the political dysfunction of both Israel’s party system and the Palestinian national movement’s decayed one-party dictatorship.

The current crisis between Israelis and Palestinians in East Jerusalem, between Arabs and Jews in cities inside Israel, and between Israel and Hamas, is not analogous to any of the previous rounds of violence inflicted on Palestinian and Israeli civilians by their increasingly feckless and bankrupt political leaders. This is not another 2014, or another 2009, or another Second Intifada. It is something new. This is what the death of the two-state solution looks like.

The current unravelling has its roots in the political dysfunction of both Israel’s party system and the Palestinian national movement’s decayed one-party dictatorship. But the precipitating event was the move by Israel’s government, last spring, to include annexation of West Bank territory in its coalition agreement, pending the resolution of the urgent COVID-19 pandemic.

For years, hardliners on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, often including officials, have sought to erase or at least to blur the Green Line — the line that separated Israel from Jordan and Egypt before June 4, 1967, which is also the line that delineated Israel’s post-1967 occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. Officials erase the line from government and textbook maps, and activists wield slogans like “from the river to the sea,” or “no settlement is illegal.” Against such pressures, from 1993 until last year, stood the commitment of both Israeli and Palestinian leaders to negotiating an end to conflict through territorial compromise. Negotiated territorial compromise, more recently shorthanded as a “two-state solution,” is what extremists on both sides were pushing against with their expansionist policies, maps and slogans. And now, at last, they have succeeded.

The movement of Israeli political leaders in 2020 — with the enthusiastic support of U.S. President Donald Trump — toward ending Israel’s Oslo commitment to negotiating territory and borders pushed the conflict to the edge of a precipice. The prospect of Israeli annexation of West Bank territory was another deep cut into the already tattered legitimacy of the Palestinian leadership in Ramallah, and it began to unravel the intricate web of Israeli-Palestinian security, economic, and regulatory coordination in the West Bank. When annexation was put on hold in August 2020, some of that cooperation resumed. But the official Israeli abandonment of negotiated compromise, alongside continued settlement expansion and the forcible relocation of Palestinian families in East Jerusalem and communities in the West Bank, made a new crisis almost inevitable. It made inescapably obvious what was already clear to many: that the Oslo framework was exhausted, and the rationale for the prevailing order in the West Bank, including the existence of the Palestinian Authority, was defunct.

The 27 years since the Oslo Declaration in 1993, for better or worse, put boundaries around a conflict that had generated major wars in every decade since 1948, along with countless acts of international and cross-border terrorism and assassination. This is not to minimize what outlived Oslo. Those 27 years saw periods of military conflict and terrorist violence that cost thousands of Israeli and Palestinian lives, along with the entrenchment of Hezbollah and Hamas, continuous Israeli expansion of Jewish settlements and the Jewish population in the West Bank, and severe restrictions on the ability of Palestinian residents of the West Bank and Gaza to live lives free of structural violence. The Palestinian Authority, created by the Oslo Accords to hold a sublease on certain responsibilities of the Israeli occupation during the negotiating period, was corrupted by its cooperation with the occupation but also by its graft, infighting, lack of accountability, and increasingly its repression and autocracy.

And still, throughout this period, the vision of a two-state solution, and the commitment of Israeli and Palestinian leaders — backed by the United States — to negotiate that compromise, also established a certain degree of clarity, predictability, and constraint in relations between Israelis and Palestinians. The injustice and violence of occupation, in which about five million people, between the West Bank and Gaza Strip, lack either citizenship or self-determination, are daily features of this reality. And yet, until now we could not begin to understand what boundaries the formal commitment to a negotiated solution put around the behavior of the two communities living cheek-by-jowl in the land both claim as their own.

The different zones of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict evident this past month — in East Jerusalem, in the streets of Israeli cities, in Gaza and in the skies over Israel — reveal just how badly those boundaries in the conflict have been breached. Palestinians in East Jerusalem, in Lod, and in Gaza all hold very different status under Israeli law and policy. But in different ways, all of them are frustrated, even enraged, both at the obstreperous supremacy advanced by ideological Jewish activists against these Palestinians’ rights, freedoms, and interests, and at the callously unequal treatment they receive at the hands of Israeli authorities. And in the wake of the riots and vigilantism in Jerusalem, Lod, Jaffa, Bat Yam and more, it’s also clear that too many Israeli Jews have come to see all of these Palestinians — whether fellow citizens or not — as their enemies.

The bankruptcy of political leadership on both sides is another reason why this crisis is so much worse, and so much more widespread, than previous episodes. Israel has held four elections in two years — and may now be on its way to a fifth, since coalition negotiations have been derailed by the violence and the political posturing around it. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s “anti-solutionism” fuels regular rounds of crisis even as it enables him to retain his hold on power despite his simultaneous trial on corruption charges. And Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s hold on power is likewise loosening — infighting within his own party torpedoed his plans for a new election that could have strengthened the legitimacy of his movement and his leadership. Instead, Hamas is able to use its rocket fire on Israeli civilians to usurp the narrative, to claim international attention and engagement, and likely also to win material benefits for itself and for Gaza Palestinians as part of an eventual ceasefire. And Israeli ministers can focus their narrative at home and abroad on defending Israeli civilians from Hamas attacks instead of the shredded fabric of Israeli society and the polarized dysfunction of its politics. This violence, redefined as another Israel-Hamas war, is all upside for the extremists and all downside for the forces of negotiated compromise and peaceful coexistence, both inside Israel and beyond the Green Line.

The latest escalation of violence demonstrates the folly of trying to marginalize this conflict for Israel, for its new Arab friends, and for the Biden-Harris administration. They may all prefer to focus on cooperation in pursuit of what they see as higher priorities. But the current crisis threatens to overturn their fragile consensus, further destabilize a fragile region, and divert the new U.S. administration’s attention from other foreign policy goals. And what we are now seeing, what Israelis and Palestinian civilians are now suffering, was more likely than not this year, as I noted in a Center for a New American Security report I published with Ilan Goldenberg and Michael Koplow in December.

A two-state outcome to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is indeed a distant prospect — but the horrific alternative is now clear. It is time for leaders in Israel, in Palestine, in the region, and around the world to take that lesson to heart, and commit to assiduous efforts to get Israelis and Palestinians back on the long, arduous path toward a negotiated resolution.

(Tamara CofmanWittes is a Senior Fellow – Foreign Policy, Center for Middle East Policy at Brookings Institute)

President Joe Biden’s plan to withdraw U.S. armed forces from Afghanistan by Sept. 11 is leading observers to renew concerns about continued progress on human rights, the status of democratic reforms and whether a resurgence of violence will set back the war-beleaguered country.

The looming concern expressed to Catholic News Service by those observers focuses on civilians, who have borne the brunt of violence for decades.

The pullout, while welcomed by the observers, is worrisome to them because they are unaware of steps to prevent a recurrence of fighting among Afghan government forces and the Taliban, a fundamentalist Islamist movement that ruled the country until its ouster by the U.S.-led coalition in 2001.

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“The U.S. policy has had diminishing returns and has not been able to achieve any significant goal over the last decade or more. The goal was to create a more secure, stable Afghanistan and that certainly has not happened,” said David Cortright director of the Global Policy Initiative at the University of Notre Dame’s Keough School of Global Affairs.

The plan, which Biden announced April 14, calls for the remaining 3,500 troops to redeploy by Sept. 11, the 20th anniversary of the al-Qaida-led jetliner attacks on the United States. In the announcement, NATO partners said they would be reassessing their commitment to maintaining troops on the ground after the departure.

Shukria Dellawar, an Afghanistan native who is policy director of the Washington-based Afghanistan Peace Campaign, said the U.S.-led war “never focused on peace,” but was fought solely to achieve a military victory.

The emphasis on meeting military goals rather than wide-scale humanitarian and political achievements poses future dangers for Afghan civilians, said Dellawar, who last visited her homeland in 2019.

“You owe it to people to leave this conflict on peaceful means,” she said. “When leaving without a peace accord and peacekeeping forces, we are leaving a colossal disaster in Afghanistan.”

The pullout from Afghanistan originally was to be completed by May 1 under an agreement negotiated in February 2020 by President Donald Trump’s administration and the Taliban. The deal called for the Taliban to stop attacking U.S. forces, sever ties with terrorist organizations, including al-Qaida, and begin negotiations with the Afghan government toward a cease-fire and peace accord.

Inter-Afghan talks began in September, but no progress has been reported. But the observers said the 2020 agreement was hardly one that will secure peace. “It’s just a troop withdrawal agreement,” said Kathy Kelly, a Christian faith-based peace activist who has visited Afghanistan numerous times during the last two decades to promote peace and reconciliation.

She feared that humanitarian efforts to address hunger, education, health care, job creation and environmental concerns will suffer without a peace accord in place. “The creation of peace would so importantly rest on alleviating the desperation people have to feed their family, have clean water, get some fuel,” Kelly said. Creating jobs that would stabilize incomes should be among the priorities of any peace talks, she added.

The observers acknowledged the work ahead is long and difficult and must expand beyond U.S. interests.

Cortright, who has written extensively about Afghanistan for 20 years, suggested that establishing an interim transitional authority that includes Taliban representation becomes the first step toward a modern Afghanistan. He said he believed neither the fragile government of Afghan President Ashraf Ghani nor the insurgent Taliban can oversee the entire country and its diverse factions alone.

Afghanistan is at the crossroads of so many powers

“It’s clear that the Afghan government cannot defeat the Taliban and it’s a problem for the Taliban that it cannot defeat the Afghan government. The Taliban doesn’t really have the support across the whole country to really win. I’m skeptical they can just fight their way into Kabul and take over,” he said.

Further, Cortright and others said, a United Nations peacekeeping mission, led by Muslim countries, must be in place to prevent potential violence as long as necessary until a wide-ranging peace accord can be negotiated.

Dellawar called for young people and women particularly to “be front and center and meaningfully included” in any peace talks.

For negotiations to be successful, neighboring countries that depend on a political stability in Afghanistan must be involved, including China, Russia, India, Pakistan and Iran, explained Lisa Schirch, senior research fellow at the Tokyo-based Toda Peace Institute, who teaches at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia.

Such talks would better be conducted under auspices of the United Nations, she told CNS, because the U.S., as a party to the conflict through its long presence in the country, has “not been able to do the mediation that is needed.”

“Afghanistan is at the crossroads of so many powers,” Schirch said. “We have always needed a regional solution. Part of the problem that the peace talks (since September) haven’t been successful is it goes beyond just the parties in Afghanistan.”

U.N. involvement, Dellawar said, would better ensure continued success in broadening human rights, particularly for women; boosting education, especially for girls; instituting democratic reforms; accessing health care; and diversifying employment.

A renewal of violence also would endanger the work of nongovernment organizations, such as Catholic Relief Services, in providing humanitarian and development assistance. CRS has operated community-based education programs since 2003. The programs have taught more than 36,000 students, 50% of them girls.

The Catholic Church, in the person of Pope Francis, may also be able to influence the peace process, the observers said. Citing the trust and respect Pope Francis has gained throughout the Muslim world for his interfaith outreach efforts, they said his encouragement to work for peace would likely be heard. “I support anything he does in terms of using his voice for peace,” Dellawar said.

The pope met in Iraq March 6 with Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, one of Shiite Islam’s most authoritative leaders. While the Taliban preach a hard-line form of Sunni Islam and hold deep disagreements with Shiites, they have reached out to some Shiite communities in an effort to build a coalition in Afghanistan.

The pope’s continuing emphasis on integral human development and the importance of protecting human dignity resonates across the Muslim world and may open channels of communication and possibilities of cooperation, Cortright told CNS.

“I can see how there can be some form of dialogue the church could help lead to facilitate the coming together of this broken society,” he said.

In Washington, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on International Justice and Peace declined comment on the U.S. withdrawal.

A month into Joe Biden’s presidency, the U.S. has rejoined nearly all the multilateral institutions and international commitments that it withdrew from under Trump. These include the World Health Organization and the Paris Climate Accords.

Most recently, on February 8th, the U.S. announced it would also rejoin the United Nations Human Rights Council (HRC) as an observer. The U.S.’ role in the human rights forum looks different than it did four years ago in light of its recent track record on civil liberties.

The HRC has two primary functions: to draft and adopt new standards for human rights and to conduct investigations into specific human rights issues. In 2018, U.S. Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley and U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced that the U.S. would be leaving the HRC, claiming that it was a barrier to any genuine global human rights protection. The U.S. had two primary grievances.

First, that the HRC has an “unconscionable” and “chronic bias” against Israel. And second, that the HRC’s membership criteria allows chronic human rights abusers to have a seat on the Council. Neither of which are entirely baseless claims.

Israel remains the only country-specific agenda item covered at every HRC meeting and Russia, China, and Eritrea — to name a few — all currently hold seats on the Council and have some of the worst human rights records in the world.

On Monday, the HRC’s 47 member states met for its 46th session, it’s third time meeting since the beginning of the pandemic. The further decline of political and civil rights as enshrined in international law will be an unavoidable hot topic.

The CIVICUS Monitor which rates UN member states’ track records of upholding the legal tenets of freedom of expression, freedom of peaceful assembly and freedom of association finds that 30 of the Council’s full member states routinely and severely restrict these rights.

And in the case of its newest observer state, the USA was recently downgraded to the Monitor’s third worst civic space rating of ‘Obstructed’. The body is a long way off from adequately representing its values.

In the case of the USA, the rating change and decline in rights is reflected by the police response to the Black Lives Matter (BLM) protest movement. During protests in 2020, law enforcement detained thousands of demonstrators, used teargas and projectiles to disperse crowds, and attacked journalists, despite the fact that most wore media credentials.

President Trump and other authority figures encouraged police officers to respond forcefully and, in some cases, requested such violent actions for their own benefit. In a perfect example of this, the Attorney General ordered the use of teargas against peaceful protesters so that President Trump could have a photo-op in front of a church.

While the BLM protests may have made the decline in civic freedoms abundantly clear, this rating change represents a longer deterioration of political and civil rights.

In response, in June the HRC unanimously passed a mandate that called for a report on ‘systemic racism’ targeted at individuals of African descent. Philonise Floyd, the brother of George Floyd, whose murder at the hands of white police officers began the mass protests, called on the human rights body to examine the U.S.’ history of racial injustice and police brutality.

In the end, the final resolution passed by the HRC called for an investigation of systemic racism globally and regrettably did not single out the U.S.

While Biden has rejoined the HRC as an observer, the U.S. must win elections in October 2021 if it wants to regain its seat on the Council. In 2019, Biden said, “American leadership on human rights must begin at home” and — in some ways — it has.

The BLM protests have sparked a degree of state and local level police reform, and Biden has made a commitment to achieving racial equity. While the U.S. should focus on improving freedoms within its borders, it should also not exempt itself from becoming a full member of the HRC again in October.

Former President Barack Obama ran for a seat on the Council because he believed the U.S. could do more to advance human rights as a member of the body. This turned out to be true— the U.S. supported the creation of several important international commissions of inquiry to investigate human rights violations.

If the rationale by Trump was that leaving the council would do more for human rights than holding a seat, it’s clear that this has not come to fruition. Whether it is freedom of speech or the right to peacefully protest, today more of the world’s population lives in ‘Closed’, ‘Repressed’ or ‘Obstructed’ countries as compared to four years ago, finds the CIVICUS Monitor.

Leadership is needed at the UN Human Rights Council on these issues, but it must come from those that have a full seat at the table and have a demonstrated track record of upholding their commitments. The U.S. is currently disqualified on both accounts. Credibility and moral leadership must come from somewhere else.

Instead, the U.S. must support other member states that are leading by example on these issues. Seven members of the HRC — Denmark, Germany, Uruguay, Netherlands, Marshall Islands, and Czechia — are rated ‘Open’ by the CIVICUS Monitor, the highest civic space rating a country can achieve.

These countries are adequately representing the values that the HRC is committed to defending. While there are surely other issues at the HRC that the U.S. will prove influential, the country is far from the inspirational example it often likes to present itself on these world stages.

At the current session of the HRC, which began on February 22nd, the U.S. should champion these members who have made meaningful progress on civil liberties and be prepared to take a backseat on issues that it so obviously falls short on.

“The Avoidable War: The Decade of Living Dangerously,” a collection of Asia Society President Kevin Rudd’s essays, articles, and speeches on the events of 2020, is now available for download at the Asia Society Policy Institute (ASPI) website. The collection is the third volume in ASPI’s annual Avoidable War series, which features Rudd’s analysis into the key trends affecting the world.

Rudd’s works provide insight into the devastating events of 2020, a year destined to be remembered as a major global inflection point — from the COVID-19 pandemic, through an implosion of multilateral governance, and to the impact on China’s domestic political economy. He shows how the year illustrated the true extent of our globalized, interconnected world, revealed dysfunction present in our institutions of national and international governance, and unmasked the real level of structural resentment, rivalry, and risk present in the world’s most critical great power relationship — that between the United States and China.

These essays, articles, and speeches — some originally published in The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, and Foreign Affairs — offer an invaluable resource for observers wishing to reflect on a tumultuous year as well as understand the forces shaping the years to come.

Download the complete collection here. Read the first volume of The Avoidable War here and the second volume here.

NEW YORK, February 13th—Today, Tibetans around the world celebrated Tibetan Independence Day, a commemoration of when the 13th Dalai Lama and the Tibetan people restored Tibet as a sovereign nation and proclaimed Tibetan independence after the failed invasion of the Manchu army.

Despite China’s brutal occupation, Tibetans inside Tibet, continue to reclaim Tibet through their protests against Chinese rule. The recent news of Chinese police murdering 19-year-old monk, Tenzin Nyima, for a non-violent protest calling for Tibetan Independence exemplifies just how severe the situation is inside Tibet. Tibetans in exile stand in solidarity with their compatriots inside Tibet by holding February 13th protests and by raising the Tibetan flag. Under Chinese Communist rule, even the mere possession of the flag can result in imprisonment, torture or worse. Therefore, Tibetans in exile who have the freedom to raise this flag do so to show China that they cannot extinguish the longing of Tibetans to be free. The #RaisetheTibetanFlag campaign saw hundreds of people around the world proudly display their Tibetan flag on social media.

In New York, Tibetans and supporters gathered outside the Chinese Consulate to raise Tibetan National Flag as a sign of protest to mark this historic day. Proclamation of Tibetan Independence was read by activists at the event and protesters chanted “Free Tibet, End to the Chinese occupation. Long live His Holiness Dalai Lama”.

“By publicly commemorating our proud history as an independent nation – a history that the Chinese government has spent over 70 years trying to erase from the global consciousness – we are reclaiming our past for future generations while strengthening our struggle so that His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama and all Tibetans can one day reunite in a free Tibet,” said Tashi Lamsang, President of RTYC New York and New Jersey.

“In occupied countries, observing independence day is a powerful expression of a people’s desire for freedom. Despite Chinese brutal occupation and their systematic attempt to erase the history, culture, and unique identity of the Tibetan people, Tibetans in Tibet, especially the new generation are reclaiming and securing the truth about Tibet’s history and increasing their calls for freedom.” Lobsang Tseten, Campaign Associate, Students for a Free Tibet.

On February 13, 1913, the great 13th Dalai Lama and the Tibetan people restored Tibet as a sovereign nation and proclaimed Tibetan independence after the failed invasion of the Manchu army. To mark this historic day, on February 13th, 2013, the global Tibet movement observed the centennial of the Declaration of Tibetan Independence by His Holiness the 13th Dalai Lama. Since then, February 13th has been celebrated worldwide by organizing flag raising ceremonies, exhibitions, lobbying events, and other creative actions to put a spotlight on Tibet’s independent past. This year marks the 9th anniversary of the celebration of Tibetan Independence day.

The New York event was organized jointly by Regional Tibetan Youth Congress New York and New Jersey and Students for a Free Tibet.

On January 6, 2021, while members of Congress met to certify the election of Joe Biden as the next president of the United States, a pro-Trump mob — urged on by the president — stormed and occupied the Capitol in Washington, D.C. The insurrection was met with shock around the country and the world.

Below, Brookings experts on foreign policy explain how the dramatic events are being viewed globally.

Madiha Afzal (@MadihaAfzal), David M. Rubenstein Fellow in the Center for Middle East Policy and the Center for Security, Strategy, and Technology: The official reaction in Pakistan was limited to the foreign ministry, which issued a relatively bland statement saying it was watching the events in Washington, and that it hoped for the situation to normalize soon and not to impact the presidential transition.

The public reaction was louder — and many-layered. People were watching closely, certainly. There was shock at the images of the insurrection in Washington unfolding on their screens. Some noted that past statements that American officials made on political transitions in Pakistan would be more applicable to the United States at this point. But at the same time, there was strong resistance to simple comparisons between the United States and countries like Pakistan. There was a sense that America had to reckon with its problems rather than indulge in a facile takedown of other countries at its own moment of crisis. And Pakistani meme-makers went to work — juxtaposing pictures of the pro-Trump extremists who stormed the Capitol next to right-wing extremists in Pakistan who have caused major destruction in the streets of Islamabad during sit-ins, very close to the seat of government.

All in all, it seems clear that these images will linger in the minds of those abroad. And that means that there will be a need for greater humility and sensitivity as America deals with issues of democracy around the world, including in countries like Pakistan.

RanjAlaaldin (@ranjalaaldin), Nonresident Fellow in the Center for Middle East Policy: The insurrection has empowered nefarious actors in Iraq, the militia groups and criminal enterprises who thrive when America’s democracy becomes imperiled. That has deadly implications for the local population. Away from the glare of the international media, it is the progressives and moderates in unstable and conflict-stricken countries like Iraq that suffer, both in the short and long term. Iraq’s protest movement has made a brave push for democratic values and good governance, at great cost to the wider civilian population and in the face of powerful Iran-aligned death squads and paramilitary groups. The rioting in Washington on January 6 will empower these groups as they look to exploit the insurrection to mount additional violent crackdowns against protesters and civil society. Some in Iraq also wish to use the January 6 events to distort and undermine the fundamental international norms and democratic principles that large swathes of the Iraqi population have embraced, but that ruling elites have struggled to implement. America’s failure to practice what it preaches has limited consequences at home, where democratic and law enforcement institutions are still strong and effective, but the consequences for others elsewhere around the world can be deadly and devastating.

MarsinAlshamary (@MarsinRA), Post-Doctoral Fellow in the Foreign Policy program: In Iraq, the public is seeing parallels between the Washington, D.C. insurrection and their own experience with politics in the last 17 years. Iraqi social media is flooded with comedic takes on the events in Washington, which make direct comparisons between Iraqi and American political figures. For example, Iraqis are recalling an event in 2016 when the followers of Muqtada al-Sadr overtook the Iraqi parliament, although that event was unrelated to election results. In a tweet, Sadr wrote: “We have always told you that Western democracy is misleading and artificial.”

Other Iraqi political elites, particularly those not allied with the U.S., have reacted in a similar way to leaders of authoritarian countries who were eager to expose the pitfalls of American democracy and double standards. More balanced analysis of the events in Washington point to the fact that democratization is always a work in progress and should never be taken for granted. In the future, the U.S. would be well-advised to approach democratizing states with less hubris and to recognize that the social divisions that make governance difficult in Iraq are similar to the unaddressed social and racial inequalities that plague American society.

Célia Belin (@celiabelin), Visiting Fellow in the Center on the United States and Europe: The events this week have been intensely covered by French media and followed by a French public mostly staying at home under COVID-19 restrictions. On social media, they expressed incredulity and shock, but also dismay at the underperformance of law enforcement, and the perceived amateurism of the rioters. Compared to other European countries, official reactions came in relatively late in the day and did not directly lay the blame on President Trump. French President Emmanuel Macron issued an unusual video in front of U.S., French, and European Union flags, where he expressed solidarity and faith in the resiliency of American democracy. He stressed the common threats facing democracies such as France and the United States, echoing a favored theme.

Marine Le Pen, leader of the far-right National Rally, deplored the events and recognized Biden as the president-elect. But her camp continues to express support for Donald Trump and spread conspiracy theories regarding fraud allegations and antifa rioters. She also denounced censorship of Trump on social media, which the vice president of the National Rally called “digital totalitarianism.” Jean-Luc Mélenchon, of the far-left France Insoumise, suggested that this was a natural backlash in response to the U.S. “organizing coups” and “rigging elections” abroad. Some French have compared the violence of the riot in the Capitol to the Gilets Jaunes (yellow vest) protests, in particular the 2018 vandalizing of the Arc de Triomphe. In the context of a tense pre-presidential campaign season, many French view the political divisions and violence plaguing America as harbingers of conflicts to come in their own country.

Charles T. Call (@call4pax), Nonresident Senior Fellow in the Center for Security, Strategy, and Technology and the Latin America Initiative: The sight of the U.S. Capitol being invaded by a mob sparked diverse reactions among Latin Americans, including horror, sympathy, and familiarity. One common reaction was to dismiss the notion of American exceptionalism. The United States showed itself to have much in common with other countries that have experienced instability, racism, and authoritarianism. Correspondingly, many used the occasion to criticize the moralizing tone of U.S. policy toward the region, noting that preaching about democracy and human rights will ring hollow. Some denounced the centuries-old “Monroe Doctrine,” which had been re-embraced by the Trump administration. Humorous memes about banana republics and the U.S. role in perpetrating coups swept through social media.

On the other hand, Latin American commentators also expressed sadness and sympathy with the plight of the United States. Already concerned about the rise of authoritarian populism in the region, pro-democracy advocates in the region see the urgency of the fight against white nationalism and extremism in the United States. There is little question that the fate of political movements in the United States affects the region, and the disquiet felt by North Americans is also being felt by Latin Americans.

Vanda Felbab-Brown (@VFelbabBrown), Senior Fellow in the Center for Security, Strategy, and Technology: Mexican President Andrés Manuel LópezObrador remains one of the world’s few leaders who has not condemned the violence on Capitol Hill. Under the guise of non-interference in other countries’ affairs, he stated: “We’re not going to intervene in these matters, which are up to the Americans to resolve.” Yet at the same time, this very week, he offered asylum to Julian Assange, clearly prepared to interfere in U.S. justice issues.

Despite the invectives President Trump has levied against Mexican people, LópezObrador has maintained a sort of friendship with Donald Trump, a relationship based on the Trump administration’s willingness to ignore Mexico’s faulty policies and backsliding in a range of issues. LópezObrador issued an oblique statement in response to questions about the mob aggression on Capitol Hill, saying: “We hope there will be peace, that democracy, which is the people’s power, will prevail.” That can be read between the lines as an endorsement of Trump’s tactics of street protests and thuggery, something LópezObrador, a fellow populist, employed in order to protest and try to reverse his electoral defeat in 2006. The Mexican president also criticized Facebook and Twitter for banning Trump for his incitement of the violence.

LópezObrador’s lack of condemnation is all the more significant given the Mexican government’s recent actions: LópezObrador refused to congratulate Joe Biden on his electoral victory and recently announced that he would not attend Biden’s inauguration. And last month, he eviscerated U.S.-Mexican security cooperation. LópezObrador is setting up a posture of a very cold shoulder, bordering on hostility, toward the incoming Biden administration.

Lindsey W. Ford (@lindseywford), David M. Rubenstein Fellow in the Center for East Asia Policy Studies: The images of an armed mob attacking the U.S. Capitol sent shock waves through allied capitals. In Canberra, Australian officials expressed dismay over the violent attack, but were quick to affirm their faith in the resilience of America’s democratic institutions and the strength of the American people. This support from U.S. allies is not merely an offering of friendship. It reflects the recognition that the resilience of the American system and America’s exercise of democracy at home has implications for the exercise of democracy abroad. As one Australian scholar argued this past week: “American democracy matters too much for us to remain silent.”

Yet this past week’s events also reminded U.S. allies that the power of America’s example can cut both ways. Over the past few months, President Trump’s disinformation campaign spread to Australia’s shores as well. Conservative media outlets echoed President Trump’s talking points. Members of parliament shared social media posts spreading U.S. conspiracy theories. Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison is now under fire to denounce these statements from members of his party.

Australia and the United States have fought side-by-side to defend democracy for decades. In the past few years, both countries have both been on the forefront of global efforts to fight disinformation and authoritarianism abroad. But this past week should serve as a powerful reminder that these efforts cannot be divorced from the need to protect democratic institutions at home.

Ryan Hass (@ryanl_hass), Senior Fellow in the John L. Thornton China Center and the Center for East Asia Policy Studies: The January 6 insurrection in Washington, D.C., provided powerful ammunition to Chinese propagandists that long have sought to delegitimize democracy as a dangerous Western conceit that lacks solutions for 21st-century societal challenges. Chinese media outlets broadcast images of mayhem inside the American Capitol to a domestic audience to buttress a narrative of America as a country in descent, plagued by deep divisions and a broken political system. Externally, official Chinese media outlets used news of the insurrection to make the case that the greatest threat the United States faces is itself, not China. When the day began January 6, one of the major news stories was the arrest of over 50 pro-democracy leaders in Hong Kong. The insurrection in Washington, D.C., deflected international attention away from this deeply troubling development. The images of insurrectionists occupying America’s legislative seat of power will be part of the Chinese official media’s playback loop for a long time to come. The incoming Biden administration will need to take early and durable steps to chip away at a solidifying perception in Beijing that the United States has lost its capacity for self-correction.

Kemal Kirişci (@kemalkirisci), Nonresident Senior Fellow in the Center on the United States and Europe: The images from the storming of the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob attracted reactions from all around the world. The Turkish response raised some eyebrows. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs called “on all parties in the U.S. to maintain restraint and prudence,” as if the winners of an extensively scrutinized election were on par with sore losers, ready to disregard all institutions and norms of a democratic country. It then went on to advise “Turkish citizens in the U.S. to avoid crowded areas and places where protests are taking place,” mirroring standard U.S. State Department travel advisories for U.S. citizens visiting countries facing disturbances (including a recent one for Turkey).

A second response came from the speaker of the Turkish parliament in the form of a tweet expressing the belief that problems can “always be solved within law and democracy,” adding: “As Turkey, we have always been in favor of the law and democracy and we recommend it to everyone.” Since those statements, “law and democracy” in the U.S. has prevailed, setting the scene for a peaceful transfer of power. The disingenuity of the calls coming from a country listed as “not free” by the Freedom House’s annual study of political rights and civil liberties worldwide is self-evident.

More striking is the wording of these statements. They are an almost verbatim translation of the statements issued by the U.S. government as the Turkish parliament was attacked by F-16s during a military coup attempt in July 2016 — suggesting sarcasm rather than genuine concern.

Suzanne Maloney (@maloneysuzanne), Vice President and Director of the Foreign Policy program: For Iran’s leaders, the dramatic developments in Washington offered tantalizing vindication of their long-held narrative about the failure of liberal democracy and the inevitable decline of the West. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei used the episode to deride American politics as a “fiasco,” adding that “today, the U.S. and ‘American values’ are ridiculed even by their friends.” Hossein Dehqan, a former defense minister and aspiring presidential candidate, sneered on Twitter that the “architect of all riots, coup d’etats, and color revolutions” now had its own Congress “overtaken by protesters.”

Elsewhere, pro-government social media highlighted the apparent hypocrisy of American public diplomacy during times of turbulence within Iran. Some made derisive comparisons between the death of a woman who joined in the attack on the Capitol and Neda Aghasoltan, whose murder became a symbol of Tehran’s vicious repression of its 2009 protests. However, the effectiveness of the government’s propaganda is unclear; in a televised discussion, several activists challenged the seeming approval of the upheaval at the Capitol against the condemnations of Iranian protesters.

Wednesday’s scenes of frenzied crowds scaling the walls of the U.S. Capitol and overrunning security to wreak havoc in the halls of American power evoked memories of the 1979 seizure of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran. Iran’s descent in mob violence did not end well. The embassy takeover facilitated the full descent of the revolution’s democratic aspirations into an authoritarian theocracy and generated a bitter standoff with Washington that continues today. At a time when tensions between the two countries are at a discomfiting high, the unrest and political polarization in the United States only intensifies the dangers.

Michael O’Hanlon (@MichaelEOHanlon), Senior Fellow and Co-Director for the Center for Security, Strategy, and Technology: I am not tracking any one country or region in particular; my esteemed colleagues do that much better than I can, and I take seriously what they say about the concerns around the world. However, I am more relaxed than some on this issue. While January 6 was a terrible day for our nation, it was also a sobering day that has already produced a partial correction. Moreover, the nation has made huge mistakes before — think Vietnam, for example, or the early conduct of the Iraq war — and recovered internationally. Other countries do not make their decisions about alliances and other such grave matters of war and peace, or economic alignment, based on popularity contests or any expectation that the United States is unblemished. Had Trump won reelection, that would have been serious. But this domestic tragedy, however scary, will soon be placed in a larger context. Based on its geography, its demographics, its Constitution, and its power, the United States will still enjoy much the same position in future world affairs as it has had in the recent past, I predict.

Bruce Riedel, Senior Fellow in the Center for Middle East Policy: Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states closely watched the riot at the U.S. Capitol on January 6. The Saudi media covered the story extensively; Qatar’s Al Jazeera was even more fixated on the dramatic attack and the condemnation of President Trump that has ensued. The Saudis have been very supportive of Trump since 2016, especially after they were implicated in the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Riyadh is very concerned that the new administration is going to reassess ties with the kingdom for the worse. With President Trump leaving under the shadow of inciting violence against Congress, their alarm is all the more unsettling for the royals closest to Trump and his family. Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman is especially vulnerable, given his role in reportedly orchestrating Khashoggi’s death and in the Yemen war. He can expect nothing like the complete support he got from the Trump, and he will face skeptical scrutiny from the Biden team and the new Congress. The Saudis are right to be worried by their four years of close association with a man now tainted as both a loser and a violent threat to the rule of law.

Natan Sachs (@natansachs), Fellow and Director of the Center for Middle East Policy: The scenes in Washington on January 6 were deeply troubling for America and, by extension, for its standing in the world and for the very image of democracy worldwide. The most important aspect is clear: an attempt, incited by a sitting president, to disrupt the core constitutional process of transfer of power. There is a major silver lining here: Congress reconvened, and there is value in the symbolism of Vice President Mike Pence himself officially confirming the victory of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. And yet the images were striking and reached across the globe. America was unable to conduct what should be regular and boring business without mayhem sent from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Moreover, as more than one foreign observer said to me: If the United States cannot even protect the office of the speaker of the house, or the dais in the House of Representatives chambers, from rioters clad in Viking helmets, what has happened to America’s basic capacity to govern its affairs? This comes, of course, after four years of domestic turmoil and amid a remarkable and continuing failure of the U.S. government to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic. Here too, the silver lining is important. Despite all the gloating on official media in Russia, China, and Iran, the United States institutions did prevail. The “city upon the hill” shines less brightly today, but it’s still standing, if in need of a major cleanup.

ConstanzeStelzenmüller (@ConStelz), Senior Fellow in the Center on the United States and Europe: In Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel made unusually frank comments on the day after the storming of the Capitol: She spoke of “disturbing images” that had made her “furious and also sad.” Laying the blame squarely at the feet of the president, she said “I greatly regret that president Trump did not concede his defeat in November — or yesterday,” and she added that this had “created the atmosphere in which such violent events become possible.” The country’s president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, was even more forthright; he called the protesters “an armed mob, incited by a sitting president.” However, he also reminded Germans that QAnon believers had attempted to storm the Reichstag building in Berlin in August. Daniel Brössler, a commentator for the German daily SüddeutscheZeitung, reminded readers that democracy in Germany has also been under attack from right-wing forces in Germany. He wrote: “Germany‘s democracy owes its existence to the U.S. Now it owes them solidarity, no less than after the attacks of 9/11. Including for its own sake. The notion that German democracy could survive without its American counterpart is absurd.”

(Picture Courtesy: People.com)