Friday, February 3, 2017

‘This was the worst call by far’: Trump badgered, bragged and abruptly ended phone call with Australian leader

After what President Trump reportedly called "the worst call by far,” with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull on Jan. 28, Turnbull gave sparse details at a news conference on Feb. 2, but said, "I stand up for Australia in every forum, public or private." (Video: AuBC via AP / Photo: AP and Bloomberg)

By Greg Miller and Philip Rucker February 2 at 9:25 AM

It should have been one of the most congenial calls for the new commander in chief — a conversation with the leader of Australia, one of America’s staunchest allies, at the end of a triumphant week.

Instead, President Trump blasted Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull over a refugee agreement and boasted about the magnitude of his electoral college win, according to senior U.S. officials briefed on the Saturday exchange. Then, 25 minutes into what was expected to be an hour-long call, Trump abruptly ended it.

At one point, Trump informed Turnbull that he had spoken with four other world leaders that day — including Russian President Vladimir Putin — and that “this was the worst call by far.”

[Why Trump’s rebuke could be good for Australia’s prime minister]

Trump’s behavior suggests that he is capable of subjecting world leaders, including close allies, to a version of the vitriol he frequently employs against political adversaries and news organizations in speeches and on Twitter.

“This is the worst deal ever,” Trump fumed as Turnbull attempted to confirm that the United States would honor its pledge to take in 1,250 refugees from an Australian detention center.

Trump, who one day earlier had signed an executive order temporarily barring the admission of refugees, complained that he was “going to get killed” politically and accused Australia of seeking to export the “next Boston bombers.”

Trump returned to the topic late Wednesday night, writing in a message on Twitter: “Do you believe it? The Obama Administration agreed to take thousands of illegal immigrants from Australia. Why? I will study this dumb deal!”

[Here’s what the ‘dumb deal’ on refugees with Australia actually says]

U.S. officials said that Trump has behaved similarly in conversations with leaders of other countries, including Mexico. But his treatment of Turnbull was particularly striking because of the tight bond between the United States and Australia — countries that share intelligence, support one another diplomatically and have fought together in wars including in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The characterizations provide insight into Trump’s temperament and approach to the diplomatic requirements of his job as the nation’s chief executive, a role in which he continues to employ both the uncompromising negotiating tactics he honed as a real estate developer and the bombastic style he exhibited as a reality television personality.

The depictions of Trump’s calls are also at odds with sanitized White House accounts. The official readout of his conversation with Turnbull, for example, said that the two had “emphasized the enduring strength and closeness of the U.S.-Australia relationship that is critical for peace, stability, and prosperity in the Asia-Pacific region and globally.”

President Trump’s hostile phone call with Australia’s prime minister puts a spotlight on the alliance of the United States, Great Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. (The Washington Post)

A White House spokesman declined to comment. A senior administration official acknowledged that the conversation with Turnbull had been hostile and charged, but emphasized that most of Trump’s calls with foreign leaders — including the heads of Japan, Germany, France and Russia — have been productive and pleasant.

Trump also vented anger and touted his political accomplishments in a tense conversation with Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto, officials said. The two have sparred for months over Trump’s vow to force Mexico to pay for construction of a border wall between the two countries, a conflict that prompted Peña Nieto to cancel a planned meeting with Trump.

Even in conversations marred by hostile exchanges, Trump manages to work in references to his election accomplishments. U.S. officials said that he used his calls with Turnbull and Peña Nieto to mention his election win or the size of the crowd at his inauguration.

[In fight with Trump, Mexico has plenty of ways to punch back]

One official said that it may be Trump’s way of “speaking about the mandate he has and why he has the backing for decisions he makes.” But Trump is also notoriously thin-skinned and has used platforms including social-media accounts, meetings with lawmakers and even a speech at CIA headquarters to depict his victory as an achievement of historic proportions, rather than a narrow outcome in which his opponent, Hillary Clinton, won the popular vote.

The friction with Turnbull reflected Trump’s anger over being bound by an agreement reached by the Obama administration to accept refugees from Australian detention sites even while Trump was issuing an executive order suspending such arrivals from elsewhere in the world.

The issue centers on a population of about 2,500 people who sought asylum in Australia but were diverted to facilities off that country’s coast at Nauru and Manus Island in Papua New Guinea. Deplorable conditions at those sitesprompted intervention from the United Nations and a pledge from the United States to accept about half of those refugees, provided they passed U.S. security screening.

[After years of hosting a notorious refugee camp for Australia, Papua New Guinea says: Enough.]

Many of the refugees came from Iran, Iraq, Sudan and Somalia, countries listed in Trump’s order temporarily barring their citizens from entry to the United States. A special provision in the Trump order allows for exceptions to honor “a preexisting international agreement,” a line that was inserted to cover the Australia deal.

But U.S. officials said that Trump continued to fume about the arrangement even after signing the order in a ceremony at the Pentagon.

“I don’t want these people,” Trump said. He repeatedly misstated the number of refugees called for in the agreement as 2,000 rather than 1,250, and told Turnbull that it was “my intention” to honor the agreement, a phrase designed to leave the U.S. president wiggle room to back out of the deal in the future, according to a senior U.S. official.

Before Trump tweeted about the agreement Wednesday night, the U.S. Embassy in Canberra had assured Australian reporters that the new administration intended to take the refugees.

“President Trump’s decision to honour the refugee agreement has not changed,” an embassy spokesman had told the reporters, according to an official in the Sydney consulate. “This was just reconfirmed to the State Department from the White House and on to this embassy at 1315 Canberra time.”

The time the embassy said it was informed the deal was going ahead was 9:15 p.m. in Washington, one hour and 40 minutes before Trump suggested in a tweet that it might not go ahead.

During the phone conversation Saturday, Turnbull told Trump that to honor the agreement, the United States would not have to accept all of the refugees but only to allow each through the normal vetting procedures. At that, Trump vowed to subject each refugee to “extreme vetting,” the senior U.S. official said.

Trump was also skeptical because he did not see a specific advantage the United States would gain by honoring the deal, officials said.

Trump’s position appears to reflect the transactional view he takes of relationships, even when it comes to diplomatic ties with long-standing allies. Australian troops have fought alongside U.S. forces for decades, and the country maintains close cooperation with Washington on trade and economic issues.

Australia is seen as such a trusted ally that it is one of only four countries that the United States includes in the “Five Eyes” arrangement for cooperation on espionage matters. Members share extensively what their intelligence services gather and generally refrain from spying on one another.

There also is a significant amount of tourism between the two countries.

Trump made the call to Turnbull about 5 p.m. Saturday from his desk in the Oval Office, where he was joined by chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon, national security adviser Michael Flynn and White House press secretary Sean Spicer.

At one point, Turnbull suggested that the two leaders move on from their impasse over refugees to discuss the conflict in Syria and other pressing foreign issues. But Trump demurred and ended the call, making it far shorter than his conversations with Shinzo Abe of Japan, Angela Merkel of Germany, François Hollande of France or Putin.

“These conversations are conducted candidly, frankly, privately,” Turnbull said at a news conference Thursday in Australia. “If you see reports of them, I’m not going to add to them.”

A. Odysseus Patrick in Sydney, contributed to this report.

Editor’s note: This article has been updated and a reference to an AP report on the details of a phone conversation between President Trump and Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto removed because they could not be independently confirmed.

EXCLUSIVE: Former Turkish PM warns Muslim ban a gift for 9/11 terrorists

Ahmet Davutoglu says Trump travel ban is 'institutionalisation of Islamophobia' and plays into hands of terrorists

President Donald Trump's ban on travel from some Muslim-majority countries has been widely condemned (AFP)

David Hearst- Thursday 2 February 2017

President Donald Trump’s Muslim travel ban is the biggest gift the perpetrators of 9/11 could have imagined, Professor Ahmet Davutoglu, the former prime minister of Turkey, writes today exclusively in Middle East Eye.

The idea behind 9/11 was to drive a wedge between peoples, religions, societies and civilisations, the former prime minister, who also served as foreign minister, says.

And in an excoriating attack on the foreign policy of Trump’s 12-day-old administration, the former Turkish prime minister adds: “This Muslim ban will reward these perpetrators with a gift that they could never have imagined before.“

READ: Professor Ahmet Davutoglu on Obama and Trump, lessons and challenges

Professor Davutoglu calls the ban an “institutionalisation of Islamophobia as a government policy of a superpower” which will increase polarisation worldwide and activate the fault lines in societies, religions and civilisations.

He continues: “The securitisation of Islam and Muslims will drive a further wedge not only between the US and its own Muslim population, but also between the US and the larger Islamic world.”

Professor Davutoglu says it is an irony of history that Trump signed the Muslim ban on Holocaust Remembrance Day, "when the guiding principle of this remembrance should have been never to again stigmatise any people, religion or society collectively".

Danger in embassy relocation, Brexit support

Professor Davutoglu was prime minister of Turkey from August 2014 until May 2016, and foreign minister from May 2009 until August 2014. Still a member of parliament for the AK Party, he had a seat at the table for many of the major events in Middle East foreign policy during the last decade.

He highlights future dangers, including Trump’s declared intention of moving the US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem which, if implemented, would be a “fatal mistake”. Professor Davutoglu says the move would be inimical to US interests, almost certainly spark bloody conflict between Palestine and Israel and torpedo any chance of a two-state solution.

More importantly, the relocation would also further destabilise the region with a “further cycle of violence and bloodshed” that would “provide fertile political ground for extremism of all sorts to thrive in the region.”

“Jerusalem is not only Jerusalem,” Professor Davutoglu says. “It is not only a disputed issue between Israel and Palestine or even the Arabs as a whole, but is a much bigger potential source of friction."

The reversal and undoing of the European integration project would be one of the gravest mistakes since World War II

- Professor Ahmet Davutoglu

Professor Davutoglu then turns to the implications of Trump’s love affair with Brexit, and courting of European populist movements. He predicts that the president’s belittling of the European integration project and the downplaying of NATO would “shake the bond” between the transatlantic community which would again be counter-productive to US national interests.

“The reversal and undoing of the European integration project would be one of the gravest mistakes since World War II, and its consequences would be deep and far-reaching,” he writes.

“This process may once again give rise to the long-buried question of the balance of power in Europe. This would not only be tragic news for Europe, but it would also directly and immediately undermine the global standing of the United States.”

All three features of Trump’s foreign policy, along with the renewed assertion of US unilateralism, will diminish the US role and presence, both in the Middle East and the world, Professor Davutoglu predicts.

How Obama failed in the region

The lessons of Barack Obama’s foreign policy failures are not being learned, the former Turkish prime minister warns, discussing three major foreign policy failures of the past decade: Israel-Syria peace talks, Syria and the Iran deal.

The first was when Professor Davutoglu led the Turkish mediators who presided over peace talks between Israel and Syria which, it was hoped, would produce a framework agreement for a peace deal by the end of 2008. Instead, the bid was derailed by Israel’s decision to invade Gaza.

“We naturally felt betrayed by the fact that Israel had once again chosen war at the very moment that the prospect of a peace deal with Syria was becoming attainable,” says Professor Davutoglu “and that they failed to inform us about their intention to go to war, despite the fact that Israel’s then-prime minister Ehud Olmert had a long talk over dinner with our then-prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey only days before the invasion.”

Professor Davutoglu believes a treaty could have transformed the region. “Yet, to our dismay, the Obama administration chose not to invest any energy or effort in reviving this initiative.”

Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu (R) meets with Syrian President Bashar Assad in 2011 (AFP/Turkey foreign ministry)

The second instance was in August 2011, when Professor Davutoglu held six hours of talks with Syrian President Bashar Assad, who agreed to a 14-point framework for a peaceful transition and a two-week period in which to declare it.

“We informed our American counterpart about the deal. Yet the US administration was rushing to declare the Assad regime as illegitimate, which it did only a week after we agreed upon the framework deal.

“Needless to say, during the same time period, the Assad regime also violated the terms of this framework deal several times. Thereafter, we also cut all the contacts with the regime."

'Five years later, the P5+1 had to settle on a deal at a time when Iran had achieved a much higher level of enrichment'

- Professor Ahmet Davutoglu

Even on the nuclear deal with Iran, the former Turkish prime minister writes that Obama had to settle for a less favourable deal than the one that Turkey and Brazil had negotiated with Iran in May 2010.

He recalls how he and Celso Amorim, foreign minister of Brazil, negotiated with Tehran for 17 hours without a break in May 2010, then informed the US about their intention to settle the dispute.

“We expected a positive response from Washington, but the Obama administration rebuffed the deal, only because it wasn’t achieved by the P5+1.

“At that time, Iran’s level of enrichment capacity was relatively low. Five years later, the P5+1 had to settle on a deal at a time when Iran had achieved a much higher level of enrichment.”

Obama’s ‘irresponsible policies’

Finally, Professor Davutoglu believes that the Obama administration's objective in Iraq was “getting out” rather than “getting Iraq right”.

The former Turkish foreign minister argues that Obama’s biggest foreign policy failure came in 2013, when he was equivocal in his response to the breach of his red lines in Syria and to the military coup in Egypt.

"Obama’s inaction on both fronts encouraged dictators to commit further atrocities to retain power, fed the extremist narrative and undermined democracy," he says, adding that 2013 was key to the exponential expansion of IS the following year.

'Obama’s inaction on both fronts [Syria and Egypt] encouraged dictators to commit further atrocities to retain power, fed the extremist narrative and undermined democracy'

- Professor Ahmet Davutoglu

But it also sent signals to others that they could count on US inaction, he argues, saying that Vladimir Putin would not have been so active in Crimea and Ukraine in 2014, and in Syria in 2015 had the Obama administration been able to match its words with deeds.

“Russian activism from Ukraine to Syria, and from Crimea to Libya, is all the direct result of the fading away of the deterrence built on the US commitment to upholding the rules and principles of international law and its declared goals, be it by default or by design,” Professor Davutoglu writes. He says future historians will treat 2013 as the year that shaped the course of ensuing decades.

“Most of the malaises associated with [George W Bush’s] half-baked and short-sighted policy of interventionism, particularly but not exclusively in the Middle East, were mirrored in Obama’s misplaced policy of withdrawal from the Middle East,” Professor Davutoglu says.

“The idea and mindset of ‘withdrawal’ from the Middle East seems to have afforded the Obama administration the space to pursue inconsequential, ineffective and irresponsible policies towards the region.”

History’s verdict on Obama, Professor Davutoglu concludes, will be a damning one. Despite his rhetoric, Obama “chose to be a prisoner of the status quo” rather than a transformative foreign policy figure.

U.N. Chief Rebukes Trump Over Travel Ban

BY COLUM LYNCH-FEBRUARY 1, 2017 - 2:54 PM

U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres delivered a sharp rebuke of President Donald Trump’s travel ban, saying it is more likely to endanger Americans than shield them from future terrorist attacks.

“This is not the way to best protect the United States or any other country in relation to the serious concerns that exist about the possibility of terrorist infiltration,” he told reporters Wednesday at U.N. headquarters. “I think these measures should be removed sooner rather than later.”

The U.N. leader’s remarks raised the risk of a possible confrontation with the new U.S. president, who has reacted angrily to challenges to his actions. And it comes at a delicate moment, when the United Nations is facing the threat of severe budget cuts from congressional Republicans and some in the White House.

Last week, the New York Times obtained a draft White House executive order calling for steep cuts of up to 40 percent of U.S. voluntary funding to the U.N., potentially crippling popular U.N. agencies like the World Food Program and UNICEF. But U.S. officials have since backed away from putting the draft, which has been reviewed by Foreign Policy, before the president for signing.

Guterres, hoping to start off on the right foot with Trump, has sought to avoid an open confrontation over the ban, initially leaving it to his spokesman to issue a mildly worded appeal to bring an end to it as soon as possible.

Facing criticism for holding his fire, Guterres issued a statement Tuesday saying that while all governments had an obligation to prevent terrorist infiltration of their borders, they cannot discriminate on the basis of religion, ethnicity, or nationality.

In his remarks Wednesday, Guterres tried to avoid weighing on possible budget cuts. “When we talk too much about things that have not happened, you trigger the happening of those things,” he said.
Instead, Guterres said he would focus his energies on doing everything he can to “prove the added value of the U.N.” and to pursue reforms that will persuade the United States and other governments that the organization merits their support.

Trump’s order has triggered protests at airports around the country and fueled widespread condemnation from American friends and foes. Even British Prime Minister Theresa May, who has sought to cultivate warm ties with Trump, issued a mild statement late Saturday noting: “We do not agree with this kind of approach, and it is not one we will be taking.”

But Guterres was less diplomatic about Trump’s most controversial executive order, which bars travelers from seven predominantly Muslim countries — Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen — for 90 days and which bars travelers from Syria indefinitely.

He said Trump’s measures “indeed violate our basic principles” regarding the treatment of refugees. “And I think they are not very effective, if the objective is to really avoid terrorists entering the United States.”

International terrorists, he added, are highly sophisticated adversaries who would be more likely to dispatch suicide bombers with passports from developed countries than from the world’s hot spots or recruit home-grown disaffected radicals to carry out terrorist attacks. It’s important, he concluded, not to impose measures “that spread anxiety and anger” that encourages the recruitment of such people.

Photo credit: FABRICE COFFRINI/AFP/Getty Images

Indian IT firms to meet Trump officials on visa reform concerns

Workers are pictured beneath clocks displaying time zones in various parts of the world at an outsourcing centre in Bangalore, February 29, 2012. REUTERS/Vivek Prakash

By Sankalp Phartiyal | MUMBAI- Fri Feb 3, 2017

Indian IT sector leaders will meet both U.S. lawmakers and officials from U.S. President Donald Trump's administration later this month to lobby against any major changes to visa regulations that could hurt the country's $150 billion industry.

R. Chandrashekhar, head of Indian IT industry body Nasscom, said details of the visit were still being finalised, but chief executives from some of India's big IT companies would be part of a delegation visiting Washington in the week of Feb. 20.

India's software services industry is concerned about a bill introduced in the U.S. Congress seeking to double the salary paid to H-1B visa holders which would dramatically increase the costs for the Indian companies employing them.

Indian IT service companies use H-1B visas to fly engineers to the U.S., their biggest market, to service clients, but some opponents in the United States argue they are misusing the programme to replace U.S. jobs.

Earlier in the week, Nasscom warned that a bill, introduced last month by Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren, a Democrat from California, unfairly targets some of its members and will not solve a U.S. labour shortage in the tech sector.

Chandrashekhar told Reuters that the visit would also seek to emphasize the "the economic partnership that is being built between the two countries."

India's IT firms, led by Tata Consultancy Services (TCS.NS), Infosys (INFY.NS) and Wipro (WIPR.NS), have seen growth slow in 2016, as customers delayed spending ahead of the U.S. presidential election.

IT players told Reuters late last year they planned to speed up local hiring, acquire U.S. firms with bigger local workforces and make a renewed push on automation to counter the regulatory threat.

"Immigration concerns were a risk item, always there, but they are more pronounced now," said a senior executive at L&T Technology Services (LTEH.NS), who declined to be named.

Speculation that Trump may issue an executive order curbing the H-1B programme sent shares in IT companies tumbling this week.

An Indian consultant working for Infosys in the U.S. said many of his colleagues were "dejected," while another engineer working for Cisco (CSCO.O) in North Carolina said management had called in an immigration attorney to reassure employees.

India's Ministry of External Affairs said it had expressed its concerns to the U.S. government.

"No executive order has been signed so far," Vikas Swarup, a spokesman for the ministry told reporters on Thursday. "Such bills have been introduced in the past too and such bills have to go through the full Congressional process. So let's not prejudge the outcome."

(Reporting by Sankalp Phartiyal; Editing by Euan Rocha. Editing by Jane Merriman)

India: Using Army as Fodder for Parochial Politics

The Government should conduct deep surgical strikes against Delhi’s Parliament, which seldom functions and where 30 per cent of the members have one or more cases of murder, rape, kidnapping etc against them

by Ashok K Mehta-Feb 1, 2017

( February 1, 2017, New Delhi, Sri Lanka Guardian) Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president Amit Shah said demonetisation and surgical strikes would be the two key planks of the electoral campaign in the five poll-bound States. Its national executive (on January 6) referred to the strikes as out-of-the-box and in consonance with its zero tolerance to terror policy. In Goa and elsewhere, Minister for Defence Manohar Parrikar has been credited with planning and conduct of surgical strikes which he has attributed to his RSS training. Parrikar is known to spend more time in Goa strategising the election there than in strengthening the defence of the country. But the BJP has launched a stealth operation called Veiled Projection of Parrikar as the chief ministerial candidate of Goa.

The Congress’s Sachin Pilot has accused Parrikar of being disinterested in his job and not living up to his appointment. The military is mesmerised with Parrikar’s one foot in Panaji and the other in New Delhi. The problem for the BJP is that some of the opposition parties have doubted the veracity of the strikes, saying those have not ended cross-border terrorism. It is also not the case that the strikes led to tranquillity on the border. This happened largely due to new Pakistan Army chief, General Qamar Javed Bajwa’s resolve to keep the border quiet.

Using surgical strikes to win votes will politicise military operations and the Army. Further, debating surgical operations that politicians least understand, at public rallies, will be most improper. Winning the 1971 war was a world apart from the surgical but not deep strikes.

The Government has deservedly and quickly lavished 32 awards for personnel of 4 and 9 Para Special Forces who carried out the strikes, making it the most highly decorated single operation in the history of the Indian Army. Soon after the strikes, Parrikar attended a party rally at Lucknow where banners and posters carrying the pictures of DGMO Lt Gen Ranbir Singh — the public face of the surgical strikes — surrounded by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Amit Shah and Parrikar, were seen. Pictures of Army officers appearing on election posters violates Army rules, traditions and military ethos. Prime Minister Modi also visited Lucknow, the centre of gravity of the Uttar Pradesh election, where he was presented the ceremonial mace as the ultimate conqueror of the enemy. The trailer of the political harvest of the surgical strikes was shown in parts of the State last year. Although demonetisation is a double-edged weapon, it has been portrayed as a surgical strike to rid the country of corruption fake currency and terrorism. None of these objectives has been significantly achieved .

During the Kargil war, the BJP claimed major victory for evicting the Pakistan Army Northern Light Infantry disguised as terrorists from key heights in the Kargil sector in some of the most amazing uphill infantry battles, which, like the surgical strikes, were generously rewarded with a profusion of gallantry awards. The opposition Congress blamed the Government for colossal intelligence failures at strategic and tactical levels and questioned it for making a scapegoat of Brigadier Surinder Singh, the Brigade Commander who was sacked by then Army chief, Gen VP Malik. Even as the hills and mountains were being contested with the lives of Indian soldiers, a parallel war was being fought by the two parties which extended beyond the termination of hostilities — the Congress taking up legal cudgels on behalf of Brig Singh. Not only was the border skirmish severely politicised, but the spat between Gen Malik and Brig Singh also got coloured as a battle between the Government and the Opposition. It was bad for morale of the Army.

There is every likelihood of a repeat of a Kargil-like post-surgical strike electoral skirmishing between the BJP and the Opposition in the States going for elections — except possibly Manipur. The BJP is determined to extract maximum mileage from what it has showcased as Modi government’s historic decision of surgical strikes into Pakistan which was the first time any Government had owned responsibility for the operations. The Congress will contend that under its charge, the Army had carried out similar operations but these were kept under wraps.

The bone of contention, though, will be the fact that despite claims to the contrary, terrorism has not ended and attacks after the surgical strikes have continued. The electoral battles with posters featuring Army personnel at the heart of the operations, including those decorated on Republic Day, will become objects of a tug of war. One hopes that the Election Commission of India (ECI) belatedly places an embargo on using pictures of Army personnel associated with surgical strikes. Such use will unnecessarily unravel the secrecy of operations and lead to political mud-slinging to the detriment of the honour and sanctity of the Special Forces.

It is true that the target-specific multiple, shallow strikes across LoC were modest in achievements given the riders of no own casualties and be non-escalatory. That was the reason Lt Gen Ranbir Singh, soon after troops had returned to their bases, informed his counterpart that the operations were not against the Pakistan Army but terrorist launch pads.

A hands-off-surgical-strikes during the election campaigns will have the added benefit of not drawing the Pakistan Army and the Deep State into the ring, given that the first announcement of the Pakistan Army chief was that he would try to keep the LoC quiet. That promise has been kept after full five months of unabated cross-LoC violence last year. By ring-fencing Pakistan and the surgical strikes, there is every likelihood of the Composite Bilateral Dialogue resuming after the elections, a full four and a half years after the conversations were suspended following the beheading of Naik Hem Raj in January 2013.

In recent weeks, much was written about the likely politicisation of the army by supersession of two Lieutenant Generals by appointing Gen Rawat as the new COAS. It is therefore, unwise on the part of the political leadership to piggyback the Army for victory in elections when the risks of politicising military operations are high. The ECI should draw suitable red lines to keep the Army out of electoral battles, letting them keep their powder dry for the real war.

The Government should conduct deep surgical strikes against Delhi’s Parliament, which seldom functions and where 30 per cent of the members have one or more cases of murder, rape, kidnapping and dacoity registered against them. The bottom line: Politicising military operations is as disingenuous as frivolously civilianising the solemn Beating Retreat ceremony.

(The writer is a retired Major General of the Indian Army and an expert on strategic affairs)

The Oil War Is Only Just Getting Started

By Tsvetana Paraskova - Jan 31, 2017, 3:47 PM CST

It’s been a month now that investors and analysts have been closely watching two main drivers for oil prices: how OPEC is doing with the supply-cut deal, and how U.S. shale is responding to fifty-plus-dollar oil with rebounding drilling activity. Those two main factors are largely neutralizing each other, and are putting a floor and a cap to a price range of between $50 and $60.

The U.S. rig count has been rising, while OPEC seems unfazed by the resurgence in North American shale activity and is trying to convince the market (and itself) and prove that it would be mostly adhering to the promise to curtail supply in an effort to boost prices and bring markets back to balance. In the next couple of months, official production figures will point to who’s winning this round of the oil wars.

This would be the short-term game between low-cost producers and higher-cost producers.

In the longer run, the latest energy outlook by supermajor BP points to another looming battle for market share, where low-cost producers may try to boost market shares before oil demand peaks.

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BP’s Energy Outlook 2017 estimates that there is an abundance of oil resources, and “known resources today dwarf the world’s likely consumption of oil out to 2050 and beyond”.

“In a world where there’s an abundance of potential oil reserves and supply, what we may see is low-cost producers producing ever-increasing amounts of that oil and higher-cost producers getting gradually crowded out,” Spencer Dale, BP group chief economist said.

In BP’s definition of low-cost producers, the majority of the lowest-cost resources sit in large, conventional onshore oilfields, particularly in the Middle East and Russia.

Although this view that low-cost producers would try to seize more market share comes from an oil major with significant interests in Russia and Iraq, for example, BP may not be wrong in predicting that the abundance of oil resources would prompt the lowest-cost producers to pump the most out of low-cost barrels before the world starts to unwind from too much reliance on oil.

Oil demand growth is expected to slow down in the years to come. BP pegs the cumulative oil demand until 2035 at around 700 billion barrels, “significantly less than recoverable oil in the Middle East alone”.

Middle East OPEC production growth would account for all OPEC output growth by 2035, BP reckons, noting that other OPEC production typically has a higher cost base and its market share would drop.

The U.S. liquids production is expected to rise by 4 million bpd to 19 million bpd by 2035, with growth mostly in the first half of the period, driven by tight oil and NGL output.

So, both OPEC’s Middle East members and the U.S. are seen increasing oil and liquids production in the next two decades.

However, OPEC – especially Saudi Arabia – has the recent bitter experience of its pump-at-will policy for market share backfiring on its economy when oil prices crashed.

Another market-share war would involve too many unknowns, including supply-demand basics, leaner and meaner non-OPEC producers, oil price effects on oil-revenue-dependent economies, or rationale for investments in higher-cost areas.
OPEC’s decision to deliberately cut supply and abandon the strategy of pursuing market share at all costs is currently benefiting the cartel’s competitor, U.S. shale.

Commenting on OPEC’s current and future relevance and influence on the oil markets, Wood Mackenzie said in an analysis last week:

“The group may still be able to control oil prices to a limited degree, but the benefits of that control will accrue to parties outside the cartel. If OPEC remains a functional entity by the end of 2017, its greatest hits will surely be in the past.”

Five or ten years from now, a possible market share ‘oil war’ would take place on a totally different battleground, and some regiments or battalions may lack essential armory to wage such war.
By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

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Indonesian presidential decree provides hope for refugees

(File) Migrants during Friday prayers at a temporary shelter in Langsa, Aceh province, Indonesia, Friday, May 22, 2015. Source: AP Photo/Binsar Bakkara

By Max Walden | 2nd February 2017

IN one of his first acts as president, the United States’ Donald Trump issued a four-month moratorium on refugee resettlement in his country. The executive order signed last Friday also banned travel from citizens of seven Muslim-majority nations.

This announcement caused worldwide panic, including leaving hundreds of Rohingya refugees residing in Indonesia’s North Sumatra already slated for resettlement in the U.S. anxious and confused. The Indonesian government openly expressed its “deep regrets about the policy.”

In oddly fortuitous timing, however, Indonesia earlier this month introduced provisions for asylum seekers and refugees into its own migration laws for the first time in history. A presidential decree released by Joko “Jokowi” Widodo provides greater clarity regarding the status of an estimated 14,000 asylum seekers and refugees currently residing in Indonesia as they hope to be resettled elsewhere.

Until now, Indonesia’s legal system did not differentiate between ‘illegal aliens’ and asylum seekers, nor did it formally recognise refugees already processed by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

“We appreciate that this new Perpres (presidential decree) confirms the definition of refugees contained in the 1951 Refugee Convention, and does not continue to label asylum seekers as illegal immigrants,” said Muhammad Hafiz, Executive Director Human Rights Working Group Indonesia (HRWG).

The new legislation also provides clarity on the respective responsibilities of governmental and non-governmental bodies in regards to refugee asylum seekers. According to Febi Yonesta, chair of the Indonesian Civil Society Network for Refugee Rights Protection – SUAKA, “there is now an established coordination and a clear function by Government in relation to the treatment of asylum seekers, no matter the mode of their arrival.”

Amnesty International’s Deputy Director for Campaigns, Josef Benedict, responded to the announcement by saying the “presidential regulation on refugees [is] a positive step forward,” but that Indonesia “should ratify [the] refugee convention next.”

Yet the UNHCR and refugee advocates in Indonesia – as elsewhere in Southeast Asian countries that have not signed the convention, like Malaysia – have continually emphasised the need for work and education rights as the most pressing priority for thousands languishing in limbo. As UK lawmaker Alison Thewliss argued this month, “restricting the rights of asylum seekers to work is not only morally questionable, but doesn’t make economic sense.” In ASEAN, only the Philippines and Cambodia have ratified the Refugee Convention, yet neither have ever resettled refugees in significant numbers.

The Rohingya issue may well change the tide in favour of refugees in the region, however.

The release of Indonesia’s refugee legislation was partly stalled due to the number of Indonesian ministries involved in its implementation – foreign, health, security, law, police and immigration. Some advocates argue that the release of the presidential decree now – after being drafted back in 2010 – reflects that the situation of the Rohingya Muslim minority in Burma has rallied Indonesians and their government in support of refugees.

Thousands of asylum seekers remain detained in one of 13 rudenim or ‘detention houses’ across Indonesia. A report entitled Barely Living was released in late 2016 documenting the highly vulnerable situation of Rohingya refugees in Indonesia. Nevertheless, the Rohingya issue has galvanised Indonesian government and civil society in a way unlike other groups of people seeking asylum before them. Reports of abuse by the Burmese military provoked protests outside Myanmar’s embassy in Jakarta last November. Indonesia’s foreign ministry recently offered formal guidance to Aung San Suu Kyi’s government on how to foster a peaceful, pluralistic democracy.

Elsewhere in ASEAN, Malaysia recently committed US$2.2 million to aid the Rohingya community in northern Burma, whilst announcing the forthcoming trial of work rights for refugees within its own borders. Even controversial Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte declared last November that he would provide asylum to refugees until his country is “filled to the brim.”

SEE ALSO: Malaysia: ASEAN should lead Rohingya crisis resolution, current progress ‘rather slow’

2016 was the deadliest year yet for refugees, as Europe closed its borders to those fleeing conflict in Syria and across the Mediterranean.

Australia continues to pursue harsh border policies while the U.S. under Trump looks to resettle far fewer, if any, refugees. Even those to be resettled from Australia’s immigration detention centre on Nauru will be subject to Trump administration’s “extreme vetting.”

Asian nations may yet step up and play their part in providing asylum to some of the world’s most desperate people.