Syrian Chemical Weapons Prompts Missile Volley From Trump

U.S. is “locked and loaded” for more strikes, but only if Assad uses chemical weapons.

Lt. Gen. Kenneth McKenzie Jr, the director of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, briefs the press on the strikes against Syria at the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., on April 14. 2018. SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images 

BY COLUM LYNCH, ELIAS GROLL, ROBBIE GRAMER-

 APRIL 14, 2018, 5:59 PM
Friday’s U.S.-led missile attack against Syria aimed at sending an unmistakable message that any future use of chemical weapons would trigger a military response from the West.


“If the Syrian regime uses this poisonous gas again, the United States is locked and loaded,” Nikki Haley, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, told the U.N. Security Council Saturday at an emergency meeting convened by Russia in an attempt to protest the strike.

But the limited nature of the strikes sent another unintended message: the United States has no intention of using its firepower to halt the mass killing of civilians through conventional means, degrade Syria’s military forces, or to challenge Russia and Iran’s military positions is Syria.

The restricted target list — three facilities linked to Syria’s chemical weapons program — appeared to have reflected the more cautious influence of Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, who feared that President Donald Trump’s hint of wider war threatened to deepen Washington’s involvement in a war that President appears eager to quit.

The strikes on the Syrian chemical weapons program may cause Damascus to think twice about using such agents in the future, but the limited operation reflects a deeply cold-hearted calculus in Washington: the Assad regime can slaughter its own population as long is it doesn’t use chemical weapons to do it.

“That’s exactly the message that’s been sent,” says Aaron Stein, a Middle East scholar with the Atlantic Council. “People can try and shift the goalposts, but the goalposts are really narrowly construed around deterring chemical weapons use,” he says.

The air attack targeted a Syrian chemical and biological weapons research, development, and production center in Barzah, Syria, as well as a chemical weapons storage facility and chemical bunker near Homs, Syria. The Barzah facility is linked to the Syrian Scientific Studies and Research Center, which has been at the center of country’s once-secret chemical weapons program since the 1970s.

Trump cheered early Saturday a “perfectly executed” joint strike, adding “Mission Accomplished!”
As Syrian and Russian officials assessed the damage wrought by the launch of more than 100 cruise missiles, White House officials told reporters Saturday that the attack achieved its objective.
“The main goal was to degrade Syria’s chemical weapons program and we think we have successfully done that,” a senior administration official said Saturday.

But American officials made clear that the strikes had not eliminated Assad’s ability to use chemical weapons. Lt. Gen. Kenneth McKenzie, the director of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters Saturday the strikes had hit the “heart” of the Syrian chemical weapons program and set it back by several years.

But “residual” elements of that weapons program remain, McKenzie said. “I’m not going to to say they won’t be able to conduct a chemical attack in the future,” he said.

The U.S. missile attack came less than one week after Syrian helicopters dropped explosives containing chlorine and smaller traces of sarin on a lone opposition stronghold in the Douma suburb of Damascus, killing nearly 50 people, including women and children, and injuring hundreds more, according to U.S. and French claims.

Following the attack, President Donald Trump warned that Syria and its key sponsors, Russia and Iran, would be forced to “pay a price” for the attack, and pledged to launch a strike against Syria for the second time in just over a year. Trump had previously ordered an airstrike on April 6, 2017, in retaliation for Syria’s use of the nerve agent against the town of Khan Sheikhoun.

Following the latest missile strike, French and U.S. authorities released detailed assessments that both concluded the Syrian government was responsible for last week’s attack on Douma.

The French government’s assessment portrayed the chemical attack as the culmination of a months-long Syrian government military offensive that succeeded in restoring control of the restive suburb.
Syria decided to use chemical weapons to shore up its military offensive on Douma after an April 4 surrender agreement with rebel forces from Jaish al-Islam collapsed, leaving a group of up to 5,500 insurgents in the town, according to the French assessment.

“As a result, from 6 April onwards, the Syrian regime, with support from Russian forces, resumed its intensive bombing of the area,” the French assessment claims. “Given this context, the Syrian regime’s use of chemical weapons makes sense from both the military and strategic points of view.”

The American assessment, released by the White House late Friday, cited social media evidence, statements by NGOs, and video and photo evidence from Duma pointing toward the use of chlorine. The American assessment said Syrian government helicopters were spotted circling Duma during the attack. “Numerous eyewitnesses corroborate that barrel bombs were dropped from these helicopters, a tactic used to target civilians indiscriminately throughout the war,” the assessment notes.

American officials said on Saturday that they are confident chlorine was used in the attack in Douma and said they also believe sarin had been used, but that they possessed less evidence to back up that conclusion. Doctors and aid organizations “described symptoms consistent with exposure to sarin,” the Friday assessment notes.

According to the United States, Syria has repeatedly used chemical weapons in the last year, despite Trump’s April 2017 cruise missile strike. That includes an alleged sarin gas attack on opposition forces in the Damascus suburb of Harasta on November 18, 2017.

Syria agreed to scrap 90 percent of its declared chemical weapons in September 2013 in a deal brokered by the United States and Russia. But international inspectors soon realized that Syria had failed to disclose its development of key chemical weapon agents, including sarin, VX, and soman. Inspectors concluded that the Syrian forces had used chemical weapons, including chlorine and sarin, in a number of instances. They also concluded that the Islamic State had used sulfur mustard on the Syrian battlefield.

Haley claimed Saturday that Syria has used chemical weapons some fifty times during the course of the country’s seven-year long civil war, including multiple attacks since the U.S. launched missile strikes at Syria last year. The French cited 44 allegations of chemical weapons use since April 4, 2017, of which 11 — mostly chlorine attacks — have been confirmed by French authorities. French intelligence services believe that a “neurotoxic agent” was used at Harasta on November 18, 2017.

The U.S. strikes were limited for two reasons. U.S. defense officials selected a small number of targets to minimize civilian casualties and avoid striking any Russian troops or equipment that could spark a wider conflict.

More significantly, degrading the Syrian chemical weapons program would require more intense military action at a time when Damascus appears to be building up its ability to use poison gas. A recent internal U.N. report suggested the Assad regime is beefing up its chemical weapons infrastructure, thanks in part to shipments it received from the North Korean regime of supplies used in chemical weapons production.

Experts argue the strikes may reduce Damascus’s ability to deliver sarin, if the stocks of chemical precursors were targeted, said Gregory Koblentz, the director of the graduate biodefense program at George Mason University. But “it won’t do anything to affect their ability to deliver chlorine bombs since [chlorine] is commercially available. They can import it openly,” he said.

On Saturday, U.S. and Russian officials faced off over the strikes in a special meeting of the U.N. Security Council, where the Russian ambassador, Vassily Nebenzia, condemned the military operation.

“This is hooliganism in international relations, and not minor hooliganism, given that we’re talking about major nuclear powers,” Nebenzia said. But Russia failed go muster support in the 15-nation council to condemn the attacks.

U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres hinted that the strikes may have been illegal under international law, since they were not authorized by the U.N. Security Council.

“The U.N. Charter is very clear on these issues. The Security Council has primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security,” Guterres said Saturday. “I call on the members of the Security Council to unite and exercise that responsibility.”

Most Republican lawmakers praised Trump’s decision to strike Syria. But Trump’s policy whiplash on Syria — a week ago, he abruptly said he wanted to withdraw U.S. troops from the fight — has grated national security experts and top Democratic lawmakers. They say the president launched the strikes without a coherent strategy on Syria and without a Congressional greenlight.

“We should be clear: military strikes are no substitute for a real strategy,” Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said in a statement released on Friday.

France warns of 'humanitarian disaster' if Syria targets Idlib

With Eastern Ghouta captured, the government is free to target the remaining enclaves of Idlib or Daraa

Idlib is home to large numbers of people displaced by the conflict elsewhere in Syria (Reuters)

Sunday 15 April 2018

A new humanitarian disaster is looming in Syria's northern Idlib region, French Foreign Minister Jena-Yves Le Drian warned on Sunday, as the Syrian government looks for its next target after claiming victory in Eastern Ghouta.

The rebel-held region, one of the last remaining outside of the government’s control, is considered a likely next target of a Syrian army assault.

In an interview with Le Journal du Dimanche weekly a day after the US, Britain and France carried out strikes in Syria, Le Drian said: "There are two million people in Idlib now, including hundreds of thousands of Syrians evacuated from rebel towns recaptured by the regime.

"There is a risk of a new humanitarian disaster."

Read More ►

'Too little, too late': What Douma refugees think of US strikes on Syria

Held by an array of extremist militants and rebels, Idlib province has been the destination of many rebel fighters and civilians evacuated from opposition-strongholds further south in negotiated deals that have seen territory handed over to the government in return for safe passage.

Speaking in Damascus this week, a senior Iranian official said he hoped Idlib would be the next area to be "liberated" by Iran ally President Bashar al-Assad, after the Syrian army's recapture of the Eastern Ghouta area near Damascus with Russian backing.

The vicious battle for Eastern Ghouta wound up shortly after a suspected chemical attack killed over 40 people in Douma, the last remaining rebel-held town there.

The West blamed Assad's forces for the chemical attack. Assad and Russia flatly denied the allegation.

'It's likely the Syrian government will head south'

On Saturday, just hours after the strikes, the Syrian army declared all opposition fighters had left the town of Douma and it had taken complete control of Eastern Ghouta.

"All terrorists have left Douma, the last of their holdouts in Eastern Ghouta," state news agency SANA quoted an army spokesman as saying Saturday, using the regime's usual term for rebels.

"Areas of Eastern Ghouta in rural Damascus have been fully cleansed of terrorism," an army spokesman also said in a statement delivered on state television.

With the offensive for Ghouta now complete, the Syrian army can turn its attention to other rebel areas that have held out in the country’s seven-year civil war.

Idlib, the largest rebel region on Syria’s border with Turkey, is one possibility. But some analysts suggest Daraa, a town to the south of Damascus and the birthplace of the revolution that has challenged Assad’s power, could be next.

Syrian soldiers take part in an offensive on Idlib, February 2018 (AFP)

"The liberation of Eastern Ghouta means lifting the security and military threat posed to Damascus," said Bassam Abou Abdallah, who heads the Damascus Centre for Strategic Studies.

"After Ghouta, it's likely the Syrian government will head south – the current situation in Daraa must be finished off," he said. 

But with Daraa sitting near the Israeli border, analysts also say Assad's regime will have to avoid any escalation with Israel. 

"The areas in the south of Syria are particularly sensitive because they are located between Damascus on the one hand, and the Jordanian and Israeli borders on the other," analyst Sam Heller said.

"Any military action could affect the national security of the three countries," said the researcher at the International Crisis Group.

France calls for new ceasefire

Thomas Pierret, a Syria specialist at the University of Edinburgh, said Daraa was the obvious next step for the regime after Ghouta, over Idlib.

"Daraa is probably more urgent for economic reasons and reopening trade with Jordan." 

Le Drian said he hoped Saturday's strikes, aimed at punishing the regime over its alleged use of toxic gas, would convince Russia to pressure Assad into negotiations on ending the war.

"We hope that Russia understands ... we must combine our efforts to promote a political process in Syria that favours an end to the crisis.

The areas in the south of Syria are particularly sensitive

- Sam Heller, analyst

"France is ready to work towards this. Except that currently the one blocking the process is Bashar al-Assad himself. It's up to Russia to put pressure on him," he said.

Le Drian said the first step would be "to begin with a ceasefire which is really respected this time".

He was referring to a 30-day ceasefire called by the UN in February to facilitate the delivery of aid and medical evacuations, which was never really implemented.

On Saturday, the US, France and Britain on Saturday launched a new push at the UN for a ceasefire.

In a draft text seen by AFP news agency they also called for a mechanism to probe chemical attacks - and also ascribe blame for them - and demanded that Syria engage in stalled UN-led peace talks.

Michael Cohen’s visiting Prague would be a huge development in the Russia investigation

Michael Cohen, President Trump’s personal attorney, is under federal investigation. The Washington Post’s Tom Hamburger explains what you need to know.(Video: Bastien Inzaurralde/Photo: Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

By Philip Bump April 14 at 7:00 AM

McClatchy reported on Friday evening that special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s team has evidence of a trip by President Trump’s personal lawyer to Prague in the late summer of 2016. Overseas travel to non-Russian countries might strike some observers as an incremental — if not unimportant — development in Mueller’s probe. That is not the case. Confirmation that Cohen visited Prague could be quite significant.

A trip to Prague by Cohen was included in the dossier of reports written by former British intelligence official Christopher Steele. Those reports, paid for by an attorney working for Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee, included a broad array of raw intelligence, much of which has not been corroborated and much of which would probably defy easy corroboration, focusing on internal political discussions in the Kremlin.

Cohen’s visiting Prague, though, is concrete. Over the course of three of the dossier’s 17 reports, the claim is outlined — but we hasten to note that these allegations have not been confirmed by The Washington Post.

It suggests that Cohen took over management of the relationship with Russia after campaign chairman Paul Manafort was fired from the campaign in August (because of questions about his relationship with a political party in Ukraine). Cohen is said to have met secretly with people in Prague — possibly at the Russian Center for Science and Culture — in the last week of August or the first of September. He allegedly met with representatives of the Russian government, possibly including officials of the Presidential Administration Legal Department; Oleg Solodukhin (who works with the Russian Center for Science and Culture); or Konstantin Kosachev, head of the foreign relations committee in the upper house of parliament. A planned meeting in Moscow, the dossier alleges, was considered too risky, given that a topic of conversation was how to divert attention from Manafort’s links to Russia and a trip to Moscow by Carter Page in July. Another topic of conversation, according to the dossier: allegedly paying off “Romanian hackers” who had been targeting the Clinton campaign.

There is a lot there — but it hinged on Cohen’s having traveled to Prague. If he was not in Prague, none of this happened. If he visited Prague? Well, then we go a level deeper.

McClatchy notes that there is no evidence of who, if anyone, Cohen met with, but that the time frame was in late August or early September, as the dossier suggests.

Which brings us to the other reason this development could be significant.

Cohen, for months, has consistently argued that he never made any such trip.

When the dossier was first published by BuzzFeed, Cohen replied to this allegation specifically in a somewhat odd tweet.

View image on Twitter

Michael Cohen

✔@MichaelCohen212

I have never been to Prague in my life. #fakenews

9:21 PM - Jan 10, 2017

• 32.6K
• 21.9K people are talking about this

Since countries don’t stamp the front of your passport when you visit, it is not clear what this was meant to show. Nor would showing his passport have been exculpatory if he’d shown, say, a stamp from having entered France or Spain, since travel within most of the European Union doesn’t require additional checks at individual borders.

That, in fact, is what McClatchy alleges: That its sources say Cohen entered the Czech Republic through Germany. A Czech publication reported shortly after the allegation was made that government intelligence officials in that country had no record of Cohen’s visiting. One source said that “if there was such a meeting, he didn’t arrive in the Czech Republic by plane.” McClatchy’s report doesn’t contradict that.

The day after Cohen’s tweet, Trump held a news conference.

“He brings his passport to my office,” the then president-elect said in response to a question. “I say, ‘Hey, wait a minute.’ He didn’t leave the country. He wasn’t out of the country. They had Michael Cohen of the Trump Organization was in Prague. It turned out to be a different Michael Cohen. It’s a disgrace what took place. It’s a disgrace and I think they ought to apologize to start with Michael Cohen.”

That part about the “different Michael Cohen” is apparently based on one report. The part about Cohen not having left the country? Based on nothing.

Cohen showed his passport to BuzzFeed. The only travel into the proper area indicated by passport stamps was a trip to and from Italy from July 9 to 17. But note that this is too early for Steele’s time frame — and for the assertion that it was a response to the firing of Manafort. How Cohen would have gotten to Prague is still unclear.

But this contradiction between a clear allegation from the Steele dossier and the assertion that it wasn’t true by Cohen and Trump helped drive the idea that the dossier was broadly discredited shortly after its release. Pick out the Prague trip and nothing that follows could have happened. Put the Prague trip back into the mix? A lot of the other parts of that allegation now become possible.* What’s more, it undermines the credibility of those who insisted that the claim was completely without merit.

Look at it another way: If the central conceit of the Steele’s claim were accurate — that Cohen was working with agents of the Russian government directly to aid Trump’s candidacy — it would be very hard to argue that no collusion took place. That likely requires Cohen’s having been in Prague.

This is our first significant indication that he might have been.

* It’s easy to cherry-pick some aspects which ring true. For example: A source of leaked information from the Democratic National Committee who claimed to be Romanian was actually a Russian intelligence official. Carter Page denied having met with Russian officials during his trip in July, until the House Intelligence Committee got him to admit that he had, however briefly. But much more of the dossier’s allegations lacks any resemblance to what is known.

This article was updated to include the report about the alternate Michael Cohen.

Merkel’s Military Revival

Germany is poised to become Europe’s first line of defense, but facing down a revanchist Russia will require more spending and better coordination among NATO allies.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel walks past sailors of the German Navy while visiting the "Braunschweig" warship on January 19, 2016 in Kiel, Germany. (SEAN GALLUP/GETTY IMAGES)

BY JEFFREY A. STACEY

 | MARCH 28, 2018, 11:37 AM

For months after Germany’s September 2017 election, it was unclear whether Chancellor Angela Merkel could form a viable new government. The widespread anxiety over the outcome of the coalition talks finally dissipated after the Social Democratic Party (SPD) decided on March 4 to join the government, cementing Merkel’s continued leadership. With political instability and populism rising across Europe, the formation of a new coalition government in Germany led to universal expressions of relief.

But if Germany wishes to achieve its ambitious regional and global leadership goals, it will need to enhance the ability of its armed forces, the Bundeswehr, to act abroad. And this will require a substantial increase in national defense spending. Germany has long lagged in defense spending despite being Europe’s largest economy.

 Among NATO allies — all of whom are treaty-bound to meet a mandated annual defense target of 2 percent of GDP — Germany ranks 17th in the EU at 1.2 percent and is nowhere close to meeting this target at present. Over the past two decades, German defense spending has gradually decreased to the current level of $45.9 billion, which renders Germany largely unable to project force abroad.

 

Not surprisingly, amid a well-entrenched national culture of pacifism, defense spending has not been a popular campaign issue. Merkel’s party, the Christian Democratic Union, has long called for Germany to meet the 2 percent target, but during the campaign she sought to downplay this pledge. Although the SPD used to be in favor of meeting the NATO target, when Donald Trump began to publicly criticize Germany for being a defense spending laggard, opposition on the German left spiked, and former Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel, a member of the SPD, declared that doubling Germany’s defense budget was no longer in the cards. (At the time, the SPD was trying to avoid losing voters to the Greens.)

Meeting the 2 percent target did not appear in the coalition agreement. While this may seem cause for pessimism, a range of factors suggests that Germany will make good on its earlier promises. The new grand coalition in Berlin will continue to ratchet up defense spending with each successive budget, with a seven-year goal of coming close to the 2 percent target. Most important, there is a growing German appetite for taking on the twin burdens of regional and global leadership. While the German public is only part of the way there, German elites and government officials now solidly believe that their rising power comes with greater responsibility.

Joachim Gauck, Germany’s former president, served as the catalyst for this critical shift. Gauck has expressed confidence in modern Germany’s acceptance of a greater global leadership role and even detected a newfound modicum of pride among German people about playing that role. As a result, Germany has become more active abroad in recent years and with less controversy. From Bundeswehr forces serving in Afghanistan as part of the NATO mission to successful German efforts to train Kurdish Peshmerga forces in northern Iraq, Germany has made progressively greater contributions to global security. Long gone are the days when German officials would criticize NATO exercises or abstain on a U.N. Security Council vote, such as the March 2011 resolution to turn the NATO Libya operation into a U.N. operation.

Just after forming the new grand coalition this month, Merkel’s cabinet approved an expansion of foreign military operations in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Mali, including increasing the number of German troops in Afghanistan by 1,300 with plans for a long-term deployment. The mission to train Peshmerga forces in northern Iraq has largely been completed, but rather than withdraw its troops, Germany is stationing most of them in Baghdad. Moreover, 100 additional troops will be deployed to a U.N. peacekeeping mission in Mali where Germany has just taken over command of a military base in Gao from the French. In addition, the German air force will continue its surveillance and refueling mission as part of the Western-allied campaign against the Islamic State. Finally, the coalition has also agreed to add $12.4 billion to the military budget over the next four years, coupled with a pledge from Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen that further resource increases are in the offing for the purpose of rebuilding German forces after successive decades of cuts.

Von der Leyen foreshadowed the new German government’s profoundly important policy decision in a speech at the Munich Security Conference in February. There, she announced that Germany was committed to greater burden sharing within NATO and specifically in the form of defense spending increases. In a further signal of the country’s growing role, a new NATO logistics command will be located in the German city of Ulm.

At a moment when small nations everywhere — and even some large and powerful ones — are moving into Russia’s orbit, German leaders have a crucial role to play.

 They must act to stop Central and Eastern European countries, such as Poland and Hungary, from falling under Russian influence, but they will only succeed if other Western European governments join them.

Indeed, in the absence of Anglo-American leadership — after the traditional leaders of the Western alliance have faded from the global scene due to self-inflicted wounds — it is critically important to the West and the liberal international order that the new leadership team of Germany and France succeeds.

The principal challenge for Merkel, French President Emmanuel Macron, and their partners involves threats from revanchist Russia, particularly in the form of a recent exercise that NATO military staff viewed as a major preparation for war — as well as the uptick in Russian provocations at sea and in the skies. Germany played a crucial role in helping the British government persuade other allies to expel Russian intelligence officers under diplomatic cover after the attempted assassination of a former Russian spy in Britain.

As Europe’s Franco-German leadership faces this growing Russian threat, the greatest danger for them is that the West has fallen into a joint security trap. As with the classic prisoner’s dilemma, because the United States and European allies did not coordinate their cuts and agree to begin combining what was left, both ended up worse off and experienced a mutual loss of security.
Under former President Barack Obama’s administration and the governments of former British Prime Minister David Cameron and former French President François Hollande, the United States and its European allies independently slashed their defense budgets dramatically. Suddenly, the European Union and NATO no longer seemed up to the task of dealing with a major military threat. Indeed, this was one of the main factors that persuaded Russian President Vladimir Putin that he could continue his policy of annexation and war in Ukraine, bombing in Syria, and foreign meddling and intervention in Europe and the United States. Deterrence is an easy thing to lose and extremely difficult to re-establish.

Despite the February 2016 move by the Obama administration to quadruple funding for the European Reassurance Initiative — an overdue attempt to fund the forward placement of NATO troops and equipment in Poland — to $3.4 billion, this reinvestment in the U.S. military presence in Europe after decades of gradual troop and equipment withdrawal was too little too late. Conventional deterrence in Europe had already been squandered, and to this date Russia is undeterred from engaging in a range of threatening behaviors that mete out serious harm to Western security interests. In Syria, for example, Russia and Bashar al-Assad’s government forces have essentially won the war; meanwhile in Libya, Russia is disrupting the U.N.’s efforts to stabilize the country.

Europe has still not developed its own integrated, deployable, expeditionary military force.

Instead, a number of European allies have spent years reducing their defense budgets under broader economic austerity measures. Even today, the NATO allies are being held back by overlapping military communication systems and battle groupings that do not complement one another. Although the forward allied military presence in Poland and America’s newfound provision of offensive weapons to Ukraine are proving helpful, significant increases in defense spending, weapons procurement, and military exercises among Western allies are required for the alliance to escape the joint security trap.

Given this situation, all eyes have understandably turned to Germany and France. The Merkel-Macron team could not begin addressing the Russian threat until Merkel emerged in charge of a new governing coalition. Now, Germany’s coalition partners have called for a “new awakening for Europe” and pledged to work “work together with all their strength” to bring it about. Together, they are encouraging Europe to strike out on its own in response to threats posed by Russia and China, as well as the challenge of Trump’s unilateral approach to everything from global security to international trade.

However, the challenges for the two leaders remain considerable, and the rise of nativist populist parties has not helped. The new far-right Alternative for Germany party, which took nearly 13 percent of the vote in the 2017 election, has criticized Merkel’s increased spending on foreign military and diplomatic missions. Nevertheless, average Germans are becoming increasingly willing to let their country to play a global leadership role. From the open arms Germans offered to Syrian refugees to the public’s steadily growing support for military involvement abroad, we are witnessing the emergence of a new Germany that will benefit the rest of the world.

First Rohingya refugees repatriated to Myanmar despite UN safety fears

Human rights groups slam move as publicity stunt while Bangladesh distances itself

Members of a Rohingya family show their ID cards. Photograph: Ministry of Information


 Michael Safi @safimichael-Sun 15 Apr 2018

Members of a Rohingya family show their ID cards. Photograph: Ministry of Information
Myanmar says it has repatriated the first Rohingya refugees from among nearly 700,000 who fled a crackdown in the country last year despite warnings from the United Nations that it is not yet safe to return.

Rights groups have criticised the announcement as a publicity stunt and Bangladesh has distanced itself, saying the repatriation was not part of the return process the two countries have been trying to start.

The stateless Muslim minority have been massing in squalid refugee camps across the border in Bangladesh since the Myanmar army launched a brutal campaign against the community in northern Rakhine state in August.

The Myanmar government announced late on Saturday that a family of refugees had become the first to be processed in newly built repatriation centres earlier that day.

“The five members of a family ... came back to Taungpyoletwei town repatriation camp in Rakhine state this morning,” said a statement posted to the Facebook page of the government’s information committee.


A member of a Rohingya family is issued with her ID card. Photograph: Ministry of Information

A member of a Rohingya family is issued with her ID card. Photograph: Ministry of Information
Bangladesh’s refugee commissioner, Mohammad Abul Kalam, told Agence France-Presse the family had been living in a camp erected on a patch of “no man’s land” between the two countries.

Several thousand Rohingya have been living in the zone since August, crammed into a cluster of tents beyond a barbed-wire fence that roughly demarcates the border zone between the two countries.
“They were not under our jurisdiction, therefore we cannot confirm whether there would be more people waiting to go back [to Myanmar],” he told AFP.

Bangladesh and Myanmar agreed a repatriation plan in January but its start has been repeatedly delayed as both sides blame the other for lack of preparation.
According to the Myanmar statement, immigration authorities provided the family with national verification cards, a form of ID that falls short of citizenship and has been rejected by Rohingya leaders who want full rights.

The family members were scrutinised by immigration and health ministry officials and the social welfare, relief and resettlement ministry provided them with “materials such as rice, mosquito netting, blankets, t-shirt, longyis [Burmese sarong] and kitchen utensils”, the government said.

Myanmar officials could not be reached for further details and the post did not say whether any more returns were expected soon.

The move comes despite warnings from the UN and other rights groups that a mass repatriation of Rohingya would be premature, as Myanmar has yet to address the systematic legal discrimination and persecution the minority has faced for decades.

The UN has said the military-led operations that started last August amount to ethnic cleansing, but Myanmar has denied the charge, saying its troops targeted Rohingya militants.

Andrea Giorgetta from the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) criticised the repatriation announcement as “a public relations exercise in an attempt to deflect attention from the need for accountability for crimes committed in Rakhine state”.

Last week, the most senior UN official to visit Myanmar this year, the assistant secretary general for humanitarian affairs, Ursula Mueller, said conditions in Myanmar were not conducive to the return of the refugees.

She cited a continued lack of access to health services, concerns among the Rohingya about protection and continued displacements. She also described conditions in camps for internally displaced people from previous bouts of violence as “deplorable”.

Many Rohingya refugees say they fear returning to a country where they saw their relatives murdered by soldiers and Buddhist vigilantes who drove them from their homes.

Boats with Rohingya from parts of Rakhine state have continued leaving Myanmar in recent months. The latest confirmed departure took place on Thursday.

Saving the girl child, saving a Nation

The politics of expediency has gripped the nation in a monstrous way. And these incidents also include raping scheduled caste women.

---

by Ananya S Guha-Apr 14, 2018
[ Guest Post ]

( April 14, 2018, New Delhi, Sri Lanka Guardian) Once again we find children at the receiving end of heinous crimes. The perpetrators are the politicians and officials of state governments. I am speaking of what happened in Uttar Pradesh and Jammu. In both cases, people who are supposed to preserve the law have tainted it with bloody hands. In the former the father of the 16 year old, because his family protested was assaulted, taken to hospital, removed to jail and was brutally killed there. What is the India of saving and educating the girl child? What is the India of the 21st century, the clean India, the India of technology and showy malls? And these people are defended by the Govt in the first case and lawyers in the second. Those who talk about history and the primeval instincts of rulers in the past, are shaming their acts, by actually keeping silent and defending these criminals. A sixteen year old and an eight year old have been raped and tortured. Where are all the organizations, especially women’s ? The slurs on a nation continue unabated.

The worst is the attack on children. School buses have been assailed over the issue of a film. Children or young adults are raped. Mothers in front of husbands. What is the country coming to? The innocence of children have been traumatized. The trauma engulfs the entire nation. The correspondent reality will be anger. Every situation, every event is politicized. Those holding the bastions of power are only blaming their political rivals. In the Uttar Pradesh case no FIR has been filed against the supposed culprit and the Chief Minister is maintaining a stodgy ( and dodgy) silence, only uttering homilies of how the culprits will be punished. But the culprit and his brother have been identified. What does he do, he flaunts his power unabashedly, with a crooked and sick smile. The entire country has seen it. And one participant in a TV channel discussion has the temerity to say that in the past he belonged to another political party!

The politics of expediency has gripped the nation in a monstrous way. And these incidents also include raping scheduled caste women. The larger reality is that of atrocities committed against ‘ lower castes’ and the poor. The political strata is now being identified as oppressor with upper caste predilections, and the oppressed being the ‘ lowly ‘ and the poor. In between we have fracas between majoritarian and minority religious groups.

What could be more fractious, caste prone and communal? The country is being divided on every conceivable line: women, caste, religion, ethnic. The majoritarian view is fiendishly upper class and caste. Politicians are pitting one community against another. West Bengal is the latest case in point. In the context of all of the above is actually saving the country. The north south divide exacerbated ostensibly by the Cauvery waters dispute has added fuel to the fire. It mind you may not reflect the entire Tamil community as it is orchestrated by political parties. However Andhra Pradesh is also connected with it as the TDM is whipping up sentiments over the issue of granting special status to the state. This is reminiscent of the situation in Tamil Nadu on the aftermath of independence when the DMK was established. The present situation is peculiarly complex as in the past there has been fall out of ethnic unrest between Tamil Nadu and Karnataka dating back to the 1980s. Again the politicians are raising sensitive issues even if the matter is intermittently sub judice.

Education, health and child issues are the last words here. The back burner is power, read political power, and even as the salaries of the country legislators are raised, they are not performing their task at all. While some of them are uttering rabid misogynist statements, the others are disrupting Parliament, in both its chambers. Since 2000 Parliament has not been disrupted so viciously as in 2018 thanks to the storming of the well ( like the storming of the Bastille!), all this leading to a severance and infraction of rules. So can the country be ruled, coupled with inept handling by the speakers in both the houses? The way the political leaders are switching allegiances smacks of an ideology bereft of ideology.

So here we have it : division of the country on class, caste, religious and ethnic lines. The symbolic protests by political parties against atrocities on Dalits will remain untenanted symbols. Only those who are the real symbols of such wanton acts will fearfully and then angrily watch. Then, preside over it across ten states as they did on 2nd April, with crocodile tears flowing from our politicos. And, the tears fall ‘ idly ‘ but perceptibly from a forsaken nation.

Where will the child go to? Whose help will she seek, as her father lies brutally murdered? What education will she get from a reprehensible world around where ruinous destruction in the garb of political acuity and ‘ wisdom ‘ lords over all considerations of law and national diversity.? The eight year old who was raped and murdered in Jammu is a symbol of the utter callousness with which the issue was dealt with. It is criminality of the highest order, with lawyers, the guardian angels of law defending the perpetrators. Anger can be the only weapon and a national chorus of protest.

Another rape reported in India amid protests against brutal acts

Supporters of India's main opposition Congress party participate in a candle light vigil as they protest against the rape of an eight-year-old girl in Kathua near Jammu, and a teenager in Unnao, Uttar Pradesh state, in Ahmedabad, India April 13, 2018. REUTERS/Amit Dave

APRIL 15, 2018

MUMBAI (Reuters) - Days after the arrest of a lawmaker from ruling Bharatiya Janata Party in connection with the rape of a teenager in Uttar Pradesh, another case of the brutal rape and murder of a girl was reported on Sunday in the state of Gujarat in the country’s west.

News of the incident followed days of protests by activists, who have accused authorities of failing to investigate attacks on women across the country. The protests have been driven in part by the BJP lawmaker’s arrest last week for an alleged assault in Uttar Pradesh, which the ruling BJP governs.

Sunday’s reports concerned an incident that took place on April 5 in Surat city of Gujarat, the city’s police commissioner, Satish Sharma, told Reuters.

“The body was recovered on April 6 by the side of a highway and according to a post mortem report, the girl was sexually assaulted and murdered on April 5,” Sharma said. He added the victim — who was 11, according to the post-mortem — has not yet been identified and that police from Gujarat’s neighbouring states have been asked to help trace her family.

“We have put our best teams in place with all senior police officials. To nab the criminals we first need to identify the body,” Sharma said.

The post-mortem examination of the girl revealed a case of “strangulation and smothering” with 86 signs of minor injuries, including sexual assault, he said. Some of the injuries were old.

A separate case of gang rape and murder of an eight-year-old Muslim girl in the divided state of Jammu and Kashmir has also caused national anger as details emerged of how the girl was kidnapped, drugged and held in captivity as eight Hindu men assaulted her.

The crumpled body of the girl who belonged to a nomadic tribe that roams Kashmir’s mountains was found in January but the case made slow progress until activists stepped up their campaign for an investigation.

 The Surat incident took place in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s home state of Gujarat, where he was Chief Minister from 2001 until he took national office in 2014.

The weekend’s protests, which echoed mass rallies against sexual violence in 2012, are piling pressure on Modi, who faces general elections due by May 2019, and he has promised to take action.

The United Nations is among the international bodies that condemned the two earlier incidents.

“We are deeply concerned about the prevalence of gender-based violence, including sexual violence against women and girls, which we are witnessing in India,” Yuri Afanasiev, the U.N. resident coordinator in India, said in a statement last week.

Protest rallies are being staged all over India on Sunday, with Bollywood actors expected to participate.

India’s opposition Congress party held a midnight candle-lit vigil at India Gate in New Delhi, the site where thousands of people protested in 2012 against a brutal gang-rape in the capital.

 

India registered about 40,000 rape cases in 2016, up from 25,000 in 2012, government data show. Rights activists say thousands more go unreported.

Indigenous environmental activist killed in Myanmar

 

• Indigenous and environmental activist Saw O Moo was reportedly killed in Myanmar’s Karen State on April 5.
• According to the Karen Environmental and Social Action Network (KESAN), Saw O Moo, who worked with KESAN as a “local community partner,” was killed by soldiers with the Myanmar military while returning home from a community meeting to help organize humanitarian aid for villagers displaced by renewed hostilities between the military and the Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA), an armed ethnic group.
• Saw O Moo was one of the most active local community leaders pushing for the creation of the Salween Peace Park, a proposed 5,400-square-kilometer protected area to be led by indigenous peoples. “We will never forget his dedication in the ongoing struggle to build peace and protect ancestral lands,” KESAN said in a statement.

by Mongabay.com on 12 April 2018

Indigenous and environmental activist Saw O Moo was reportedly killed in Myanmar’s Karen State on April 5.

According to the Karen Environmental and Social Action Network (KESAN), Saw O Moo, who worked with KESAN as a “local community partner,” had attended a community meeting that day to help organize humanitarian aid for villagers displaced by renewed hostilities between Myanmar’s military and the Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA), an armed ethnic group. Despite a nationwide ceasefire agreement signed in October 2015, recent hostilities between the two sides are said to have displaced as many as 2,300 local people.

Saw O Moo was reportedly returning to his home in Ler Mu Plaw village by motorbike when he offered a ride to a soldier of the KNLA who was assigned to provide security for Karen civilians in the Ler Mu Plaw area. “At 5:20 PM, just as the two men were nearing Saw O Moo’s home in Ler Mu Plaw, they were ambushed and shot at by Burma Army soldiers at a place called Wah Klo Hta on the edge of the T’Ri Plaw plain,” KESAN reports.

According to The Irrawaddy, the Myanmar military has denied any wrongdoing in the killing of Saw O Moo and claimed he was in fact a rebel fighter and that he had grenades on his person. The Irrawaddy reports that, in a statement released early Wednesday, the military says its troops “shot at two fleeing plainclothes men who were suspected of being involved in sabotage attacks and planting mines,” and that the troops had “captured one of the men dead.”

The Irrawaddy also reports that Saw O Moo’s family has not been allowed to retrieve the community leader’s body, and that soldiers have fired upon anyone attempting to do so.
A tribute to Saw O Moo posted by KESAN notes that:

Since 2006, he worked as a local community partner with the Karen Environmental and Social Action Network. Saw O Moo will be remembered for his life-long passion and commitment to preserving Indigenous Karen cultural traditions, promoting customary land stewardship, and leading local community forest conservation activities as the Luthaw Paw Day Community Forest Coordinator. 

In his roles as Indigenous Wildlife Researcher and Kheshorter Community Forest Committee Advisor, Saw O Moo worked tirelessly to protect some of the last intact old-growth forest and endangered species habitat remaining in Burma. On August 9, 2017, Saw O Moo travelled to Yangon to help launch the Kheshorter Community Forest Documentary in commemoration of World Indigenous Peoples’ Day.
Saw O Moo was also one of the most active local community leaders in the Salween Peace Park, a grassroots initiative to create a 5,400-sq. km Indigenous Karen reserve in Mutraw District. Saw O Moo was a member of the Salween Peace Park Committee and firmly believed in its vision for peace, biodiversity conservation, and cultural preservation.

Despite the decades of conflict in the region, the Salween River Basin is “one of Asia-Pacific’s most biodiverse ecoregions,” home to species like the Asiatic black bear, sun bear, eastern hoolock gibbon, and Sunda pangolin, Demelza Stokes reported for Mongabay in 2016. Karen leaders like Saw O Moo have joined with local people and NGOs in calling for the creation of Salween Peace Park, envisioned as an indigenous-led protected area.

“For us as Indigenous people, the Salween Peace Park represents our deepest desires and needs,” Saw O Moo said at a public consultation meeting in December 2017.

“Saw O Moo’s death is yet another casualty of ongoing fighting that has broken out between the Burma Army and the Karen National Liberation Army,” KESAN said in a statement. “Since the fighting began on March 4th, over 2,300 villagers have been forced to flee their homes. Saw O Moo could have followed his wife and children into hiding in the forest, but he chose to remain at his home in Ler Mu Plaw to protect his people from the attacking Burma Army soldiers. For KESAN staff and all Indigenous Karen people of Mutraw, Saw O Moo’s death is an unspeakable tragedy. We will never forget his dedication in the ongoing struggle to build peace and protect ancestral lands.”

Saw O Moo was killed by soldiers with the Myanmar military on April 5. Photo courtesy of KESAN.

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Article published by Mike Gaworecki

Regular excess drinking can take years off your life, study finds

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By Alex Therrien-13 April 2018

Regularly drinking above the UK alcohol guidelines can take years off your life, according to a major report.

The study of 600,000 drinkers estimated that having 10 to 15 alcoholic drinks every week could shorten a person's life by between one and two years.

And they warned that people who drink more than 18 drinks a week could lose four to five years of their lives.

The 2016 UK guidelines recommend no more than 14 units a week, which is six pints of beer or seven glasses of wine.

Authors of the Lancet study said their findings backed up the new guidelines and also said they did not find an increased risk of death for light drinkers.

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Scientists, who compared the health and drinking habits of alcohol drinkers in 19 countries, modelled how much life a person could expect to lose if they drank the same way for the rest of their lives from the age of 40.

They found people who drank the equivalent of about five to 10 drinks a week could shorten their lives by up to six months.

The study's authors also found drinking increased the risk of cardiovascular illness, with every 12.5 units of alcohol people drank above the guidelines raising the risk of:

• Stroke by 14%
• Fatal hypertensive disease by 24%
• Heart failure by 9%
• Fatal aortic aneurysm by 15%

Drinking alcohol was linked with a reduced risk of non-fatal heart disease, but scientists said this benefit was wiped out by a higher risk of other forms of the illness.

Previous studies have suggested that drinking red wine can be good for our hearts, although some scientists have suggested these benefits may be overhyped.

Another Danish study found drinking three to four times a week was linked to a lower risk of type 2 diabetes.

"This study makes clear that on balance there are no health benefits from drinking alcohol, which is usually the case when things sound too good to be true," said Tim Chico, professor of cardiovascular medicine at the University of Sheffield, who was not involved in the research.

"Although non-fatal heart attacks are less likely in people who drink, this benefit is swamped by the increased risk of other forms of heart disease including fatal heart attacks and stroke."

The UK's drinking limits are at the right level, Richard Piper from Alcohol Research UK says


Scientists say the study challenges the idea that drinking in moderation is good for our health

Recommended limits in Italy, Portugal, and Spain are almost 50% higher than the UK guidelines, and in the USA the upper limit for men is nearly double this.

But Victoria Taylor, senior dietician at the British Heart Foundation, which partly funded the study, said this did not mean the UK "should rest on its laurels".

"Many people in the UK regularly drink over what's recommended" she said.

"We should always remember that alcohol guidelines should act as a limit, not a target, and try to drink well below this threshold."

Dr Angela Wood, from the University of Cambridge, lead author of the study, said: "The key message of this research is that, if you already drink alcohol, drinking less may help you live longer and lower your risk of several cardiovascular conditions."

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