Until Hana Tova moved to Tel Aviv as part of her Study Abroad program, she’d seen little to challenge her negative perception of Palestinians. Growing up in a “pretty conservative, Jewish-Zionist, pro-Israel” community in the US, the main message, she says, was that Palestinians are “all terrorists who want to kill us.” Challenging this narrative meant denying Israel’s right to exist or even downplaying the historical suffering of Jews. To make matters worse, her boyfriend’s best friend had been killed by a bomb blast in Israel. Now in Tel Aviv, the ongoing threat of terror attacks meant Hana herself was on constant high alert. 

It came as a shock, then, for Hana to find herself placed in student halls with a Palestinian roommate — and to be aware, all of a sudden, of her own prejudice.

“I don’t want to say I was brainwashed or anything,” she says, “but I was like, I don’t even know this person. Why am I judging?”

Then, one day when they were alone in the student apartment, her roommate opened up. When she was 14 years old, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) had raided her village in Palestine and fired through the wall, shooting her in the leg. The power was cut and she lay there, bleeding out in the dark. Luckily for her, her parents — both doctors — attended to her until it was possible to get to a hospital. 

“Who do you blame?” asked Hana. Her roommate replied: “Everybody”. 

For Hana, this was the moment that something shattered; that she saw, for the first time, people on both sides of the conflict as victims. But her experience is rare. In Israel and Palestine, few people from opposite sides of the wall ever meet like this, in conversation rather than conflict. Indeed, their respective leaders strive to keep it that way. 

Israeli citizens are banned by their own government from entering Gaza and most of the West Bank — apart from roads designated for settlers, from which Palestinians are banned. Residents of Gaza are unable to leave their narrow 25-mile strip. Many West Bank residents (including some Amnesty International staff) are subjected to travel bans. The only Israelis most Palestinians will ever meet in person are the occupying soldiers manning the West Bank’s hundreds of checkpoints, patrolling villages or conducting raids. For these Israeli soldiers, most of whom are young adults undertaking mandatory military service, their primary interactions with Palestinians are in the form of dealing with protests or having stones flung at them in anger. 

A Deepening Divide

When everyday life is heavily securitized, it creates a perpetual state of stress, fear and distrust that often spirals into ever-increasing aggression. In a 2019 study, Palestinian anthropologist Rema Hamammi looked at the effect that the ubiquitous, constantly moving military checkpoints have on residents’ state of mind in the West Bank — as well as on the Israeli soldiers who work on them. Her own commute to work used to be a short drive, she wrote, but now the tense stops at different checkpoints manned by a hostile army had made the simple act of getting around “arbitrary and chaotic”. 

These mini-confrontations with power created, she says, “a constant state of uncertainty and anxiety (is it open or closed? Does this permit work or not? What’s the mood of the soldiers?)”. Coupled with the power imbalance, the stress fueled resentment, humiliation and fear — primarily on the part of Palestinian residents, but also for the jittery soldiers left to enact erratic orders in a hostile territory.

Account after account collected by researchers like Hammami, whistleblowers and the Israeli Breaking the Silence project, which interviews returning soldiers, attest that instilling humiliation and fear isn’t an accident: it’s a strategic goal. Even to an outsider, the toxic dynamic is clear each time you pass through a checkpoint and witness how these interactions play out in petty power plays and the disdain written on the faces of people who openly despise one another.

To make matters worse, Israel’s “people’s army” conscription model means its military overwhelmingly comprises teenagers and young adults. Every single Israeli soldier we came into contact with in the West Bank while reporting this story was an adolescent male — the worst-performing demographic for impulse control, ability to judge genuine threats or respond appropriately to perceived aggression. Given the circumstances, it’s hardly surprising that frightened teenage boys, handed guns and left to fend for themselves in occupied territory, so often handle the pressure badly. 

Worse, the vindictive dynamic frequently escalates into revenge operations on both sides of the conflict, with harrowing consequences. In April, militants in Gaza responded to Trump’s proposed “peace” deal by releasing helium party balloons carrying explosives into Israel, some of which landed in a kindergarten. In August, Haaretz reported that a seven-year-old Palestinian boy in Quaddum was wounded after he tried to play with one of several boxes of explosives planted by Israeli solders as a crude deterrent to protesters. These continual breaches of international law deepen hatreds and undermine any progress towards peace. 

Pushing back against cycles of violence can be draining and traumatic in its own right, especially when it means urging one’s own side to exercise calm and restraint. One Israeli sergeant told Breaking the Silence that he was called a Nazi and a Jew-hater by a settler mob when he tried to protect a Palestinian child from violence in 2014.

He said, “I felt like shit. I was there to pretect the Israelis and they took me for granted and called me a traitor because I didn’t want an eight-year-old Palestinian who has nothing to do with the situation to be hurt because of something he can’t control. That’s the atmosphere — an atmosphere full of hatred and rage… it’s depressing.”

Meanwhile, in the West Bank, a tour guide described how he once made an offhand comment to a foreign journalist that he wouldn’t rule out welcoming Israelis onto his trips one day — a quote that was foregrounded in the resulting article, leaving him nervous of reprisals by compatriots. In a fight this ugly, any shift towards reconciliation is viewed by hardliners as betrayal.

The Kids Aren’t Alright

Continual exposure to the stress and violence of this protracted conflict traumatizes citizens of all ages, but children are the worst hit. 

Yoav Applebaum runs Ahava Village, a care home in Israel that started out as an orphanage for Jewish children fleeing Nazi Berlin in 1938. Today, the center looks after Israeli children from severely dysfunctional homes and a range of cultural backgrounds. Most have suffered abuse or neglect, while some have lost family members to acts of violence or terrorism. 

As Applebaum explains, children referred to his organisation experience post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and other trauma-related emotional or psychological conditions that make it difficult for them to integrate at school or in society — or simply to function properly. Children that experience trauma need extensive support, counselling and loving care to help them cope, he points out, both to prepare them for adult life and, in many cases, to steer them away from the drug abuse they were exposed to growing up. 

The children at Ahava Village are acutely vulnerable, lacking family support networks to care for them, but they certainly aren’t the only children left traumatized by the realities of life amid the protracted conflict. Research by the Israel Center for the Treatment of Psychotrauma in 2015 found that 40% of children living in Sderot, an Israeli town bordering Gaza, suffered from PTSD and anxiety. Things are even worse on the other side; a recent study conducted in the Gaza Strip found that 100% of more than 1,000 Palestinian children surveyed had been exposed to three or more highly traumatic events, with 42% suffering from severe or moderate PTSD. 

Applebaum believes a permanent solution for peace would ease social tensions, leaving people “emotionally free” to focus on improving their family and social relationships. What’s more, he says, without the strain of the conflict, people on all sides would be financially better off and government spending priorities could shift from training soldiers to investing in community services and development. All of which would contribute to “raising children in an atmosphere of security, quiet, and human warmth.”

Declining Resources

If child survivors of trauma need medical care and support to recover, integrate and thrive, then neither party in the conflict has the resources to counter a crisis of this magnitude. Least of all the Palestinian side, where mental health services in Gaza and the long-term refugee camps of the West Bank are almost entirely limited to those provided by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). Already overstretched, UNRWA suffered a major blow in 2018, when President Trump cut all US aid to the Palestinian refugee organisation. 

“Reducing the UNRWA services affects so many people, especially children, who don’t have proper playgrounds or facilities or services,” says Ahmad Tummalaih, a resident of Al-Am’ari Refugee Camp in Ramallah, in the West Bank. UNRWA runs all medical and mental health facilities relied on by families in the camp, he says. 

One of 19 camps housing around 775,000 refugees in the West Bank, Al-Am’ari is a cramped warren of concrete-block structures that were built in 1957 to replace the tents that originally populated the camp. The first wave of Palestinian refugees who ended up here in 1949, fleeing their homes in Jaffa, Haifa and around 30 other towns during the Israeli War of Independence, expected the arrangement to be temporary. 

Over 70 years later, Al-Am’ari — still squeezed into a square kilometre and unable to expand — is home to generations of people born into the camp who have never seen their ancestral land. Despite this, many hold onto the land titles and keys to the farms and homes their grandparents left behind, insisting, even now, that this is temporary. That one day, they will return. 

“We’re not hungry for food, we are hungry for freedom. We are hungry, hungry for our land,” says Tummailah, who describes his grandfather’s home in a village near Jaffa (Tummailah believes Israel has not yet built anything on that land, but the coastal area of Jaffa is prime real estate and we couldn’t find a surviving village of that name). “Here I live in a bad situation, but I have land. I dream to return to it,” he says.

If UNRWA closes down, this dream will be dashed for good. Should they move out of the camps and accept citizenship in the West Bank, these Palestinian refugees will lose the legal basis to fight for their right of return. Decades of suffering will have been for nothing. 

The Pressure Mounts

Already, life is tough, unemployment is high and prospects are few. The threat to UNRWA means, as Tummaliah points out, yet another layer of psychological pressure. As the political stalemate drags on, conditions in the camp get harsher, optimism trickles away and the walls close in on its long-suffering residents, it’s easy to imagine how frustration and despair could lead to increased social problems — and erupt into more violence. 

“If UNRWA gets completely shut down, that’s going to increase people’s problems, which can lead to extremism, to violence,” says Tummaileh. “People have lost their lives, their family members, their wealth and properties. They have little left to lose. Losing any more will lead to something worse.” 

This sense of despair seems warranted. Defunding UNRWA is symptomatic of a wider shift in US relations with Israel and Palestine that has seen Trump’s administration abandon the Palestinian side of the debate entirely. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the so-called peace plan, realistically a blueprint for full annexation of the Palestinian territories by Israel, which was proposed by Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner earlier this year. 

Swiftly rejected by the Palestinian side, the annexation was green-lighted by the US, although it has since been delayed by the outbreak of Covid-19 and then as a condition of Israel’s normalized relations with the UAE, formerly an ardent supporter of the Palestinian cause. 

Desperate Times

The UAE isn’t the only nation to step back from Palestine in favor of improved relations with Israel; Bahrain and even Saudi Arabia have begun to distance themselves. But the US is the only country to announce their U-Turn in such a brash and (for Palestinians) humiliating manner. As Hady A. Amr, former US Deputy Special Envoy for Israeli-Palestinian Negotiations, put it: “what ordinary people see is Trump saying not one more penny for Palestine refugees. Trump is really awesome at setting up the United States to be hated around the world. It seems to me that’s his actual goal.”

If Trump succeeds in stirring up more hatred and desperation on the Palestinian side, the fallout will inevitably exacerbate the conflict, leading to trauma on both sides.

“You will kill many children. You’ll kill many families,” said Tummaliah, addressing the US president. “Until now we didn’t believe in terrorism, we believed in peace. But now young people believe in terrorists.“

Letting Off Steam

The arts provide one way to explore the trauma of this collective refugee experience through a layer of abstraction, fostering intuitive empathy rather than focusing on historical fact and culpability. Evidence of this human need to sublimate trauma into creative output is everywhere, from studios in Ramallah, to the graffiti that coats every inch of the dividing wall, to the simple fact that Israel has the most art museums per capita of any country in the world. 

“Art is a good outlet. It’s a good path to go on, in terms of trying to understand what is going on and process everything. Not only on a personal level, but also on a collective level,” explains Alaa Albaba, an artist from the Al-Am’ari refugee camp, speaking through an interpreter. Albaba is best known for his “Route of the Fish” street art series, which uses the image of tinned fish to symbolize Palestinians from the coastal town of Jaffa as plucked from their natural habitat and packed like sardines into arid, high-altitude camps. 

But with basic services under strain, it is getting harder and harder for young Palestinians to look for positive channels for  their stress and frustration. 

“If you walk around a refugee camp and you ask people, what kind of things do you need? Of course, the first thing that they would talk about in terms of their priorities is the difficulty with the economic situation, mental health issues, anxiety, psychological pressure, the difficulties on finding work and all of these things,” says Albaba. “No one will tell you, oh, we need art because this is an outlet for us. The fact that people are living in poverty and difficult economic circumstances means art remains not a priority.” 

Clearly, recovery cannot begin in earnest until a genuine peace plan is put in place. One that, in Hady’s words, “is based on freedom and dignity”. But as the hardliners gain ground and traditional mediators fall away, divisions will only deepen. To make matters worse, the COVID-19 pandemic is now exacerbating these tensions, triggering acute medical shortfalls in the Palestinian territories and threatening economic collapse in Israel, where unemployment spiked at 25% in July. As fears mount and emotions intensify, any chance of the two sides healing from the shared trauma of war seems increasingly remote. 

L'articolo How the Trauma of Conflict Deepens the Israel-Palestine Divide proviene da InsideOver.

The atmosphere outside the purpose-built, 15,000-seat stadium that hosted heavyweight contenders Antony Joshua and Andy Ruiz in December was unusually civilized for a boxing match. Families with young children strolled through the Diriyah Oasis, a manicured park designed to celebrate the cultural significance of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s birthplace. Young couples – the men mostly sporting spotless white thawbs, the women in flowing black abayas – chatted over coffees and ubiquitous bowls of dates. Luxury cars lined the parking lots. Smiling security staff waved arrivals so seamlessly into the two entry queues that you barely noticed you were being split into the “all-male” and “women and families” categories that were until recently separated by partitions in cafes and restaurants. 

Welcoming the Wild West

This was the first time Saudi Arabia had opened its doors en masse to Western visitors – the tourist visa was introduced just two months prior – and to showcase a sweaty, lightly-clad, contact sport, no less. This heavyweight championship rematch was another step in Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman’s (MBS) grand modernization campaign, alongside easing gender restrictions and green-lighting cinemas and music concerts. If the idea was to challenge stereotypes of the desert Kingdom, it was working: there was even a sprinkling of rain. 

And then, a moment of crisis ruptured the calm. Two clearly intoxicated Englishmen screaming profanities broke into a fistfight right outside the stadium just minutes before the Crown Prince (and the event’s orchestrator) were due to arrive. The effect was shock; alcohol is illegal in Saudi Arabia and scenes like this are practically unheard of. People stared and security guards closed in. Perhaps this meeting of cultures wasn’t quite as friction-free as it had first appeared. 

Saudi Arabia Shells Out Big Bucks for Bread and Circuses

Reported to have cost over $40 million, the biggest bout of the year is one of the more expensive major sporting events to be staged in Saudi Arabia, but it’s far from the only one. From 2018 to 2019 the country also hosted a European golf tour, a prestigious horse racing event with a $20 million prize, Amir Khan’s WBC international welterweight title fight,  Formula E Diriyah E-Prix, a Supercoppa Italiana match between Juventus and AC Milan, and even a WWE event featuring a female wrestling match for the first time in the country’s history, albeit with the competitors wearing more modest outfits than usual. 

Not everyone is happy about this, of course. Human rights groups frequently criticize the choice to host international sporting events in Saudi Arabia as attempts to “sport-wash” a reputation scarred by ongoing abuses. These include the arrest and imprisonment of women’s rights activists, writers, bloggers and government critics, as well as the high-profile October, 2018 murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi Arabian embassy in Turkey. 

Meanwhile, while younger Saudis tend to be broadly positive about the country’s recent modernization and liberalization efforts – MBS enjoys a 90 percent approval rating among those aged 18-24 – some older and more conservative counterparts grumble that the changes are too much, too soon. It’s true that social norms are changing rapidly, at least by the standards of this deeply conservative country. Many of Riyadh’s gleaming SUVs are now driven by women, mixed-gender pairs sip lattes in Starbucks and, occasionally, you even see a woman without a head covering. None of this seemed imaginable just four years ago. 

MBS’ Modus Operandi

If MBS is aware of the old guard’s muted objections against his campaign of change, he hardly seems perplexed. The Crown Prince made his position clear almost as soon as he took office. In November 2017, he grabbed international attention by holding some of the country’s most senior princes and elite businessmen under arrest in the Ritz Carlton hotel – part of an anti-corruption drive lauded by international monitors that successfully recovered over $106 billion. 

Clearly, the Crown Prince was not concerned about ruffling feathers, and at first it paid off. His efforts were met with praise from the international community: human rights groups welcomed the lifting of the ban on women driving in 2017, for example. Others were encouraged by the environmental implications of Vision 2030, MBS’s ambitious plans to overhaul Saudi’s economic system and diversify away from oil. The plan involves boosting non-oil industry sectors such as defense, manufacturing, renewable energy and tourism, including high-profile entertainment and sporting events.

Very quickly, though, it became apparent that liberalization in Saudi Arabia would only happen on the precise terms and timelines dictated by MBS. The Crown Prince is regularly accused of arresting his critics and was even accused by Lebanon of holding their Prime Minister hostage. 

Even after the driving ban was lifted, the activists who had campaigned for this languished in prison. The most notable of these is Loujain al-Hathloul, a 30-year-old woman’s rights activist who has been detained for several years and is believed to have suffered torture at the hands of Saudi authorities while in prison. The message is clear: change is coming, but only when and how MBS decides it. Any deviation will be viewed as dissent. 

The Cracks Start to Show

Ultimately, it was the brutal murder and dismemberment of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, whose column criticized the regime, at the Saudi Consulate in Instanbul in 2018 (and MBS’s suspected involvement) that sent the Crown Prince’s reputation into free-fall. Riyadh initially denied that the execution had taken place at all, but was forced to backtrack when it emerged that the embassy was bugged and hidden microphones had recorded the entire affair. 

This grisly discovery obliterated the carefully crafted “reformist” image that MBS had presented to Western governments. MBS maintains that he knew nothing of the murder – he says it was carried out by rogue agents – but in a report for the UN by special rapporteur Agnes Callarmand found “strong evidence” that this was an extrajudicial killing ordered by senior Saudi authorities, most likely MBS himself. International public opinion turned against the regime, the country dropped eight points in the Press Freedom Index (from an already-low 172 to 180) and the US congress debated whether to discontinue sales of weapons to Riyadh. 

“You cannot do something like what happened with Jamal and expect people to be like: that’s fine, absolutely no problem,” says Michael Stephens, a Research Fellow for Middle East Studies at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI). “You know, it just doesn’t work that way. Why? Because of the egregiousness of the offense and the fact that Khashoggi was closely connected to many people. “

The Khashoggi affair hasn’t only left a lasting stain on MBS’s reputation among his would-be allies; it has also given his regional rivals more ammunition. Both Qatar and Turkey used the incident to discredit MBS, with Turkish President Tayyip Erdoğan, a long-standing critic of the Crown Prince, capitalizing on the killing to publicly berate the young Saudi leader.

What Happens When the Money Stops Flowing?

While MBS has fallen from grace on the international stage, he has so far kept criticism at home to a minimum. Part of this is self-censorship, but certainly not all of it; the groundswell of support among younger Saudis is in earnest. 

Why wouldn’t it be? Saudis are increasingly cosmopolitan in their outlook. The country is fast emerging as one of the world’s largest (and highest spending) outbound tourism markets. University students study abroad at five times the OECD average. Women make up half of all entrants to the tertiary education system, although they are still underrepresented in the workforce. While many Saudis are quick to emphasize that they are proud of their culture and don’t want to see it eroded, it is hardly surprising if younger generations with connections abroad are open to new ideas, as well as more opportunities to put their extensive education to use. 

Until now, Saudis also enjoyed enormous financial freedoms to compensate for other restraints. The Saudi leadership has historically issued extremely generous state subsidies to its population in exchange for loyalty – an arrangement known as Saudi’s Social Contract system. Healthcare and education through to university level are free for all citizens. Around 90,000 Saudi students studying overseas receive government grants that take care of full tuition, a comfortable stipend to cover living costs for themselves and dependents, and ever so often, unexpected gifts of thousands of dollars — essentially, a reward for being unofficial brand ambassadors for Saudi Arabia abroad. Combined with the reintroduction of concerts, cinemas and other light entertainment to the Kingdom, it’s easy to see how MBS has kept this section of society so sweet.

But now the system is under threat. As much of the globe went into coronavirus lockdown in the first quarter of 2020, demand for oil dwindled. In March, MBS initiated a global oil price war, much to the dismay of Russia and the US. Saudi’s decision to sell its crude oil at a reduced price while increasing production sent the global price of oil plummeting. “Saudi Arabia gambled that it would be able to do a showdown with Putin and it basically didn’t succeed in getting him to step back,” says Dr Roxane Farmanfarmaian, a lecturer at Cambridge University’s department of Political and International Studies.

Oil Revenue Isn’t Easy to Replace

MBS’s long-term plan may be to unhook his country’s economic performance from oil, but for now, the two are very much intertwined. As global oil prices fell to an all-time low, government revenue was slashed by 22%, piling financial stress on the Saudi economy, which already under pressure due to huge public expenditure incurred by Vision 2030. “The truth is that Saudi Arabia is further away from diversifying (the economy) than it’s probably been ever since MBS took control of this issue,“ says Stephens. 

This is already inhibiting MBS’s ability to win over the population with lavish spending. Riyadh recently announced that it will be tripling the rate of VAT and suspending the living allowance stipends introduced to support government workers in 2018. It’s one thing for MBS’s modernization vision to falter; for it to fail without the financial security blanket that Saudis have come to expect could have a huge impact on his support base at home. 

Shrinking Influence Abroad

Compounding the issue is the expensive, relentless war next door in Yemen, which has already cost the Kingdom $265 billion and counting.

Five years into the conflict, Saudi Arabia has failed to quell the Houthi rebel presence in Northern Yemen and MBS has lost his key ally in the Yemen fight: the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Reports of airstrikes killing civilians have drawn widespread condemnation; the UK government has been banned by its own Supreme Court from selling weapons to Saudi Arabia that could be used in Yemen.  

MBS also risks appearing to have been outmaneuvered in Yemen by his number one enemy, Iran, which provides unofficial support to Houthi rebels, enabling the fighting to continue and draining Saudi resources. It’s an effective strategy, according to Farmanfarmaian. “The moves of Iran generally have to be viewed as very, very well considered overall,” she says. 

Yemen: Saudi Arabia’s ‘Afghanistan’

“I think it’s going to be their Afghanistan,” says Stephens, referring to the US’s two decade-long conflict. “If Saudi Arabia went into this war to stop Iran having a foothold in Yemen, then they failed. “

Even Iran’s other enemies are loath to be Saudi Arabia’s friend. When the Iran-backed Houthis launched a major drone strike on an Aramco oil facility on Saudi Arabian soil in September 2019, the US chose not to step in to lend military support for a counterattack on Iran. Farmanfarmaian believes MBS’s oil price war was motivated partly out of revenge against the US, another major oil producer, for this slight — but if so, it backfired. Rather than re-establishing Saudi Arabia’s global influence, this tit-for-tat approach pushed MBS further into the cold. In May 2020, Washington announced its decision to withdraw its Patriot air defense system, used to protect Saudi from Iranian attacks. The US is also considering withdrawing other protective US military equipment from the Kingdom.

“MBS is trying to push his weight around at a time in which Saudi Arabia’s voice probably never mattered less,” says Stephens. He believes that underpinning all this is the “basic truth” that the country is a decreasingly important player on the world stage. “Saudi Arabia is no longer the big daddy that it was,” Stephens says.

Too Many Yes-Men

So what exactly is driving this self-destructive hubris? Stephens believes it comes down to the reluctance of MBS’s inner circle to dare contradict or question their prince. “There is a culture of fear. I have seen it. It’s very negative actually because it is creating a ‘Yes Man’ approach to politics,” he warns. 

This culture of appeasement means the leadership rarely gets to hear about outside criticism, concerns or the way external stakeholders truly view the kingdom. Hedge funds and asset managers outside the country, for example, quietly warn investors to “dodge, stay clear. Don’t get involved. Don’t be part of this,” says Stephens – but these reservations are unlikely to ever reach MBS’ ears. 

When he came into power, Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince inherited a vast playground in which even the most extravagant ideas could be backed up by near-unlimited wealth. With his rivals subdued and even his aging father King Salman suspected to be semi-imprisoned in his palace, there was no-one to caution the young royal against doing whatever he wanted. Slowly but surely, however, MBS is discovering for himself that no matter how iron-fisted his rule at home, there are limits to his power abroad. Without money or friends, the game could soon be up.

L'articolo Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Offers Bread and Circuses – But Is It Enough to Keep His Country Onside? proviene da InsideOver.

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Wildlife trafficking is the fourth largest illegal industry in the world, generating $26 billion a year – and it is growing. The biggest market? China. Watch the full report here: Big Cats, Big Business

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For years, one issue has united countries across the Muslim world: Palestinian Liberation. Countries as diverse as Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Jordan, Indonesia, Kyrgyzstan and Albania may have little in common, but their support for the Palestinian cause in all strata of society has been consistently loud and clear. But now, as the US strives to push through a peace deal viewed by many Palestinians as a humiliating annexation plan, these supporters are showing where their loyalties truly lie. In doing so, they threaten to push Palestine into the arms of its last remaining loyal friend: Iran.

Palestine’s Geopolitical Alliance Outlook

Outwardly, Palestine’s traditional allies are still on side. The EU and the African Union rejected Trump’s “Deal of the Century.” The Arab League, a union of 22 nations that includes Egypt, Jordan, UAE, Lebanon, Jordan, Bahrain, Oman, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, denounced Trump’s deal as laying the foundation of apartheid, rather than a genuine two-state solution. Behind the scenes, though, many of these countries are wavering. 

“Arab regimes in the Gulf are much more interested in cultivating a discreet, but close relationship with Israel because of their shared concern with Iran, than they are in supporting the Palestinian issue,” Says Dov Waxman, Professor in Israeli Studies at UCLA. The “geopolitical and diplomatic reality,” he warns, is that Palestinians feel increasingly neglected by an international community that’s letting them down.

Saudi Arabia’s Palestine Dilemma

Of all these supporters, Saudi Arabia is in the most awkward position. Being a visible and public ally to Palestine is an important part of the Kingdom’s self-styled image as being a supposed guardian of Islam and protector of the faithful all over the world. At the same time, the country’s ambitious Crown Prince is looking to diversify the economy away from oil. This makes Israel – one of the region’s economic superpowers ⁠- too big a potential partner to ignore. 

In a 2018 interview with the Atlantic, Saudi Prince Mohammed Bin Salman broke with years of Saudi foreign policy to acknowledge Israel’s right to their “own land.” In private meetings, he is reported to have criticized the Palestinian Authority over a perceived lack of willingness to negotiate with Israel. Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia and Israel share an important mutual friend: the US. Working together is inevitable, even if all three nations find it politically expedient to play down these relationships back home. 

“The Saudis are trying to say one thing in Washington and another thing in the Middle East, and it’s not working out very well,” says Hady A. Amr, former Deputy Special Envoy for Israeli-Palestinian negotiations under President Obama. 

Growing Ties Between Saudi Arabia and Israel and Serious Tensions With Iran

This duality isn’t new. Behind the scenes, Saudi Arabia and Israel have been quietly working together to normalise relations for years. This was inspired partly by their shared resentment of Obama, who cooled ties with both countries while alarming Gulf State despots by showing support for pro-democracy protesters during the Arab Spring⁠ ⁠— Trump and Obama’s approaches “could not be more different”, says Amr.

Bringing the crisis to a head, though, is the mounting tension between Iran and its three shared enemies: the US, Israel and Saudi Arabia. 

Ever since President Trump withdrew from the Iranian Nuclear Deal in 2018, diplomacy in the Gulf has been spiraling into chaos, edging the region closer to inter-state war. The US and Iran publicly taunt and threaten each other, even flirting with the possibility of maritime conflict. Tehran also funnels its aggression into proxy conflicts with Israel and Saudi Arabia, the most destructive example being Yemen.

When the US assassinated Iranian General Qasem Soleimani in January – with the help of Israeli intelligence ⁠- many feared this would spark all-out conflict, one that would place Palestine firmly in the line of fire. “The Soleimani attack could have sparked a war, which could have opened a Hezbollah Israel front. We could still see something like that going forward,” says Amr.

“The world is concerned about the possibility of world war, but not Palestinians,” shrugs Shaher Haroun, Deputy General Manager for Palestinian Society for Care and Development in Al’Amari, a 70-year-old refugee camp near Ramallah in the West Bank. War, or something very similar to it, has long been the daily reality, he says. “We are used to it”.

Palestinians may dismiss the Iran-US tensions as bluster, but it’s already playing out in their own backyard

As the wording of Trump’s deal makes clear, the US “vision” is less about peace and prosperity than removing an inconvenient barrier to recruiting Israel’s neighbors into a coordinated effort to contain Iran. The document even lumps together the grievances and priorities of Israel and Saudi Arabia (which does not yet officially recognise Israel as a state), suggesting that Iran’s strategy to “encircle” both countries would be averted by better collaboration between Israel and its Arab neighbours following a peace treaty.

Saudi Arabia Praises Some of Trump’s Palestine Peace Plan, Iran Denounces ‘Devilish’ Plan

While he stopped short of endorsing a document that essentially absolves Israel and blames Palestinians for all facets of the ongoing conflict, Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince expressed support for President Trump’s efforts. Likewise, State Minister for Foreign Affairs, Adel al-Jubeir, praised some “positive elements” of the peace plan, while Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan al-Saud announced the Kingdom’s intention to develop relations with Israel following a deal.

Iran, on the other hand, seized the opportunity to proclaim support for Palestine. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei strongly and publicly denounced Trump’s plan, tweeting (in Farsi): “The devilish and vicious policy of America toward Palestine called the ‘deal of the century’ will never materialize…all Muslim nations will confront them and will not let it materialize.” 

Tehran is putting both its money and its munitions where its mouth is.

Iran already supports Hamas, a fundamentalist political organisation and militant group that has controlled the Gaza strip since 2007, and to an even greater extent, its rival, Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ). Iran supplies the PIJ with weapons, combat training and millions of dollars in cash, keeping the militant group engaged in active conflict with Israeli forces for years. The PIJ fired several hundred missiles towards Tel-Aviv in November 2019 alone. 

‘The Islamic Republic Sees Supporting Palestinian Groups as its Duty’

In response to Trump’s proposed peace plan, Khamenei publicly promised to step up support for Palestinian militants. “We believe that Palestinian-armed organizations will stand and continue resistance. The Islamic Republic sees supporting Palestinian groups as its duty,” he said. 

Iran has plenty of reasons to meddle in the Palestinian territories. First and foremost, it’s a strategically useful way to get at Israel by, as Amr puts it, using local militant groups “as levers to turn on and off when they’re needed.” The uptick in violence in Gaza following Soleimani’s killing suggests that Iranian revenge could indeed be a factor.

“Iran has an incentive to see an escalation on the Israeli-Palestinian front and to ensure that Israel’s southern border isn’t too quiet. Just to kind of remind Israel that it also has the ability to directly strike back,” says Waxman. “But obviously, the other reason for that escalation in violence is a response to Trump’s peace plan.” 

On a larger scale, taking over the reins as champions of the Palestinian struggle means challenging another major rival: Saudi Arabia.

“The Palestinian issue is a good issue for Iran to position itself as a kind of defender of all Muslims, and to generate popular support across the region,” says Waxman. “That is related to Iran’s desire to present itself as a kind of pan-Islamic power and to mobilize popular support, which is related to its long-standing historical rivalry with Saudi Arabia.”

Iran Wants to be Seen as an Islamic Power, Not Just a Regional Power

In other words, Iran wants to be seen as an Islamic power, not just a regional power. By positioning itself as the only Muslim nation left standing up to America and Israel while defending the rights of Palestinians, it intends to step into Saudi Arabia’s shoes as the foremost Islamic power. 

This comes at a particularly sensitive time for US-Palestinian relations; one which throws Saudi’s muted response into sharp relief.

In 2018, the Trump administration announced that it would cut all funding and support to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), which provides assistance and protection for over 5.5 million Palestinian refugees, and withdrew over $200 million in support to Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, citing concerns about Hamas’ influence in the region. 

Washington also abandoned all semblance of neutrality in the Israel-Palestine conflict, moving the US embassy to Jerusalem and closing the de-facto Palestinian Consulate. The contentious decision triggered days of protests in Gaza, with dozens of deaths and over 1000 people injured. Tehran’s Foreign Minister, Mohammed Javad Zariff, was quick to denounce the US embassy opening as “a great day of shame.” He accused the Israeli government of “massacring countless Palestinians in cold blood.”

Things have got so bad that the Palestinian Authority recently announced plans to cut ties completely with Israel and the US. According to Amr, this represents a dangerous U-Turn from the Obama administration, which made sure to keep in regular contact with the PA, despite tensions between the two sides. 

“At least we kept the lines of communication fully open and would regularly try to take positions that were bridging gaps between the Palestinian Authority and Israel,” he says, warning that Trump’s insistence on breaking all “long-standing international norms” has undone any genuine progress the US previously made in the region, undermining “three-quarters of a century of US international policy.” 

“Right now, what we have is a president that seeks to ignite nationalism around the world in his own political interests. And I don’t think it’s helpful to anyone,” he adds.

In the meantime, it’s little wonder if Palestinians caught in the middle drift into Iran’s orbit.

Trump Has Cut Off Palestinian Avenues of Democratic Change

By leaving the Palestinian Authority out of negotiations, Trump made it clear that their democratically elected bodies have no influence over the future of Palestinians’ land. Illegal Israeli settlements continue to proliferate in the West Bank with impunity, and Israeli President Netanyahu recently announced plans for thousands of new homes in occupied East Jerusalem. Waxman suggests that this indicates that Israel views the peace proposal as the US giving the green light to annex more of the West Bank. By contrast, Ariel Shannon pulled all Jewish settlers out of Gaza in 2005 amid mounting security concerns. Seen in this light, it’s hardly surprising that today, militant groups in Gaza enjoy support from around one third of the Strip’s residents.

However nefarious Iran’s motives, Palestinians are running low on options. The US has chosen Israel, loud and clear. Riyadh increasingly sees them as a hindrance, not a priority. The Arab world is losing interest. Not that Palestinians seem surprised; tell an inhabitant of Ramallah how passionately people in Riyadh or Amman champion their cause and you’ll get a raised eyebrow or a cynical smile. 

Palestinians are painfully aware that, despite being half the planet’s cause célèbre for generations, international outrage has failed to improve the situation on the ground. As friends fall away and combatting Iran becomes the region’s number one priority, it’s increasingly clear who they can ⁠— and can’t ⁠— rely on.

L'articolo As Palestine’s Friends Fall Away, Iran is the Last Man Standing proviene da InsideOver.

Reportage / Environment 27.02.2020

Big Cats, Big Business

The luxurious resort island of Gaya in Malaysian Borneo is the epitome of a tropical paradise. Just a 15-minute boat ride from Kota Kinabalu – the capital of Malaysia’s eastern State of Sabah – here the region’s famous wildlife has…

Lindsey Kennedy

Nathan Paul Southern

L'articolo Big Cats, Big Business proviene da InsideOver.

At the Defence & Security Equipment International (DSEI) exhibition, the atmosphere was jovial. Men in cargo trousers and polo shirts hovered around the light arms stands, sipping G&Ts. Senior military officials, their badges flashing on their lapels, laughed and joked with top brass from other nations’ defence forces. If not for the extra security and the blacked-out Mercedes and Maybachs outside, you could have been walking into any other expo at the London ExCel Centre.

Inside, too, were the same enthusiastic company representatives, showcasing their newest and most impressive technologies to a ready and eager audience. But these were no ordinary products. There were tanks, rocket launchers, attack helicopters. A queue of excited businessmen in suits waited their turn to play with the rocket-propelled grenade launcher and its accompanying virtual reality screen, encouraging you to fire the RPG towards an enemy base and watch it go bang. In a country with some of the most stringent gun laws in the world, passersby could casually pick up and play with the latest pistols, sub-machine guns and assault rifles.

Wandering around the world’s largest arms fair, it would be easy to forget that these guns, missiles and bombs are being used to kill civilians, all around the world. 

Outside, the protesters certainly had not forgotten. The celebratory tone at the fair was in stark contrast to this very public backlash against the British arms trade. Some described the event as “disgusting”; others spoke of their determination to keep up their demonstration despite already racking up court dates in the process. All in all, more than 100 people were arrested throughout the three-day event. 

“A lot of the policing we saw [against peaceful protesters] was ridiculous and over-the-top, actually quite violent and repressive,” says Andrew Smith of the Campaign Against Arms Trade. “It was completely unjustified by the circumstances… almost like the Conservative government would be embarrassed by such a protest because many of their allies who are coming in would never tolerate such a thing in their countries.” 

Pubic disapproval for some of these allies – as well as the industry as a whole – is widespread. The capital’s mayor, Sadiq Khan told the arms fair’s organisers to “get out of London”, while a 2017 poll found that only a quarter of British people believed their government should actively promote the sale of domestically produced arms to foreign governments. The vast majority deemed it “unacceptable” to sell arms to Saudi Arabia (62%), Russia (70%). China (63%), Pakistan (68%) any country that violates international human rights law (71%) or even non-democracies (60%).

Despite this, the UK government has continued to sell a third of its arms to countries on human rights watchlists, most of which had a presence at the arms fair. The stands reflected a whos-who of high-profile human rights violations, international law-breakers and controversial conflicts, often situated in close proximity with no sense of irony. 

Pakistan and India’s stands, for example, displayed their brightly coloured missiles and bombs within spitting distance of each other. Saudi Arabia’s defence industry (SAMI) proudly showed off its products while elsewhere in the hall, both its neighbour Bahrain and mortal enemy Israel showcased heavy weaponry, alongside private British company BAE and US defence contractor, Raytheon. 

From an economic standpoint, it makes sense for London to host an event like this. Westminster is keen to promote the UK arms industry, which accounts for 3.5% of GDP and directly provides 135,000 jobs domestically. The UK is the world’s second-largest arms exporter, generating £14bn worth of sales in 2018 alone. 

Of course, there are some restrictions. The UK government can’t sell weapons directly to countries placed under international sanctions, which theoretically rules out potential customers like Russia, Myanmar, Libya, Venezuela and Iran. However, loopholes are exploited all the time. Military hardware that can be deemed “dual-use” gets a free pass, allowing the UK to continue furnishing the repressive Libyan government with military-grade surveillance gear. Earlier this year, a UN investigation revealed that UK company Veripos used an intermediary in Singapore to sell technology to the Myanmar military, which is currently involved in an ongoing genocide that has left tens of thousands of Rohingyas dead and created a mass refugee crisis in Southeast Asia. 

Meanwhile, despite a partial embargo blocking sales of “any equipment which might be used for internal repression” to China, it emerged in June that Hong Kong police shutting down pro-democracy, anti-China protests were using rubber bullets and tear gas manufactured in the UK. There is evidence, too,  to suggest that the UK sold Turkey the phosphorus is used in chemical weapons attacks on Kurds in Northeast Syria in October. 

Prime Minister Boris Johnson, before his leadership of the Conservative Party, even lobbied for the sale of bomb parts to Saudia Arabia in the days following a lethal airstrike that killed 14 Yemeni civilians. He claimed that, if the UK didn’t, someone else would. Privately, some industry insiders echo this argument, arguing that exporting British expertise along with the weapons improves accuracy and helps reduce casualties. Certainly, the Saudi Arabian presence at DSEI did little to inspire confidence in the Gulf Kingdom’s professional capabilities in this regard: on the SAMI stand, a very young representative in a very expensive suit was vague on technical details but excitedly asked, “do you want to see the big bombs?”.

Those critical of the UK arms trade are unimpressed by this take, however. Patrick Wilkin of Amnesty International describes the decision to continue licensing arms sales to Saudia Arabia and its coalition members as “appallingly, shockingly irresponsible”. By propping up the country’s air force “despite a wealth of evidence of incredibly serious violations of international human rights and humanitarian law”, he says, the UK has helped facilitate widespread civilian casualties and the deliberate destruction of vital infrastructure such as water wells.

The Supreme Court agrees. In June, the Campaign Against Arms Trade won a landmark case preventing the UK government from approving any new licences for military equipment for sale to Saudi Arabia, on the basis that this was unlawful. This was an extremely significant step, but as Wilkin points out, doesn’t cover existing sales contracts. 

“It is a partial victory,” he says. “We’re continuing to challenge the UK government on that one, because it seems completely illogical that the court could rule that the decision-making process wasn’t lawful, but that extant licences can continue to operate and shipments can continue to flow to Saudi Arabia.”  

What many people don’t realise, too, is that they may be inadvertently funding the arms trade with their own money. In the UK, employees alongside their employers contribute part of their salary to their pension pot each month. This money is then invested on their behalf by pension funds, with fund managers selecting the investments deemed to deliver the strongest returns. Very often, that includes the arms industry.

“The likelihood is that, unless they’re a really big company with their social responsibility concerns, they’re not that likely to look in a lot of detail at how responsibly the pension is invested,” explains Rachel Haworth, UK Policy Manager at ShareAction, a charity that campaigns for responsible investment. She says many pension funds invest passively, simply tracking the FTSE 100 rather than making an active call about where to entrust their money. Worse, a facet of the industry’s “problematic culture” is a tendency to dismiss the concerns of the very people whose money these funds manage.  

That’s not to say that individuals who object to their money financing the arms trade have no say in the matter. Under UK law, on written request, a pension fund must disclose the general sectors and top 20 companies they invest in, giving people a chance to raise objections or pressure their employer to change provider. You can also decide to switch to the pension company’s “ethical fund” (if they have one) – although as Haworth points out, while these are likely to exclude arms investments, the fund manager ultimately decides what constitutes “unethical”. 

From protests to legal action to divestment campaigns, pressure is mounting on the British arms trade. While campaigners agree that there’s still a long way to go (despite vowing to respect the Saudi ruling, for example, the UK government admitted in September to breaching the new rules three times in their first three months), CAAT’s Andrew Smith is optimistic about the future. Prominent political figures and parties are increasingly willing to take a stand, he says.  

“Historically, Labour governments and Conservative governments and Coalition governments would have set an identical policy on the arms trade, one of uncritical support for the Saudi regime and so on,” he says. “But that does seem to be changing. We’ve seen the Labour Party, SNP, Liberal Democrats all taking a very strong line against arms sales. It has changed the political dynamic in parliament quite significantly.”

If these parties maintain their position on the issue beyond the upcoming General Election in the UK in December, this could create genuine political will to change one of the most prominent – and controversial – of any British industry.

L'articolo How the UK’s Defence Industry Continues to Defy Popular Criticism proviene da InsideOver.

On 12^th March 1993, several ships left Dubai for India, carrying enough explosives, weapons and ammunition to wage a small insurgency. Shortly after the ships arrived, undetected, at Mumbai (then called Bombay), ten bombs exploded at high-profile targets across the city, including the Bombay Stock Exchange, government buildings and several crowded public spaces and hotels. 257 people were killed and over 700 injured.

That the devastating blasts, which came at a time of heightened tensions between Hindu nationalists and Muslims throughout India, were masterminded by the Pakistani Security Services (ISI) is disturbing enough. Even more so was their choice of partner in orchestrating the attack: the powerful mobster Dawood Ibrahim, leader of South Asia’s biggest organised crime syndicate.

Today, Ibrahim is one of the subcontinent’s most notorious fugitives. He continues to run his crime empire D Company from a safe house in Karachi, under the protection of the ISI. His presence there is a constant reminder of just how deep the divisions between Pakistan and India run.

Mafia Boss or Terrorist Mastermind?

But just who is Dawood Ibrahim? Few verified accounts exist about the shady figure, but we know he was (ironically) born the son of a police constable in the Dongri area of Mumbai. It was here that Ibrahim was first arrested on robbery charges in the 1980s, although he has also been implicated in street gangs, violent crime, extortion, gambling and various forms of smuggling since the 1970s.

The budding young gangster quickly ascended through the ranks of the Mumbai underworld, forming the (now infamous) D Company. When a police crackdown on organised crime in 1975 fractured the strongest mafias at the time, Ibrahim saw an opportunity to take over the Mumbai underworld. Perceiving a power vacuum, he led the charge in a violent gang war with the Afghan gangs of Alamzeb and Amirzada for control of Mumbai. D Company maintained a tight grip over the city throughout the 1980s and 90s, with Ibrahim at the helm.

Ibrahim’s influence in modern Mumbai is everywhere, extending well beyond backroom gambling dens and territorial drug wars. Before 2000, the Indian film industry was unable to qualify for bank credit and film producers were often left with no alternative but to consider illicit sources of funding. The ever-opportunistic Ibrahim spotted a profitable business model – one that would, moreover, see him rub shoulders with India’s elite. D Company has financed Bollywood films for decades, using the connection to launder cash as well as rake in money from distribution rights.

Much like Johnny Fontane in Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather, real-life stars in contemporary Bollywood make little secret of their relationships with the mob. At lavish showbiz parties, A-listers mix with the Mumbai mafia. So much so, in fact, that in 2013, Bollywood star Sanjay Dutt was sentenced to a five-year prison sentence for receiving firearms from D Company.

The days of Dawood Ibrahim treating Mumbai as his personal gangster playground did eventually come to an end, however. An arrest warrant was issued after he ordered the assassination of a rival gang leader outside of a Mumbai court house in the late 1980s. The underworld figure fled the country and continued running his operations from bases in Dubai and Pakistan.

From here, the D Company gang grew into the international organised syndicate that it is today, with 5,000 active members and bases throughout Asia, Africa and Europe. At the same time, the outlawed mafia boss began to develop relationships with militant groups. It is here that the Dawood Ibrahim and D Company story becomes rather more complicated.

Merging of Crime and Terrorism

India declared Ibrahim a terrorist following his involvement in the 1993 Mumbai attacks. It is hardly surprising that Pakistan did not follow suit – but then, neither did the US at first. In fact, it took the US Treasury until 2003, a whole decade later, to declare Ibrahim a terrorist supporter, alleging links to the Afghan Taliban and al-Qaeda. Soon after, the United Nations Security Council also accused Ibrahim of having supported al-Qaeda for decades.

But is Ibrahim truly a terrorist mastermind, another Osama Bin Laden (whom he apparently met with in Afghanistan)? Or is he simply a scheming mafia boss, using the real terrorists as a way to cement his power?

The truth is somewhere in between.

“Everyone is paying their taxation quota to the Taliban and so D Company would be no exception,” says Dr Tricia Bacon, a researcher on terrorism and insurgency at The American University. Bacon believes that Ibrahim’s relationship with groups like the Taliban and Al-Qaeda are about pragmatism, not extremism: you simply can’t smuggle heroin out of Afghanistan without encountering them.

“They’re going to have to the pay the Taliban like everybody else, which is not necessarily a close relationship, it is just how these sorts of arrangements work,” she says.

But while Ibrahim clearly started out as a criminal with no terrorist or political ideology, some experts say his motivations may have shifted over time.

Dheeraj P.C., a PhD candidate at University of Leicester who has carried out extensive research into the D Company organisation, believes that something shifted for Ibrahim when violent Hindu nationalists destroyed the 16^th Century Babri Masjid Mosque in Ayodhya, a devasting act of cultural vandalism that descended into months of anti-Muslim rioting. Some defendants prosecuted over the 1993 attacks cited both the destruction of the mosque and subsequent rioting as a motive, and it was around this time that Ibrahim began to conspire with the Pakistani ISI. Could this have stirred the gangster’s sense of outrage on behalf of his Muslim brothers and sisters?

It’s possible. More cynical commentators, though, suggest that Ibrahim wasn’t so much moved by the desire to protect or avenge his fellow Indian Muslims as by an opportunity to reassert control over the Mumbai underworld. Profits from fine metal smuggling had begun to drop for D Company in the early 90s, following a global decline in gold and silver prices. Developing a relationship with the ISI (Pakistan’s security service) at this time opened new markets for Ibrahim’s crew in smuggling heroin and explosives. Orchestrating the attack on Mumbai would cement this.

“It wasn’t ever clear to me how political D Company was,” says Bacon. “[After the 1993 attack] we didn’t really see any political activities or political agenda”.

What Is Ibrahim Doing in Karachi?

Whether a terrorist or a gangster, how can a man who orchestrated a large-scale terrorist attack in which 250 people died continue to live freely in a mansion, without fear of arrest, in the fifth most populous city in the world?

Bacon believes that, rather than equal partners in the attack, the ISI simply outsourced the 1993 blasts to D Company. In return, Ibrahim could continue to run his global mafia from Pakistan as part of what Bacon calls a “legacy of protection.” To an extent, this suited India too: doubts over exactly who ordered and carried out the Mumbai attacks meant that India could treat it like a domestic terror attack, rather than a strike from a foreign government. The alternative would likely have meant war.

The US, meanwhile, is reluctant to push Pakistan too hard on counterterrorism issues at a time when they need the country’s cooperation to secure a peace arrangement in Afghanistan. What’s more, Washington is hardly keen to weigh in on an issue that clashes with its top priority in the region: ending nearly 20 years of conflict in Afghanistan.

“Dawood Ibrahim is one of the top international fugitives out there,” says Michael Kugelman, a senior expert on South Asia for The Wilson Centre. And yet, he says, “I am pretty sure that President Trump has not heard of D Company.”

His aides are hardly likely to enlighten him, either. Despite the US labelling Ibrahim a terrorist supporter, it would likely do more harm than good to pressure Pakistan into handing him over. “The US really needs that Pakistan-Taliban relationship if they’re going to push through this peace deal,” says Kugleman.

Terrorist or mafia boss, it looks as though Ibrahim is sitting pretty in Pakistan without fear of arrest – at least, for now. With peace talks still underway and India-Pakistan relations more fraught than ever, the D Company leader continues to pull the strings of his global criminal empire. Whether the US will take India’s side on the issue once safely out of Afghanistan, though, remains to be seen.

L'articolo How India’s Most Notorious Crime Lord Became Pakistan’s Honoured Guest proviene da InsideOver.

In just two years, Mozambique’s most northerly province transformed from an idyllic, remote, tropical paradise, bursting with economic potential, to a battleground held hostage by an Islamist insurgency.

Exactly who these insurgents are, or what they want, remains a mystery. The militant group has been named by locals and the media as al-Shabaab, but no definitive links have been found to the Somali group sharing that name.

Even the Mozambique government is vague about it – and keen to keep its people in the dark. Journalists are now banned from the region and the group itself is yet to make a public statement. Violence rages throughout the province and it’s not even clear who government forces are fighting.

What is clear, though, is that Mozambique is not able to tap into the great wealth of natural resources in the north, in a country desperate for investment, where over 50% of the population live in poverty.

The upsurge in violence came soon after the discovery of gas reserves in the the province. The estimated $30 billion in untapped resources should have been an economic miracle to Cabo Delgado’s isolated coast, which suffers from crippling levels of unemployment and a disheartening education system.

The gas discoveries have instead become a point of contention throughout the northern province. The local people are yet to see any great benefit from the resources, explains Dr. Eric Morier-Genoud, an expert on Mozambique from Queen’s University Belfast.

“There was high expectation, but very little of this has trickled down,” says Morier-Genoud.

What’s more is that residents are losing their land due to infrastructure development without sufficient compensation. Many believe this to be the genesis of the armed struggle.

Simone Haysom, a senior analyst at The Global Initiative Against Organised Crime, says this anger plays a role, but falls short of claiming this as the root cause of the unrest.

“There is definitely something to be understood around grievance in the way that profits from the resources have been shared,” explains Haysom, but she remains dubious over how this has manifested into such an extensive armed resistance.

The Cabo Delgado Province was first struck by militants in October 2017, when insurgents carried out a series of well organised and deadly attacks on police and military posts in the coastal town of Mocimboa da Praia. Since then, violent incidents from insurgents have intensified. Attacks on villages, burning of homes, kidnapping and public beheadings have become commonplace in a province that had been enjoying a period of peace until just two years ago.

Haysom, who authored a detailed report on the violence in northern Mozambique, emphasised the lack of clarity surrounding the insurgency.

“Nobody really knows how organised the insurgents are,” she says. “No one fully understand why they are doing what they are doing or what triggered the violence to start with.”

The motives of the group are shadowed in uncertainty, but their use of violence is extensive and a serious cause of concern for local residents. The insurgents have battered the province with such severe levels of violence and instability, that in June of 2018 several oil and gas companies ceased operations in the province, stating that they would suspend work until the Jihadi threat has eased. The US and UK followed suit and urged their citizens to leave the region.

“The spread of violence and the intensity of the insurgency has indeed aggravated,” explains Dr. Morier-Genoud. He warns of the shocking nature of the violence, how beheading has become regular practice and the ways in which insurgents are becoming more brazen in their attacks.

“In the last month, more or less, attacks have now started to happen during the day time. Which didn’t happen before,” he warns. “They are more confident and more aggressive. So there is a change there.”

The State is cautious of how this looks to potential investors and have so far been vague in their description over what is going and how Maputo is countering the insurgency.
This is a particularly troubling realisation after it was revealed that L6G, the private security firm, owned by the notorious Blackwater founder Erik Prince, has offered to deal with the Islamist threat on behalf of the government.

Offers of assistance from private firms may be particularly attractive to Filipe Nyusi’s government, who wish to avoid the prying eyes of foreign governments on the north’s untapped resources.

Another theory surrounding the insurency is that the violence is actually being led by organised crime groups, who are blurring the lines between crime and terrorism in Cabo Delgado. The coastal province is a significant transit route for heroin being trafficked through East Africa and into Europe. The illicit trade is growing in the region and provides an annual $100 million to the local economy.

Egidio Vaz, a political analyst at the Mozambican non-governmental organization IREX, believes that criminality is a more likely cause of the violence than religious ideology.

“This conflict comes at a time when the governments of Tanzania and Mozambique are cracking down on poaching, illegal mining, and illegal fishing,” Vaz said in an interview to DW. “They’re also strengthening the borders and trying to better protect flora and fauna.”

The concern is that until recently, organised crime groups were able to operate openly with minimal interference from authorities. Many have therefore conflated the insurgency with a strategically timed offensive from violent smuggling networks.

The link between the violence and organised crime groups is not accepted by everyone.

“I think the question of how the violence in the north relates to these existing networks is one that is not exceptionally clear,” says Simone Haysom. “We don’t find evidence of their being a significant link between the militants and organised crime networks in Mozambique.”

Haysom goes on to explain that organised crime is not particularly violent in Mozambique, unlike narco groups in Mexico which have hundreds of heavily armed foot soldiers.

“They have been able to operate because of a political economy in the north where the illicit economy has a really high degree of political protection. In that context, organised crime does not need to mobilise militias,” explains Haysom. “They just need to pay off the right people and pay and form the right relationships with people in the ruling party hierarchy.”

Eric Morier-Genoud is also sceptical over the connection to organised crime and points to an ideology possibly inspired by Boko Haram in Nigeria.

“My reading is that it is a religious sect, in a sense like Boko Haram,” he says. “It was a religious phenomenon, they tried to establish their own society, ruled by Sharia, separated from the state.”

Mozambique is in desperate need of the income stream that untapped gas resources could provide. The country is still recovering from decades of devastating conflict and, just last month, a cyclone ripped through the country causing an enormous humanitarian disaster. While we do not know what the insurgents want, we do know that local residents do not feel like they are going to benefit from the gas discoveries. The natural resources could be enough to unite the country, but only if State corruption eases and the locals are given their fair share.

L'articolo An Islamic Insurgency is Blocking Mozambique proviene da InsideOver.