The Enemy Of My Enemy Is My Friend: Exploring the unlikely alliance between the People’s Republic of China and the Islamic Republic of Pakistan

On December 18, 2019, Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan implored the world to pressure the Indian government to revoke their controversial Citizenship Amendment Act, which promises citizenship to all non-Muslim refugees and immigrants from Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan. In his speech to the Global Refugee Forum, he stated that “if the world acts right now and puts pressure on the Indian government to stop this illegal activity, we could prevent this crisis.” He also referred to the act as “Islamaphobic” and “Xenophobic”, threatening sanctions and potential conflict with India. However, just a couple of months earlier, on July 12, 2019, Pakistan was one of 50 countries that backed China's policies in Xinjiang, with Prime Minister Khan signing a joint letter to the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC), and commending China's "remarkable achievements in the field of human rights." On the contrary, evidence shows that China is interning entire communities of Uyghur Muslims. They are interned at detention centers where they are forced to consume pork and alcohol, do manual labor, and women are forced to undergo sterilization. When confronted with this double standard, Prime Minister Khan bluntly explained that China had been a great friend of Pakistan throughout history and that “Pakistan does not talk about things with China in public right now because they are very sensitive.”

 The concept of mutual alliance based on a common enemy despite significant differences has always existed throughout history. For example, during the American Revolutionary War, The Absolute Monarchy of France signed a treaty of alliance with the fledgling enlightened democratic United States as they both had a desire to defeat Great Britain. Similarly, during the Second World War, the communist Soviet Union welcomed the capitalist United States into the Allies as they both shared a desire to defeat Nazi Germany. Currently, this diplomatic concept accurately represents the relationship between Pakistan and China as both countries seek to combat Indian aggression and influence. At first glance, such an amicable relationship between the Atheistic Communist state and the Islamic Republic should be unlikely as both countries are vastly different, both culturally and socially. Yet, throughout recent history, Sino-Pakistani relations have strengthened rather than declined as would be expected due to their sheer differences. Using course materials and primary and secondary sources, this paper aims to explore how such an unlikely relationship bloomed through the course of the Cold War and beyond. 

Political History between China and Pakistan:

To understand the blossoming relationship between these two countries, it is imperative to understand how such a relationship formed in the first place. On October 1, 1949, Chairman Mao Zedong officially proclaimed the People’s Republic of China after defeating the Nationalist forces of Chiang Kai-Shek and routing them to Taiwan, marking the end of the Chinese Civil War. Two years later, Pakistan became the first Muslim country to recognize the communist state. For a while, relations between the two countries remained cordial: Pakistan was hesitant to pursue closer ties with China due to its reliance on U.S. aid and China overlooked tensions between India and Pakistan as India was a socialist state with a greater influence in South Asia. Even after, in 1956, when then-Pakistani Prime Minister Huseyn Suhrawady signed a friendship treaty with then-Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai, China remained largely neutral in the conflict between India and Pakistan. 

In 1958, Field Marshal Ayub Khan seized power of the Pakistani government through a military coup and quickly consolidated the country’s relations with the U.S., signing a bilateral security agreement with the U.S. in 1959, which allowed the U.S. to build military bases in Pakistan. President Khan even offered India a defense agreement for a joint defense against any external threat. This action greatly concerned the Chinese government, which feared that the U.S. was planning to surround China with nations under their sphere of influence. Furthermore, in 1959, President Ayub claimed that there were areas in the disputed region of Kashmir that China controlled but belonged to Pakistan. Buoyed by its military and economic ties with the U.S., he even went as far as stating that Pakistan would be willing to go to war for those areas, just as it had engaged in a war with India over the same region. Naturally, relations remained tense and volatile between the two countries until January 16, 1961, when President Ayub replaced his foreign minister with an ambitious 30-year-old man named Zulkifar Ali Bhutto, who would forever change Sino-Pakistani relations, along with the country of Pakistan, for generations yet to come.

Unlike his predecessors, Bhutto advocated for closer ties with China. He saw China as another world power that could counterbalance India’s influence in the region. His views were confirmed when China and India engaged in armed conflict over the Kashmiri region in 1962. After China defeated India in the conflict, President Ayub, who was reluctant to pursue closer ties with the communist state, agreed with Bhutto’s viewpoint. In March 1963, Bhutto visited China and signed a treaty of alliance with the Chinese government, which resolved all border disputes in Kashmir and established economic, military, and political ties between both nations. Bhutto returned home as a diplomatic hero, having gained Pakistan a powerful ally against India. In 1971, he was elected as Pakistan’s first socialist President. 

Furthermore, President Bhutto realigned his foreign policy towards China and away from the U.S. During the Mao years, he strengthened ties with China. Despite the Chairman pursuing an isolationist foreign policy, especially after the Sino-Soviet split of 1956, Mao Zedong had a deep respect for President Bhutto, whom he viewed as a Maoist bringing prosperity to his people. As a result, Pakistan was one of the few countries that China opened up to during the Mao years. However, a significant turning point in the relationship was when a newly empowered China, just having received the UN security council’s permanent seat from the Nationalists in Taiwan, used its first veto power to deny Bangladesh’s application for recognition as an independent country. They claimed Bangladesh to be a rebellious province of Pakistan just as Tibet was to China. To show his gratitude to the Chinese government, President Bhutto arranged for U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger to take a stealth flight from Islamabad to Beijing. Kissinger mediated the secret discussions between the U.S. and Chinese governments, thus beginning the normalization of the U.S.-China relationship. Additionally, President Bhutto was the last foreign guest Mao Zedong received before his death 105 days later; subsequently, Bhutto issued a period of national mourning. Conversely, after Bhutto was ousted and executed by a right-wing military government, many Maoists in China and worldwide condemned the overthrow and execution as “barbaric and unjust.”

Even after the Cold War, the relationship between Pakistan and China has strengthened considerably. Be it right-wing military governments or left-wing democratically elected governments, Pakistan's ever-changing political leadership has always had one thing in common: to advocate for closer relations with the Chinese government. After the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, which was roundly criticized by the Western world, Pakistan was one of the few nations that supported the Chinese government. Then-Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto went as far as publicly denouncing the protests even though she was a public proponent of Pakistan’s democratization. She based her foreign policy on that of her late father, and she sought to promote economic and military ties with the People’s Republic and away from the U.S. After the September 11th Attacks and the subsequent War on Terror, the Bush and Obama administrations at first favored the Pakistani government due to their close proximity to Afghanistan. However, after receiving reports that Pakistani’s Inter-Services Intelligence provided strategic support and intelligence to the Afghan Taliban, the U.S. government gradually withdrew its support for the Pakistani government and shifted it towards the Indian government. 

Consequently, this has led the subsequent Pakistani governments, be it conservative or liberal, to pursue closer ties than ever with the Chinese government, having felt betrayed and used by the U.S. In return, China provides economic and military aid to Pakistan, turns a blind eye towards the ISI supporting the Taliban, and criticizes India whenever there is a border excursion or dispute with Pakistan. Thus, a primary factor for why this unlikely alliance between these two countries exists is the culmination of decades of gradual realignment and diplomatic overtures away from the United States and towards the People’s Republic of China. 

Tensions between China and India:

Additionally, to understand China and Pakistan’s relationship, it is imperative to understand the frosty relationship between China and India. At first, relations between the two countries were cordial, with India being the first non-communist country in Asia to recognize the People’s Republic in 1950. Both countries signed a trade agreement in 1954 and, along with Pakistan, attended the Bandung Conference in Indonesia. All three countries, along with twenty-six other countries, signed the Bandung Declaration, which aimed to promote Afro-Asian economic and cultural cooperation along with opposing colonialism and neocolonialism by any nation, serving as a preamble to the Non-Aligned movement that would later arise in the Cold War. However, relations quickly soured in 1960 as border conflicts erupted in the region of Kashmir, to which both China and India lay claim to and sought to occupy. To rectify this problem, Premier Zhou Enlai visited India in what would later become a landmark event in Indo-Chinese relations. Zhou Enlai’s negotiation with Indian Prime Minister Nehru ended in a deadlock and, when he returned to Beijing, he wrote in a note to Chairman Mao that India’s “economic policy has moved increasingly towards the right [and] the gap between the rich and poor is growing.” The border disputes resulted in a short border war between the two countries in 1962, resulting in a Chinese victory. As a result of this humiliation, anti-Chinese sentiment was prevalent throughout India.

During the 1970s and 1980s, under India’s authoritarian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, who also happens to be the daughter of Prime Minister Nehru, the country was steered towards the Soviet Union to counter Chinese and U.S. influence in Pakistan. Under her rule, the Indian Communist Party was accused of being pro-Chinese and illegally funded by the Chinese government and many of their political leaders were jailed during the state of emergency that Prime Minister Gandhi imposed to secure her rule. Naturally, this infuriated the Chinese government who, in turn, provided military aid to Pakistan every time they went to war with India or funded their nuclear program to counter India’s nuclear program. 

More recently, there have been a lot of hurdles for India and China to overcome. At present, India faces a trade imbalance that is heavily in favor of China. Unlike Pakistan, the two countries have also failed to resolve their border disputes in Kashmir, and there are reports of Chinese military incursion into Indian territory. Additionally, while Pakistan has been moving closer towards China, India has been moving closer towards the U.S., which signals that both countries are wary of the other’s competing influence. China has also funded separatist groups in Northeast India, known to employ terrorist attacks in the region from time to time.

Therefore, it is impractical to state that the only reason China is allied with Pakistan is to counter India’s influence. All three countries have a complex and unique relationship with one another that would have been impossible to achieve in a standardized world. China’s tensions with India stem all the way back to 1960, and with U.S. influence in India growing by the hour, China’s best bet to counter a U.S.-influenced state on its southern border is to have a Chinese-influenced state on its southern border, and with Pakistan, that influenced state can be achieved.

Economic Ties:

Another primary factor contributing to the alliance between China and Pakistan is the deep economic ties the countries have with one another. Pakistan was one of the few nations that traded with Mao’s China. When the foreign minister of Pakistan gifted a set of mangoes to Chairman Mao in 1968, Mao quickly used the gift as a propaganda tool. Foreign Affairs journalist Evan Osnos describes in his book, Age of Ambition, how the Chinese populace worshipped the mangoes for they received the touch of Mao Zedong, and how the gift was sealed in glass boxes to avoid its decay. Essentially, Maoism became the state religion of China during his rule, and the mangoes that Pakistan gifted were a sign of a blessed economic relationship between the two countries. 

Recently, China has sought to influence other countries via economic methods. They fund and provide billions of dollars in aid and grants to developing countries, and in return, they receive economic and political influence in said country. Pakistan is no exception. In 2013, as part of China’s Belt and Road Initiative, the two countries established the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), which is an economic route stretching from Western China through Pakistan to the Indian Ocean coast, comprising a collection of vast infrastructure projects under construction in Pakistan valued at 47 billion dollars. CPEC’s potential impact on Pakistan has been compared to that of the United States in post-war Europe, with Pakistani officials predicting that CPEC could create 2.3 million jobs between 2015 and 2030 and increase the national GDP by two to three percent. When the Corridor was established, celebrations rang out in Pakistan, with many Pakistani politicians offering gratitude to the Chinese government to help build Pakistan’s inadequate infrastructure and economy. 

Additionally, Pakistan has been the largest recipient of foreign aid from the Chinese government. After the devastating 2010 floods that crippled Pakistan, then-Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao committed to and delivered 250 million dollars in humanitarian aid to the flood-stricken country, its largest-ever humanitarian aid to any foreign country. During the 1990s, Pakistan was vulnerable to economic collapse owing to a combination of severe economic mismanagement and a halt in U.S. economic assistance following the imposition of the sanctions. It narrowly avoided economic collapse due to millions of dollars of Chinese loans and capital aid. Thus, a large amount of foreign aid that China provides has considerably strengthened relations between Pakistan and China and has only moved Pakistan closer to China’s sphere. Many Pakistani citizens often have a favorable view of China, citing their capital aid and their willingness to protect Pakistan’s national pride, especially when it comes to India. In contrast, many Pakistani citizens have a negative view of the United States, blaming their interventionism in Afghanistan for causing the Afghan refugee crisis and for conducting drone strikes in rural Pakistan. Additionally, they criticize the Obama government for not respecting Pakistan’s sovereignty when they sent Seal Team Six to kill Osama Bin Laden in Abbottabad. 

However, there are critics of this economic relationship. According to Indian political journalist Harsh Pant, “China has been forced to pump in some more money, and Pakistan has been forced to take on more debt only to sustain the façade of a productive economic engagement between the two nations.” He cites the various corruptions of capital and foreign aid by members of the Pakistani government and the rolling back of special projects, and China’s security concerns of operating within Pakistan. Even in Pakistan, there are critics of Pakistan’s dependence on China, criticizing the CPEC as a debt-trap that will burden Pakistan in the long term. Pakistan has already faced numerous economic crises throughout its history and already has a stifling debt. Many Pakistani economists worry that this economic relationship with China will tie a chain of massive debt to China, forcing the country to be permanently dependent on Chinese aid, unable to dig itself out of this financial hole. 

Military Ties:

Unlike their economic relationship, the military relationship between Pakistan and China is of mutual benefit as both countries seek to contain India’s military. Pakistan’s military relationship with China goes as far back as the Mao years. Author Jung Chang revealed this in Wild Swans, written when she visited Zhangjiang to practice her English with foreign sailors. She references how a “Pakistani military attaché came down from Peking…[They] had been to Sichuan.” Her personal experience reinforces that the two countries had a stable military relationship as the Pakistani military traveled throughout China during the isolationist Mao years during the height of the cultural revolution. China has been the major arms supplier of Pakistan since 1990. Most of the weapons that the Pakistani army uses are purchased and created in China. This military relationship is mutually beneficial for both nations as Pakistan receives arms and supplies to bolster their army and protect themselves from an Indian attack. At the same time, China received Western-made arms and military technology through Pakistan after multiple nations imposed an arms embargo on China after the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown. Pakistan’s Air Force and Navy include Chinese ships and interceptors, and Pakistan is producing the JF-17 Thunder multi-role combat aircraft jointly with China and the K-8 Karakorum light attack aircraft. The sharing of military technology between the two nations is vital for their national security. Both countries seek to combat Indian influence and intervention in Kashmir. Where both Pakistan and China have claimed Indian-controlled areas of Kashmir as their own, and border conflicts in that region are expected.

Despite their differences in culture, religion, and ideology, one aspect of the relationship that binds the two countries is their history of authoritarianism. Even though Pakistan claims that they are a democracy, the real power lies in the military’s hands, who have exercised a role in Pakistani politics since its founding. The Pakistani Army favors a relationship with China as China provides arms and technology to the Pakistani Army with no strings attached. As a result, the Chinese government can rest easy knowing that their relationship with Pakistan is stable no matter who is elected Prime Minister, as the army favors a closer relationship with China over the U.S. The military has also intervened in the premierships of the Pakistani Prime Ministers’ if they felt the Prime Minister was shifting the country away from closer ties with China, effectively a coup d'etat. They are consolidating the Pakistani-Chinese relationship further to the Chinese government’s delight. 

The most powerful military technology that China provided Pakistan with was the blueprint of the nuclear bomb. After its own acquisition of nuclear technology, China championed the rights of all nations to obtain this weapon of mass destruction as it felt the restriction of ownership was a Western imposition on the third world. This sentiment then guided Beijing to provide intelligence on nuclear weapons technology to Pakistan’s chief nuclear scientist, A.Q. Khan. Additionally, after India conducted its own successful nuclear test in 1974, the Chinese government accelerated its support of Pakistan’s nuclear program. They viewed a nuclear India as a dangerous threat and believed that a nuclear Pakistan would be an effective deterrent. 

Additionally, Chinese security agencies have been accused of knowing and supporting Pakistani transfers of nuclear technology to Iran, North Korea, and Libya. Therefore, the two countries’ military relationship is one of the leading factors in why there is an unlikely alliance between them. It is a mutually beneficial relationship wherein China receives Western arms and technology via Pakistan, while Pakistan receives arms and nuclear technology from China. The exchange is a source of national pride in both countries. 

Criticism of Sino-Pakistani Relations:

Surprisingly, there is little criticism among intellectuals of the relationship between both countries within both Pakistan and China. In China, most intellectuals often follow the State’s policy of promoting ties with Pakistan and self-censor their own thoughts of the Islamic Republic. In Pakistan, where intellectuals are given a little freedom to exercise their views, there have been very few cases of intellectuals criticizing the Sino-Pakistani alliance, more often on economic grounds rather than humanitarian. Especially shocking is the silence among Pakistani intellectuals and Islamic leaders on the internment of the Uyghur populace, a majority of whom are Muslims. Krzysztof Iwanek notes this in his article “The Deafening Silence of Pakistani Jihadists and Radicals on China’s Uyghurs.” He notes how there is little to almost no discussion among Pakistani intellectuals on the matter. He also explains that those firebrand Islamic preachers that publicly condemn the Indian, Burmese, and U.S. governments for their discrimination towards their Muslim populace “turned cold when the issue of Xinjiang camps hit the headlines around the globe.” It is quite remarkable that the country with the world’s second most Muslim population and the world’s first Islamic Republic is voluntarily silent about their fellow Muslims’ plight because of the benefits the Sino-Pakistani alliance brings to them that far outweighs the costs.

What little criticism of the relationship which may be unearthed was not from Pakistani intellectuals but rather from economists, although few in number and opinion, these economists worry that Pakistan is becoming increasingly dependent on China. For example, CPEC, which was widely celebrated among Pakistani economists and government officials, was criticized by a few U.S.-oriented economists that argued the Corridor was a debt-trap for Pakistan and that its benefits were only short-term. It is important to note that these economists favor a trade relationship with the U.S. and if the U.S. were to engage in a similar project with Pakistan, these economists would be silent on the matter.

Furthermore, there is evidence that shows that Chinese foreign aid often does not help the general public, with corruption running rampant among the Pakistani bureaucracy. Despite China providing nearly a hundred million dollars a year to aid Pakistan’s people, critics in the U.S. have pointed out that, although a substantial amount does go to help the Pakistani economy and population in terms of infrastructure or welfare, a good amount of that money does not reach the Pakistani population but rather lines the pockets of Pakistani bureaucrats or politicians, with an estimated twenty million dollars lost in corruption every year. That is another criticism among Pakistani economists about China’s economic relationship, with many arguing that foreign aid from all countries, China included, is doing more harm to Pakistan than good. Therefore, despite there being very few critics, both in Pakistan and China, about the alliance between the two countries, the few that criticize the alliance often do so from an economic perspective, not a humanitarian one, unlike Western nations. 

Conclusion:

As this paper has described, the relationship between Pakistan and China is extremely complex. This unlikely alliance is one that has been gradually developed throughout their histories. It encompasses their political, economic, and military alliance that benefits both nations. Critics of their relationship often point to Pakistan’s over-reliance on China, which China can take advantage of, especially with Pakistan’s growing debt. Yet, the Pakistani people seem to ignore all of that along with China’s persecution of their Uyghur Muslim populace; in fact, according to a 2013 Pew Research poll, 81% of Pakistani citizens have a favorable view of China, the highest in the world. International Relations scholars often point to the Chinese-Pakistani relationship as a prime example of the neo-realist school of International Relations theory, pointing out that state power considerations, rather than culture, religion, ideology, can determine foreign policy behavior. When confronted by U.S. officials about China’s uncompromising support for Pakistan, Chinese General Xiong Guangkai famously said, “Pakistan is China’s Israel.” Unless there is a significant change in foreign policy, Pakistan will always be in China’s pocket, with little hope for change in the future.  

The Disproportional Impact of Covid-19 in Pakistan

With approximately a year since COVID-19 spread rampantly across the board, with economic and political ramifications being brought to the surface, the virus is still unfolding. Since the emergence of the disease in Wuhan, China, in December 2020, there have been more than 15.2 million confirmed global cases of the virus with the number of deaths 2.5 million as of January 2021, with that number only going up. Nobody could have imagined the multitude of ways this virus would affect the lives of many across the globe. Despite its close geographic proximity and economic ties with China, the first 2 cases of Covid-19 in Pakistan were reported around mid-February of 2020, with over 560,000 cases and over 12,000 deaths currently. To curb the spread of the virus, provincial governments established lockdowns in their respective areas during the months of March and April. 

While in the case of Pakistan, there were already prevalent patterns of unequal economic opportunities, health care systems, and social condition pre-pandemic, the spread of COVID‐19 and the gradual release of strict lockdowns and subsequent implementation of social distancing protocols has further perpetuated indirect adverse effects on unequal medical accommodations, economic development, and social conditions towards the lower-middle class citizens of Pakistan. This paper will provide a comparative analysis and frame the current conditions in the health system, economic spectrum, and social life within Pakistan as a whole, concluding with what actions have taken place to mitigate the impact Covid-19 has left in these domains and what further action can be taken from the government and local people for substantial change to occur. 

Healthcare System and Covid-19 Challenges 

Prior to the pandemic, Pakistan’s neglected health care sector was already a point of contention. As of May 2020, it was reported that Pakistan spends approximately less than 1% of its GDP on the national healthcare system, despite recommendations from the World Health Organization (WHO) positing an allocation of about 6%. As expected, when coronavirus hit the country, many national and private hospitals were up against quite complex challenges. In the initial stages of lockdown procedures in March andApril, only a few specific quarantine centers were present with limited diagnostics and treatment facilities until the government received primers, testing kits, and equipment from other China among other countries. The focus was on infrastructure, supplies and staff management. The wards were redesigned and upgraded. Even now that conditions have somewhat improved, centers continue to run out of rooms, and thus make it difficult for non-Covid patients to receive prompt and attentive care.  

In terms of the provision of healthcare in Pakistan, rural populations have inadequate and inappropriate facilities compared to their counterparts. There are many stories of patients waiting to be treated even with the most dire COVID-19 symptoms, but are mostly seen only through bribery – paying powerful relatives, friends, etc. to admit these patients as promptly as possible. COVID-19 has exerted substantial impacts on “at-risk” groups: older people, healthcare providers, children, the homeless, daily wage laborers, and the economically poor, and over here there are many present case studies displaying the effect COVID has had on vulnerable patients, such as pregnant women. Where the government of Pakistan has taken necessary and strict actions to overcome the spread of the virus, no efforts have been seen to address the effects it has had on maternal health issues within the country. The pandemic has also seriously affected the availability of essential pregnancy‐related medications, vitamins and supplements, not only affecting the mother’s health but the child’s as well. The contagious nature and high mortality rates tied to COVID-19 has led to many pregnant women being apprehensive to attend doctor’s visits, and has  caused higher rates of psychological distress, depression, and anxiety. Pakistan, a low‐income country suffering from under-investment for decades, has been slow to recognize maternal health conditions coupled with the pressure to mitigate the further spread of covid-19; therefore, these issues experienced by pregnant women are considered at the end of priority list and are undertreated. 

While this remains as a brief outline of the complex healthcare challenges Pakistan continues to experience it clearly displays how these challenges disproportionately affect people at a disadvantage due to their class, gender, etc. in receiving basic, proper healthcare. There is a simple reality prevalent here: the wealthy are able to find loopholes to receive the care they need. The lower your socioeconomic status is, the more difficult it is for you to receive these basic necessities.The Covid-19 pandemic is only highlighting these cyclical issues in Pakistan’s healthcare system.  

Covid-19 and the Economic Challenges in Pakistan 

According to a Dawn News report, the most who have economically suffered have been Pakistan’s daily wage workers and urban slum settlers. Pakistan is estimated to undergo a loss of 2.5 trillion rupees ($15.5 billion) due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Pakistan's already fragile economy had only just begun stabilizing and moving towards recovery when the health crisis struck. Unemployment has risen enormously due to a large decrease in exports. With Pakistan primarily exporting textile products, the pandemic has put a halt to this consistent means of financial stability, with some orders even being cancelled altogether. When Pakistani prime minister, Imran Khan took office, Pakistan’s GDP growth was around 5.8%, now with the pandemic this has taken a major downfall at a mere 0.98%. This plethora of statistics underscore the fact that the pandemic has hit an already fragile economic system in Pakistan.  

However, some industries, such as  retail within Pakistan, despite enduring shock from the strict lockdowns, were able to withstand the challenges. Pakistan’s grocery retail space, estimated by industry insiders to be worth more than $50 billion (7.91 trillion Pakistani Rupees) in revenues annually, is mostly operated through a means of ‘karyana bazaars’ or ‘Khattaks.’ These are essentially small shops, often in large markets that cater to household basics like flour, rice, sugar, cleaning products etc. With the spread of Covid-19 becoming rampant back in March and April 2020, these small,crowded stores took an immediate hit with the loss of customers and thus revenues. These owners and their respective businesses were impacted differently and for different periods of time. The solution for all of this? Online grocery shopping. Many Pakistani retail business owners and entrepreneurs took advantage of a growing technology sector and opted for grocery orders made online and through mobile apps, achieving a profit jump by 50 to 70 percent month on month. Despite suffering initial challenges, the innovative nature of the retail sector ultimately allowed these businesses to survive and grow amidst the covid-19 related economic hurdles. 

The farming sector of Pakistan, primarily in the northern areas, has not only served as a backbone for food security but has always been a major support to the economy, being the highest contributor to GDP. There have been major disruptions in production of wheat, rice and various crops due to the limiting work force and restriction of transport facilities for dispatching harvested crops. As more people were being pushed into poverty, Imran Khan took it in his hands to place what he called as ‘smart lockdowns’ – in light of the country's high levels of poverty and unemployment, the government taking made a decision to keep the businesses and the factories running and close down only non-essential activities. Despite a major loss of agricultural sector activity and food security during this time, Khan still felt the need to proceed with the larger vision of creating wealth through industrialization and ‘all about creating wealth.’

Covid-19 and Society in Pakistan

Our inherently social nature, regardless of nationality, means that our desire for connection and interaction is the most normal thing in the world - but we have been forced to adapt to the “new normal” of physical distancing. The social ramifications of covid-19 highlights the disproportionate effects covid-19 has had on students and the education sector as a whole, as access to technology and high-speed internet have turned into the new issues many students have had to overcome. 

In March of 2020, the Government of Pakistan had mandated that all schools and universities would be part of the nationwide lockdown. This ultimately prompted the Ministry of Federal Education and Professional Training (MoFE&PT) to seek educational alternatives to ensure learning continuity. However, learning continuity presented itself as an issue given the unequal access to technology and internet for many in Pakistan. The transition towards online learning has meant a large allocation of resources to cater towards the academic requirement of approximately 47 million students who have discontinued their in person education. Along with this are the stresses students have had towards the online setups. In recent studies, women exhibited higher levels of anxiety and depression in comparison with men pertaining to the pandemic and its social consequences, which suggests that they hold a greater psychiatric burden of the COVID-19 pandemic.

With the new dominance of virtual learning systems, the issue of digital divides among urban and rural populations are more prevalent than ever before. In relatively less technologically privileged countries like Pakistan where only 22% of the population have access to full internet facilities. This is attributed to the already established high poverty ratio and lack of technology infrastructure, which limit the access of high-end internet facilities to students living in conditions outside of the urban or semi-urban regions and who do not usually belong to middle and upper societal classes. In December, the government launched its first Radioschool, a virtual educational program which aims to accommodate for and expand student outreach in response to the second school closure. 

However, its effectiveness and accessibility still remains in the shadows, due to a lack of transparency and training in providing these same programs to provinces across all of Pakistan. Furthermore the federal government should also help the provincial governments prepare educational content according to their respective boards so that education in these trying times can continue in the country. While the government was quick to recognize the issue students being able to access their course materials from home, Pakistan has attempted to shift to hybrid learning, with educational institutions being caught in a cycle of opening in phases and closing up again when covid-19 cases begin to rise; thus being an ineffective way to curb the spread of the virus and prevent an anticipated spike. 

Pakistan has been labelled as one of the top ranked countries in Asia with the highest response to social protection during Covid-19 crisis. Nonetheless,  the COVID-19 positivity rate and number of deaths due to the virus have increased. Now more than ever, it is critical to recognize that these issues were not just periodical challenges of March/April of 2020. A lot of the research and studies allude to these issues and the immediate relief efforts to be solely focused in the early months of 2020. The pandemic is prevalent as ever and has every potential to become widespread and rampant with the lack of enforcement for social distancing and lockdown rules coupled with overall public apathy to the virus. 

There is a need to establish rehabilitation centers across the country for mental health crises and provides 24 hours assistance to the public.The improvements of covid-19 units in hospitals and online learning initiatives should not be temporal and timely actions that were done in 2020. Imran Khan claims that a second lockdown will be detrimental to the economy, but this should not take priority over an already fragile healthcare system and the potential lives that can continue to be at risk. There needs to be consistent efforts on behalf of the government, preferably accepting that a second lockdown is must in order to ensure medical, economic, and educational security.

One Face, One World: The Life and Legacy of Sultan Qaboos bin Said

As the world reels from the gravity of the COVID-19 pandemic, unmanageable civil unrest, and widespread political upheaval, it is easy to lose sight of seemingly smaller events. For many living in the United States and the Western world, the passing of Omani Sultan Qaboos bin Said on January 10th, 2020 was little more than a passing headline. But for the people of Oman, the death of their reigning monarch represented the end of an era. Bereavement did not fail to extend outside of the country however, as family and officials in Muscat received condolences from leaders worldwide. From Kenya to Pakistan and across the Middle East, Omanis everywhere shouldered their grief with the plethora of kings, presidents, and prime ministers who had the distinct honor of meeting the Sultan. It is hard to fathom the impact of such a man upon Oman and the region. Why did the death of one man elicit such an outpouring of sympathy from leaders across the world? How is it that this natural cycle of a noble’s ascension, rule, death, and succession to the next ruler would cause tens of thousands to gather in Muscat for his funeral? 

In order to understand this subject, I paid a visit to the Omani Embassy in Washington, DC to interview Marwan al-Balushi, the Information Attaché. Meeting Mr. Al-Balushi for the first time, I am kindly greeted and welcomed into his office with a firm handshake before he instructs me to take a seat as he quickly darts out of the room. His office is tidied and neat, and as I adjust myself on the couch he has pointed me toward, I notice Sultan Qaboos’ royal portrait hung adjacent to that of his successor: Sultan Haitham bin Tariq. The gazes of both are intense but temperate, exuding a wisened calm into the room which is only added onto by the traditional Arabic music coming from Mr. Al-Balushi’s computer. Moments later when my interviewee returns, he carefully hands me a piping hot jigger of rich coffee, which he tells me is a classic Omani brew. Little bigger than a shot glass, it only takes a few sips of the uniquely spiced coffee before I’m jolted awake. After sharing some pleasantries and outlining the purpose of my presence at the embassy that day, Mr. Al-Balushi excitedly reaffirms his commitment to aiding in my understanding, and we begin the interview.

Where It All Began

I first ask for him to offer me an understanding of Sultan Qaboos’ accomplishments and policies, but before doing so, Mr. Al-Balushi insists that “a history of Oman is required” to put everything into perspective. “The time before Sultan Qaboos unmet the aspirations of its people,” he begins. “Oman was isolated, cut off from the world, and largely underdeveloped—there were only three schools in the entirety of the country.” In spite of its rich, triumphant history, it is true that the decades preceding Sultan Qaboos were a low point for the great nation. For instance, as can be seen from this biography of the time prior to Sultan Qaboos’ tenure, Taimur bin Feisal (Qaboos’ grandfather), was so disinterested in running his own country that he exiled himself to India to separate himself from the responsibility of managing Oman. Marked by a power feud between the imamate and sultanate—or the religious and political heads of state—then-Sultan Said bin Taimur significantly isolated the country and stagnated its industries. By the late-1960s, as the Sultan waged war with the Marxist guerilla group the Dhofar Liberation Front, the British had decided that Said bin Taimur had become too much trouble. Realizing his rule could not be legitimized through conquest alone, in July of 1970, the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office aided in the coup d’état which placed bin Taimur’s son, Qaboos bin Said, upon the throne. As a July 27th, 1970 article from the New York Times writes, the Sultan expressed “I have watched with growing dismay and increasing anger the inability of my father to use the new‐found wealth of this country for the needs of its people. That is why I have taken control.”

Of course, it begs the question: Why was Britain so intent on managing Oman? Furthermore, where was this organized socialist opposition in the form of the DLF coming from? To the first point, Britain’s focus on Omani stability stemmed from the profound connection that Britain has possessed in relation to Oman since the late 1920s. At that time, Oman was technically two loosely-connected states comprising of Muscat (the coast) and Oman (the interior). These two states were essential in the consolidation of the London-based Iraq Petroleum Company (IPC). This monopolization of the Omani oil industry by the British contributed to the disunity of Oman and their further desire to stabilize it under Sultan Qaboos. As for the Dhofar Rebellion, much of this disturbance may be traced to the geographical vicinity of the Dhofar Governate in Oman to Yemen, which at the time was the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen. Fundamentally dedicated to spreading Marxism across the Arabian Peninsula, the DLF was a conglomeration of transnational irregular fighters which waged an almost 10-year war on the sultanate. With Qaboos’ successful stabilization efforts as well as armed support from the British and Imperial Persia, the Dhofar Rebellion finally ceased to be a significant entity by 1976.

A Step in the Right Direction

Under Sultan Qaboos, Oman redefined the responsibility of the government to its people, and substantially improved human rights and quality of life nationwide. Rather than hoarding the wealth to his own private treasury, Qaboos used the renter income from Oman’s petroleum industry to finance infrastructure projects, healthcare, education, and agriculture improvements. From 1960 to 2000, Oman’s infant mortality rate fell dramatically, from 169 for every 1,000 to just 18 for every 1,000.  “Improving the lives of workers was a big task for the Sultan,” Al-Balushi tells me, “and there are plenty of stories of the Sultan himself travelling the country, hearing out the personal stories of his countrymen and recommending them to the government for federal work. Occasionally, he even used his private wealth to pay outstanding family debts.” In some ways, Oman remained authoritarian and restricted. While Sultan Qaboos granted universal suffrage to all those over 21 in 1996 under Oman’s first constitution, “unauthorized public gatherings remained prohibited.” Compared to the state of Oman prior to 1970, however, the living standards for the average citizen dramatically increased with the ascension of Sultan Qaboos.

Oman additionally experienced a revolution to its very political system. “The old government style was referred to as barza,” Al-Balushi explains, “a decentralized form more akin to tribal rule than centralized power.” He goes on to explain how Sultan Qaboos introduced a bicameral system consisting of the houses of shura and dawla (equivalent to the American House of Representatives and Senate respectively). While the dawla is made up of appointed officials, the introduction of a democratically-elected shura was an incredible step in allowing for formal representation in the Omani political process. Unlike his father, Qaboos additionally introduced a system of “10-year advisors”, meant to legitimize a formerly informal system of consultants to the sultan as it had existed for centuries prior. This interest in a parliamentary system is unsurprising of course, given Qaboos’ education at Oxford and Britain’s Royal Military Academy of Sandhurst. But it was because of his broadening of political communications—for instance, joining the UN and Arab League in 1971—that allowed Oman to place the foundation for its foreign policy later.

Sultan Qaboos’ Foreign Policy

This brought us to the question of how the late sultan conducted his foreign policy. Al-Balushi explained that “the Sultan lived by, I would say, three core tenants: respect your neighbor, no intervention, and no agenda in other countries.” These pillars of Qaboos’ philosophy in relation to foreign nations is what has allowed Oman to remain on such stable terms with its neighbors and across the waters over the decades. Joseph Kechichian of the RAND Corporation expressed this in his piece covering Omani diplomacy. For Kechichian and other scholars, it was Qaboos’ “balancing [of] interests, tolerance toward differences, and a determined search for mutual benefits” that managed to skyrocket Oman’s prevalence on the world stage as a mediator during conflict. Al-Balushi chuckles lightly before stating “There’s a funny story, actually. During the conflict between Iraq and Kuwait, Oman was involved with the US-led coalition, and it formally condemned Sadam’s invasion. But when all other countries cut ties with Iraq, Oman was the only one to maintain its embassies in both Kuwait and Iraq.” This is confirmed by Kechichian in his article, and is frequently told to embody the spirit of Omani foreign policy. For Sultan Qaboos, there was no such thing as stepping away from the negotiating table.

Oman’s foreign policy has not gone without scrutiny however, and its involvement with some countries like Yemen has remained split to this day. On one hand, as Al-Balushi details, “following Oman’s war with Yemen early in Sultan Qaboos’ reign, he tried everything to connect with Yemen and ease tensions.” Indeed, Oman had previously opened its first consulates with Yemen under Sultan Qaboos, and had been involved in an attempt to jumpstart the Yemeni oil industry. But with the collapse of the Yemeni political system and the civil war there, Oman has come into shaky conflict with its fellow neighbors. For instance, in 2016 Oman was accused of smuggling arms to the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen, against the wishes of the Saudi-backed Gulf Cooperation Council. Oman similarly came into conflict with the rest of the Arab World following Egypt’s recognition of Israel in 1979. Oman stood with only Sudan and Somalia in maintaining relations with Anwar Sadat for what was considered an ultimately controversial decision. These examples serve as instances where Omani neutrality has served as a technicality for Middle Eastern countries to condemn it for its contradictory policies or inaction.

But this is where the uniqueness of Sultan Qaboos’ foreign policy comes into play. “He wanted one face and one world,” Mr. Al-Balushi continues. “Oman was about respect for human rights—even when it came to Israel and Palestine, Sultan Qaboos stood firm that any decision should be made in the respect of the rights of both parties to their sovereign determination. It is why Oman supports the legitimate and just demands of the Palestinian people of an independent Palestine with a capital in East Jerusalem, while simultaneously upholding the Arab Peace Initiative and a two-state solution.” Like with his general rule of non-interventionism, Sultan Qaboos was an advocate for universal equality and outcomes that benefited both parties. The reason why the story of Oman’s response to the Gulf War is so notable is because it shows a line of consistency. Just as in the recognition of Israel in 1979, Oman remained steadfast in supporting its ally in Egypt and not caving to the pressure of denouncing Sadat’s action so harshly. Meanwhile, not only are the claims of Houthi rebels being aided in the Yemeni conflict unreliable given Oman’s mediation of both sides, but Oman has remained steadfast in its conviction to holding no favorites. 

Remembering Sultan Qaboos bin Said

Recalling his experience with the phenomenon of Sultan Qaboos’ public image and how it has changed over time carefully, Mr. Al-Balushi illustrates how differences have been settled by telling me of how different the Arab Spring was for Oman. “Where other countries had protestors calling for the heads of state to be removed, the people of Oman said no. ‘We love you Sultan Qaboos, just not the ministers.’” This trend continued throughout the 2011 protests in Oman, as Omani civilians expressed “We love His Majesty, but there are problems we need to fix.” Al-Balushi continues, “Even then, you know what happened? Sultan Qaboos listened to his people.” Sure enough, Sultan Qaboos responded by firing a third of his cabinet in addition to helping the people directly by promising 50,000 government jobs and the opening of a second public university. Ultimately, the people of Oman were happy with the outcome of their protests, and praised the Sultan for his handling of the unrest.

As I am about to finish the interview, I ask Mr. Al-Balushi to try summarizing how Sultan Qaboos’ legacy will live on. Looking out the window as if in deep thought, Marwan’s eyes lightly water as he recalls “There are only two times in my life that I have cried. One of those times was upon the death of Sultan Qaboos.” Pausing to collect himself, he continues: “Sultan Qaboos crafted a new Oman and a new country from nothing, and he has crafted a foundation for everyone after him. I mean no disrespect, but Americans don’t understand. In the United States, in the West, politicians are temporary figures meant to serve three or four years. Their title and their position are their job and they are looked at like a worker. In Oman, Sultan Qaboos was more than that. He was not only a king; he was a father to everyone. He respected his country, and so his country respected him.”

A cynic will look at Oman and see an absolutist monarchy with little in the way of oversight as in the Western democracies. But this is not an endorsement of every policy and procedure under Sultan Qaboos. It is that there is a trust in the system, unique to Oman, which has allowed the country to thrive in the years following Sultan Qaboos’ ascension to the throne. It largely works because of the “kind of people the Omani people are" as Mr. Al-Balushi describes it. “We are a tolerant and an open-minded people. You want to go to a mosque, you go to a mosque, or you want to go to an opera, you go to an opera. You will find some Omani women with head scarves, and others without. That is what the Omani people are about.”

There is no way to completely predict what is in store for Oman or its people in the years to come. But if one thing is for certain, it is that Sultan Haitham bin Tariq has some big shoes to fill with the passing of Sultan Qaboos bin Said only a short while ago. If Oman is to survive as a unified people, they must continue to uphold the values of their beloved sultan: tolerance, rule of law, mutual respect, and spiritual passion. One can only hope that these principles are adopted by others around the world, and that a more stable Middle East and international order may be crafted from them.

Yemen: A Path to Reconstruction

Yemen has undergone a brutal civil war officially beginning in 2015. The war has furthered Yemen's underdevelopment and ultimately turned it into a failed state from dilapidated infrastructure, insufficient healthcare, food and water insecurity, and an unstable government and economy. The Yemen Civil war began because of marginalization of a religious minority, the government's failure to provide economic opportunity for citizens and exploiting certain areas for its own gain, and a lack of representation of religious and regional groups. To resolve the war for the long-term future, there must be inclusive peacebuilding and assistance from the United Nations to facilitate peace conversations. To begin the first steps of state-building, Yemen must establish a decentralized government, strengthen the role of local governance, and forgo economic diversification.

Following the Arab Spring, where numerous Arab nations were demanding to overthrow dictators, Yemen fought for change too. President Ali Abdullah Saleh was forced to transition his position to Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi, but this transition failed. There was massive unemployment, food insecurity, suicide bombings, and a separatist movement in South Yemen. In 2014, the Houthi Shia rebel group, a religious minority, took hold of northern Yemen's capital, Sana'a. Hadi fled to Saudi Arabia, asking for international intervention. Saudi Arabia then created a coalition of Gulf countries implementing air strikes in order for the Houthi rebels to restore Hadi's rule. Saudi Arabia accused the Houthis of having links with Iran, which led to the involvement of regional powers as well as international powers in this war. The Saudi-led coalition was supported with U.S. intelligence, and the U.S., U.K., and several other European countries have sold arms to Saudi Arabia that were used to further the war in Yemen. As the war has gone on, Saudi Arabia and Iran have furthered the Sunni-Shia divide in Yemen. Parts of Yemen are now controlled by the Houthis, Republic of Yemen, Saudi-backed Hadi forces, Al-Qaeda, and the U.A.E.-backed Southern Transition Council.

The core of this issue stems from history. When North and South Yemen unified in 1990, the capital was declared in Sana'a in northern Yemen. The south began to feel marginalized by the north, as they were exploiting the oil and natural resources in the south and using it to mostly invest in Sana'a. South Yemen's Southern Movement for independence rose in 2007; they felt the northern centralized government was corrupted, and they did not have enough authority to manage their abundant resources. As for the Houthis, they had fought six wars with the central government between 2004 and 2010. The Houthis fought because of marginalization of their community and beliefs, not having enough authority in Houthi-majority regions, and longing for a democratic non-sectarian republic.

Upon discussing how to resolve this complicated war, it is essential to recognize the core problem: numerous religious and regional groups feel marginalized, and they want an inclusive governing system that is not corrupted as well as a stronger economy. Considering this, the first step for coming to a solution is an inclusive peacebuilding process, which requires the participation of women, Yemeni youth, and other marginalized groups such as southerners and religious minorities. Civil society organizations and women leaders in Yemen have contributed greatly to peacemaking already. For example, in tribal areas, women have been leading in mediation efforts because they are well respected and trusted in their communities. Yemeni women have previously demanded change and achieved 30 percent representation in the National Dialogue, which was a 2014 Yemeni transitional dialogue discussing peacekeeping. Muna Luqman, a Yemeni woman leader among many, spoke before a UN Security Council meeting, demanding that women be at the forefront of peace talks. She has consulted the only woman in the Government delegation, Rana Ghanem, for peace consultations, who agrees that there must be more seats for women. Luqman has additionally communicated with Houthi women, who have stated that they are ready for peace negotiations. Lastly, the Women Solidarity Network has been filling gaps left by the state, helping displaced people with food and other necessities, diverting the youth from fighting to peacebuilding, arbitrating for the release of detainees, and resolving conflicts over water and land resources. Though Yemeni women bear the brunt of the war, they are the largest hope for peacekeeping because they are trusted among their communities.

In addition to this, the UN must act more firmly to mediate peace negotiations and halt armed violence. The UN must take part in mediating peace negotiations between all parties, not just the Houthis and the Saudi-led coalition air bombardment campaign. This especially points to the Southern Transition Council, as they are also actors in the war. To avoid more conflict, it is essential to hear the voices of each group that is involved. The UN must create means to enforce its resolutions, including that of disarmament and demobilization of the Houthis and opening naval, aerial, and land blockades. The UN must also demand the demilitarization of liberated cities and aid in restoring essential government institutions such as the social welfare fund. Additionally, it should bring international actors, such as the Saudi-led coalition, the United Arab Emirates, Iran, the U.S., and the U.K. to hold discussions and to mitigate more violence. Though international actors such as Saudi Arabia claim to be air striking Yemen to place the former government back in Yemen, Saudi Arabia seeks to defeat Iran by defeating the Houthis. This issue must be discussed and addressed in the UN Security Council, and there must be negotiations between Saudi Arabia and the Houthis for a cease-fire. It is a crucial time now, as Saudi Arabia wants to back out because of economic downturns and the coronavirus pandemic.

Lastly, the UN must localize the peace process by creating local peace agreements in areas of military conflict, and additionally must get rid of combatants in civilian and city institutions. This has already been proved to help; local communities such as local councils, social leaders, and civil society have arbitrated between armed groups and created local ceasefire agreements. In order for the UN to localize and promote inclusivity in the peace process, each negotiating actor should have 50 percent women in their delegations, and the UN Special envoy and the Chair of Redeployment Coordination Committee must communicate regularly with women and require the inclusion of women, the youth, southerners, and other marginalized social groups in legal texts. Making each actor's voices heard will help cement a long-lasting solution to prevent future uprisings and violence.

If the war comes to a resolution, the next step is to unify the country by rebuilding the state. To implement an inclusive governing system, Yemen should transition to a decentralized federation. In a federation, the central government would not have much overriding power over the governorates. Each governorate would have a higher degree of autonomy and will get to control more of their internal affairs. For example, a governor should not be appointed by the president, rather through local elections. For local elections to be efficient, they must be supplied with sufficient infrastructural resources by the central government. In addition, to prevent the overpowering of the central government, the constitution must be well-written by all parties to ensure that the central government cannot use broad statements to excuse its over-bearing interference and exploitation of governorates. This will address the issues raised by the Houthis, who want more voice in Houthi-majority governorates, and southerners, who want more authority over their resources as well. Because each governorate would have greater control, there would be less marginalization and exploitation of different regional and religious groups, and there would be a boost of participatory democracy. This is essential, as Yemen has been a historically tribal society, with multiple ethnicities, religions, and communities.

The central government must be anti-corruption and be represented by all groups. Corruption creates distrust of the government, which could lead to more protest and violent conflict. To combat anti-corruption within the central government, there must be several key players, including a coalition of politicians, civil society organizations, senior government officials and private businesses. This coalition can mitigate corruption problems, especially when it comes to the central government abusing its power and not integrating revenues into all governorates to invest in Yemeni communities and create stronger infrastructure and economic opportunity. The central government must also be responsible for rebuilding damaged infrastructure, especially the sewage and electrical systems, roads, and buildings for medical facilities, government, and other essential purposes.

Strong local governance is an essential key to Yemen's government system. The absence of local authorities and councils negatively affect the governorate's leadership, as well as the representation of civil society organizations. Governorate Hadramawt is a good example of the importance of local authorities. Local authority in the governorate Hadramawt brought about local culture and social awareness that prohibited this community from getting involved in the war. The reason for this is that the governorate had communicated with all political, social, and religious figures in the community. Hadramawt is currently creating an advisory council for the governor, which consists of the political, social, and intellectual leaders. This advisory council would hold repeated discussions on issues in the governorate and how to solve them. Hadramawt is a strong example for why local authority is important, and this must be a framework followed by other governorates. Local councils maintain the social fabric of Yemeni communities and keep them stable and secure, therefore they must be preserved and strengthened to give Yemenis voices in their communities.

Moving forward, local councils must have political rights for elections, and local councils must have some autonomy to not be dissolved by the central government or be misused to benefit the central government. To strengthen local governance, it must have the power to manage and develop local resources, provide public services such as medical facilities and schools, and create jobs for the youth. Local authorities must have the power to manage development and construction projects and manage local resources that meet the governorates expectations of development and public services. The local authorities must be able to grant licenses to industrial, trade, services, and investment companies. Local governance must invest in schools, as education is a fundamental factor in elevating the citizens in terms of economic class, decreasing inequality between boys and girls in education, creating human capital, and eventually allowing for educated citizens to improve technologies for infrastructure and industries.

To begin reforming the economy, Yemen must find a way to generate revenue. One way is to improve the agricultural sector and move away from dependency on food imports. To improve the agricultural sector, the central government must invest and develop a functional irrigation system, which has been weak due to insufficient water and land resources. Despite this, Yemen can take advantage of its diverse climate to produce different agricultural products throughout the year, and implement more terraced agriculture infrastructure, which has worked in the past. The private sector must be incentivized to produce more agriculture and sustain limited resources. There also needs to be the implementation of policies that give tools for large and small farmers, such as the agricultural techniques and education, a good irrigation system, marketing opportunities, business practices, agricultural mechanization, fertilizers, and management of crop and yield.

Before the civil war and currently, Yemen has had a weak production base and insufficient economic diversification. Therefore, aside from the agriculture and petroleum sector, there must be other high productivity sectors in Yemen. This includes the fisheries sector, the food industry, the construction industry, and other industries such as tobacco products, cement, and metals. For example, Yemen can improve its fishery sector due to its advantageous geographic location. Yemen has a 15,534-mile-long coastal strip that spans across the Red Sea, Indian Ocean, the Gulf of Aden, and the Arabian Sea. This provides enough diverse aquatic life to sustain Yemen's fishery sector. The central government must invest in this promising sector by providing sufficient infrastructure and tools for fishers. This is essential because this will tackle part of Yemen's dependency on outside food sources and massive unemployment.

Another product that could potentially be used to export is qat, a plant that contains a stimulant that many people enjoy chewing. Though Yemen has had issues with qat addiction and replacing other agricultural production with qat production, it can still be used for an advantage in exports. If there is government regulation on the amount of qat being produced, qat can be a small potential industry that can help with exports for Yemen. Lastly, Yemen has historically exported coffee to numerous countries and can revive this past triumph by using fertile lands throughout Yemen. Yemen has sufficient land for cultivating coffee beans and can use this as an advantage for exporting and generating revenue. Traders can buy coffee from farmers and sell them among international businesses, which they have done before. Other sufficient foods that can be planted are almonds and vegetables, which are great for the economy and the people. Of course, this is only a small amount of what Yemen can expand with sufficient infrastructure.

Outside assistance is needed in Yemen to jump start Yemen’s economy again. Donor assistance in long-term development projects is what will help rebuild the economy. When Yemen’s political leadership is stable and there is an established government, international organizations must reopen their offices in Yemen. The World Bank must re-open the 32 development assistance projects they were working on before the war, as they were worth over 500 million US dollars over many sectors. In addition, organizations such as USAID must re-establish their aid relief programs when it is safe. The World Bank’s Damage Need Assessment calculated that Yemen needs post-conflict rehabilitation projects, and the Ministry of Planning and International Cooperation calculated that Yemen needs at least 100 billion US dollars to reconstruct Yemen. Yemen cannot rebuild by itself, as its economy is damaged and collapsed. There must be external assistance to redevelop Yemen to have a starting point to drive its economy upwards.

In conclusion, the most important aspect of Yemen's development is firstly coming to a stable political solution, which can be helped by an inclusive peace building process. It is only after this war is resolved, and all internal tensions are resolved, that Yemen can begin reconstructing all aspects of its country by decentralizing the government, promoting economic diversification and development, and strengthening local governance. This will take decades, but it can be done if the process leading to development is inclusive, since Yemen is very tribal, ethnically diverse, religiously diverse, culturally diverse, and regionally diverse. For this reason, the only way the country can rise up is if everyone has a voice and is there to pull it up together.

Rape Culture in Pakistan

Content Warning: Discussion of rape and sexual violence

Pakistan remains in shock and disbelief after a woman was gang raped by robbers in front of her children near a motorway in the city of Lahore on September 9th. In the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, thousands of citizens have headed to the streets in an immense outcry. Horrendous acts, such as gang rape, continue to occur despite citizen outcry and condemnation from the government. According to a 2017 report from the Madadgaar National Helpline 1098, nearly 93% women experience some form of sexual violence in public places in their lifetime in Pakistan. However, this event is not an isolated incident; in fact, this is a culmination of a  festering issue in the country, which consists of  regular threats, harassment and a growing rape culture. The perpetuation of rape as a repeated crime with little to no repercussion has stemmed from multiple discrepancies within the judicial system, a chasm among societal norms and behaviors, and  a lack of education towards sexual violence and sexual protection. While women’s rights activists have stepped up to the plate,in terms of supporting and facilitating a nationwide Aurat March in 2019 and 2020, there is still a considerable amount of work that needs to be done from the ground up. This paper will breakdown the event in detail, the societal norms and legalistic fixtures that have reinforced crimes such as rape, concluding with what actions have taken in place thus far from the Pakistani people and what practices must be implemented for substantial change to occur. 

Motorway Incident 

While this incident of gang-rape was not the first Pakistan has witnessed within the country, it is crucial to consider specific details of this case which ultimately resulted in a considerable amount of pent-up rage and frustration among citizens. It was around 3am on September 9th when a woman, who is  a resident of France, and her two children were driving back from relatives in Gujranwala, Pakistan. She ran out of fuel and per the advice of her relatives, she called the motorway emergency numbers for assistance. It was reported that after waiting for approximately an hour for help to arrive, two armed men broke into the woman’s car, stole a considerable amount of money and material possessions, and proceeded to rape her in front of her two children. 

Despite the horrendous circumstances of that night, it was what Umer Sheikh, a senior police official, had to say the following morning on national TV that displayed a widepsread problem with the system. Umer Sheikh appeared in front of the media and implied  that she had been partly to blame. First, he questioned why she had not taken a busier road, given that she was driving at 10 pm, and then when on to state that she should have checked her fuel before departing. Sheikh also added that the woman, who is a French resident, was traveling under the impression that Pakistan is as safe as France. It is one thing for an individual to experience this level of trauma and abuse then to see the most senior police official, who is meant to empathize with citizens and protect the community at large, instead blaming the victim for what happened that night and holding that person solely responsible for their own safety. This was one of many breaking points in Pakistan, resulting in protests calling for a host of demands, such as the termination for the senior police official to improve police accountability. Immense questioning and eyes are pointed towards the victim rather than the criminals or the traffic who failed to arrive in a timely manner. Despite the fact that two suspects have been found and are being held for questioning, the central problem remains: instead of being treated with empathy, the victim's actions are critiqued thus normalizing victim-blaming and a flawed justice system. 

Systemic Behaviors on the Ground 

Along with this motorway incident, a flood of rape cases has reached the media. This case was only five days after a 5-year old girl was found murdered, raped, and torched. In roughly the first two months of 2020, as many as 73 incidents of rape have been reported, including five gang-rape cases. It should be  reiterated that  these statistics are only considering cases that have been reported.. It is imperative to consider the multitude of victims and their ordeals which have gone unnoticed, specifically how normalized behaviors and attitudes have made it seem as though Pakistan is at a standstill or has even backtracked when it comes to handling acts of rape and sexual violence. Difficulty in getting the courage to report such cases reflects cyclical gendered practices deeply entrenched in a patriarchal society where women in some cases are exploited in the name of religious and cultural norms. For example, honor is a social value tied to virginity and modesty with men deciding if these virtues are being met. Societal behaviors place more responsibility and pressure on the women to uphold a certain image which dictates the way she should dress and how loud she should be in public; behavior outside of these frameworks appear as conscious indicators to attract male attention. 

A big part of the problem lies within the language and terminology that is used when discussing issues like rape in Pakistan. Pakistani activists highlight that the problem persists due to  people immediately blaming the victim and their family-  Blame goes to the victim for roaming around freely and  the parents are blamed for not taking ‘proper’ care of their child. That is the way rape has always been framed within Pakistani society. Additionally, the rape has always been tied to a female’s modesty and her family’s honor; thus rape is often portrayed  as a loss of her piety and good character and respect of her family. It is disheartening to see a system that leaves families suffering because of  societal notions of dishonor and shame and victims not receiving the justice they deserve, while perpetrators are essentially roaming free. Social attitudes and norms embody larger narratives in society which tell women ‘not to get raped’ instead of turning the focus towards telling men ‘not to rape’; thus women  treat major or minor acts of sexual harassment as trivial and are willing to accept  that they are objects of sexual desire and not human beings who should be treated as fairly and equally as their male counterparts. 

Do Laws in Pakistan Actually Help Women? 

When it comes to acts of sexual assault , Pakistan tends to utilize religion and interprets Islamic ideology to understand crimes such as rape and how it should subsequently be handled. There is a large chasm in ideology and tolerance when considering the fair treatment of women that are based on set laws meant to protect them. While there have been fine-tuned laws, with the intention to help victims of rape with legal process of reporting the crime and taking it to the courts, evidence shows these efforts have not been as effective. 

In 2016, the Pakistani parliament broke massive legislative ground when it passed laws to increase sentences for rapists, making it mandatory that the culprit must be imprisoned for 25 years, and those who commit honor killings of women, as an attempt to close a loophole that allowed many of the killers to go free. Despite these promising changes, in 2016 alone, 370 rapes were registered in the country and 3100 cases were still under investigation. Data shows  that the cases are increasing with the passage of time despite the presence of a legal mechanism of protection. Another factor is the lack of political stability in Pakistan, which enables perpetrators of all sorts of gender-based crimes against women to go unpunished, as government action on both national and local level remains absent. It was a Jirga that decided in 2002 that Mukhtar Mai was to be gang-raped as recompense for a sexual assault committed by her brother. Jirgas, or tribal courts in the rural regions, is a nuanced version of the justice system, which operates on centuries-old codes of honor; this tribal code believes that women should essentially succumb to the orders of male relatives. Over the years, there has been increasing tensions between judiciary challenging the old tradition of jirgas known for providing quick justice. Most people prefer the jirgas’ style of quick and rough judiciary due to the formal legal system being categorized as cumbersome and corrupt, with cases taking years to reach a final verdict. 

The crackdown towards the criminalization is also heavily dependent on which party is holding majority seats in parliament and the importance they place on the particular issue. When accepting his role in office, Prime Minister Imran Khan’s particularstance on social justice and change for all, led to him  condemning the rape that occurred on the motorway in a tweet stating, “They [rapists] should be given exemplary punishments. In my opinion, they should be hanged at the chowk [intersection].” Despite the bold nature of his tweet, a month post incident, no major action has taken place in legal terms. However, this has been the most responsive action by parliamentary government in the last few years. It was in 2017 that Khan’s opposition and former party in power, the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) that the government decided that the solution to Pakistan’s inefficient and politicized judicial system was to provide constitutional cover to Pakistan’s centuries old jirga system. This ultimately displayed at one point the government not only accepting their fault of maintaining a weak judiciary based on self-interest, but consciously wanting to promote a system without considering the negative repercussions it would have towards women’s rights in Pakistan.  

What is Being Done: The Role of Everyday Women 

 The World Economic Forum ranked Pakistan 151 out of 153 countries in its 2020 Global Gender Gap Index Report. The Aurat March -- or Women's March -- has been held across Pakistan on March 8 for the past three years, attracting thousands of citizens, both men and women, intending to demand gender equality, minimum wages for the working class, and bodily rights in the context of sexual harassment and for police support victims in filing for criminal reports, along with raising slogans against sexual harassment and gender-based violence. Women’s rights activists, such as Fouzia Saeed, who founded the first women’s crisis centre in Pakistan, believes progress is being made and that mindsets are changing within society. While women are claiming their own voice through the Aurat March, and with the movement’s message gaining sustainable traction and support through the use of media, there has also been a great amount of backlash. In relation to this year’s March 8th demonstrations, conservatives conducted a smear campaign against feminist activists. Throwing stones at protestors and destroying placards were tied with the justifications deeply embedded in socio-religious norms, stating that it was a highly Western campaign that simply just wanted to promote vulgarity. The status of women has been a social tripe which has evolved into finding an autonomous voice, the the danger of strengthening prevailing patriarchal cultural norms that use Islam as the justification. 

The Future of Pakistan: The Beacon of Light Ahead 

The Aurat March displays itself as a catalyst for detailed guidance and hope, due to its multi-dimensionality and holistic approach of synthesizing the key issues coupled with strategies and solutions to tackle these daunting tasks. The Aurat March was one way to bring women of all ethnicities, classes, and religions onto one platform. Everyday should be a women’s day in Pakistan- there should not be temporary outrage and anger exhibited towards isolated events; this should be a continuous struggle against rigid socio-religious behaviors. Attention should turn towards easing the pain and helping the survivors and their families. Breaches in law enforcement hindering the healing process for these victims should be held accountable. Law enforcement must also see potential good that can come from partnering with NGOs that can send professionally trained female facilitators to accompany the victim when reporting the crime, with the purpose being to ensure the welfare of the survivor. Furthermore, it is an impreative to look  at rape as a heinous crime, rather than an infliction on the victim’s character or honor. Bold reforms and bold attitudes will be needed to bring about this outcome. None of this can become a reality unless the grit and the will of the Pakistani people manifest as the main driving force. None of this can be possible if women are not given positions where power resides; ultimately women must step outside domestic roles to attain their basic rights. 

U.S. Policy Towards Saudi Arabia: The Up's and Down's

The United States’ (U.S.) policy towards Saudi Arabia restrains numerous determinants and interests. The U.S. considers the global market for oil, counterterrorism efforts, containing Iran, trade, and human rights when conducting policy towards the kingdom. The U.S.-Saudi relationship is significantly progressing as both countries share a number of interests in the Middle East. 

The U.S. trade in goods with Saudi Arabia has been steady since 1990. At that point in time, U.S. exports were $4 billion and imports were $10 billion, while in 2010, exports were $11.5 billion and imports were $31.4 billion. In 2019, exports so far have amounted to $8.9 billion and imports to $9.8 billion. Over the years there has been a pattern established where the total value of imports exceeds that of exports. The U.S. imports hydrocarbons from Saudi Arabia, which is a crucial component of petroleum and natural gas, making it essential for U.S. energy needs. The U.S. then exports weapons, machinery, and vehicles to Saudi Arabia. 

Historically, the U.S. was dependent on oil from Saudi Arabia. However, the U.S supply of oil has changed. As of now, the U.S. is the top oil producer and the largest consumer of crude oil and petroleum products, surpassing Russia and Saudi Arabia in the production of crude oil. The U.S. has numerous reserves with various natural resources, including crude oil. As a result of technological advancement in oil extraction, U.S. oil production is expected to increase even more in the future. Though the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) continues to be the largest oil producer, non-OPEC countries such as the U.S. and Canada will contribute significantly to the growth of world oil supply. Despite this, Saudi Arabia is still an important player in the world market for oil.  As a key member of OPEC, Saudi Arabia is able to coordinate with other OPEC members in order to control oil prices through the manipulation of the oil supply. As a "swing producer," Saudi Arabia is able to influence the world market quickly and independently with its spare oil capacity.

Saudi Arabia is more important to U.S. interests because of its capacity to change the world price of oil than as an oil exporter. Even though the U.S. is a top exporter of oil, it is still dependent on the world price of oil as part of the global market. If Saudi Arabia increases its supply, the world price of oil would fall, which would harm U.S. oil producers. For example, if the U.S. imposed restrictions on imports of Saudi oil, U.S. oil refineries would experience a shortage, as Saudi Arabia imports an estimated five million barrels a day to the U.S. While the five million barrels Saudi Arabia imports is significant, the U.S. is in a position to replace that with oil imports from Canada or domestically produced crude oil. However, the cost to U.S. oil producers from a Saudi-led price drop would be considerably more detrimental to U.S. economic interests. 

Because Saudi Arabia plays a major role in controlling the global oil market, U.S.-Saudi policy should be governed by collaborating on the world price of oil rather than focusing on imports and exports. As top exporters, the U.S. and Saudi Arabia could collaborate to meet increasing oil demands from emerging economies. According to the World Bank, as developing nations' economies grow, their demand for fuel and consumer goods that are dependent on crude oil will also increase. This allows the U.S. to prioritize energy independence without weakening relations with Saudi Arabia. In the long run, policy focused on cooperating with Saudi Arabia on regulating the global oil market would benefit U.S. economic interests. 

U.S. energy policy extends beyond oil to nuclear energy within Saudi Arabia. The U.S. and Saudi Arabia signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) which represented their willingness to cooperate on nuclear activities in medicine, industry, and electricity production. In 2018, Secretary of Energy Rick Perry and Minister of Energy, Industry, and Mineral Resources Khalid al Falih discussed the potential for civil nuclear engagement, including new technology sharing. In 2019, the Trump Administration stated that it would share its nuclear technology if Saudi Arabia agreed to International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspections. The U.S. must be especially wary of Saudi attempts to develop nuclear weapons considering escalating tensions with Iran in the aftermath of the crumbling Iran Nuclear Deal. However, if the U.S. pushes too hard for the enrichment and reprocessing restrictions, several U.S. Administration officials and nuclear advocates have argued that Saudi Arabia would search for nuclear cooperation with Russia or China. Therefore, the U.S. is constrained in its ability to push for IAEA inspections, which puts them in a difficult position since inspections are essential for nuclear security. It is necessary for the Trump Administration to demand IAEA inspections, as a nuclear conflict between Saudi Arabia and Iran would be incredibly detrimental to U.S. national security. 

There have been a number of security-related events that have positively and negatively affected the U.S.-Saudi relationship. Shortly after the Cold War, the Gulf War that lasted from 1990 to 1991 strengthened U.S.-Saudi cooperation after half a million U.S. troops were deployed to Saudi Arabia in order to push back Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait. At the same time, Salafi jihadism was spreading in Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia. For political reasons, Saudi Arabia suppressed the internal Salafi opposition but did not react to transnational Salafi jihadism. Saudi Arabia did not want to have a conversation about Salafism domestically seeing as it was ideologically similar to jihad and Wahhabism, an ideology central to Saudi government institutions. U.S.-Saudi relations then worsened after Al-Qaeda bombed the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998 and conducted the September 2001 (9/11) attacks. Saudi Arabia denied any connection to Osama Bin Laden including financial connections to Al Qaeda. Saudi Arabia additionally viewed the U.S. negatively after the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

Despite these events negatively affecting the U.S.-Saudi relationship, they have partnered together in counterterrorism efforts. For example, Al-Qaeda campaigned against the Saudi Arabian regime and conducted terrorist attacks there in 2003. After Saudi Arabia condemned Al-Qaeda following the 2003 terrorist attack, the U.S. cooperated with the kingdom in intelligence sharing and eliminating financial sources to jihadist groups. Like the U.S., Saudi Arabia views Al-Qaeda, Al-Qaeda's affiliates, ISIS, and Salafist-jihadist groups as a threat to Saudi national security. The U.S. believes that Saudi Arabia has improved its counterterrorism efforts since the 9/11 attacks, and it has been more involved in cooperative initiatives. For example, Saudi Arabia co-chairs the Counter-ISIL Finance Group of the Global Coalition to Counter ISIS, and since 2014, Saudi Arabia has prevented Saudis to travel abroad to support terrorist groups. In 2017, Saudi officials stated that they plan to contribute to stabilization efforts in Syria and get involved with Iraqi leaders. U.S.-Saudi relations also continued to cooperate because they have a shared interest in containing Iran, as it remains both a threat to U.S. interests in the Middle East and a rival power of Saudi Arabia. 

It is necessary to examine the policies that continue the counterterrorism alliance between Saudi Arabia and the U.S. because they face similar threats from common enemies. The U.S. benefits from having a counterterrorism partner in the Middle East, especially from a wealthy nation that has significant political influence over Arab states. The U.S. should ally with Saudi Arabia to contain Iran, especially because of the current high tensions between the three actors. U.S. and Iran tensions have recently escalated after potential military attacks and an Iranian shootdown of a U.S. drone over the Strait of Hormuz. If the U.S. were to get into a military confrontation with Iran, it is in U.S. national interest to cooperate with Saudi Arabia, where it could access Saudi air space and bases for troops. Thomas Lippman, Adjunct Scholar at the Middle East Institute, claims that Saudi Arabia is not crucial for U.S. security interests because its military capabilities are limited. The U.S. holds naval headquarters in Bahrain, maintains a large airbase in Qatar, and has troops in Kuwait and Djibouti, among many other areas. He claims that the U.S. should go by an "issue-by-issue basis" with Saudi Arabia, rather than maintaining a close partnership. I disagree with this point; even though the U.S. has strategic military bases in numerous areas in the Middle East, Saudi Arabia is still an important asset for intelligence sharing, and using it for additional military space would be an added benefit of partnering with them.

Though Saudi Arabia has limited military capacity, the U.S. conducts arms sales and training and service support to strengthen the Saudi military. For example, there is the United States Military Training Mission (USMTM) in Saudi Arabia and the Saudi Arabian National Guard Modernization Program (PM-SANG), which supervises U.S. defense cooperation with Saudi Arabia. In May 2017, President Trump indicated that the U.S. would continue strengthening bilateral defense cooperation with Saudi Arabia through arms sales. In 2019, Secretary of State for Political Affairs David Hale went to Saudi Arabia to meet with the Saudi Deputy Defense Minister Khalid bin Salman Al Saud and Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Adel al-Jubeir. Secretary Hale emphasized the strong U.S.-Saudi partnership and shared interests in working with other regional partners to contain Iran's influence over the Middle East, as well as promote security and stability.

Encouraging dialogue between Saudi Arabia and Qatar is also in the U.S.’s security interests. Saudi Arabia has had a rocky relationship with Qatar for over twenty years as they have been concerned over Qatar's ties with Iran, in which Qatar provides natural gas reserves. In 2017, Saudi Arabia cut diplomatic relations with Qatar, closed its land borders, air space, and waters to Qatari vessels, and disallowed Saudi nationals from visiting Qatar, as well as demanded Qatari nationals to leave Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia had claimed that Qatar supported terrorism, interfered with the domestic affairs of other Arab countries, and supported Iran's push to destabilize Saudi Arabia.

This is of significant concern to U.S. security interests in the Middle East. The U.S. has close defense cooperation, including in arms sales, with both Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Because the U.S. has major facilities in Qatar, it is in the national interest to attempt to fix Saudi Arabia's relationship with Qatar, as this broken relationship is unsuitable for U.S. security interests. If the two states went into military conflict, the U.S. would be in a difficult situation because it has defense cooperation with both countries. Picking sides would further the conflict and severe one or the other relationship.

Another current event pertaining to U.S. security and human rights interests in Saudi Arabia is the Yemen Civil War. The Trump and Obama Administrations have diplomatically supported Saudi Arabia's attempts to reintegrate the Hadi government, and have also provided logistical and intelligence support to their military operations. The Saudi-led coalition has contributed to Yemen civilian casualties, a humanitarian disaster, a blockage on the flow of goods and humanitarian aid to Yemen, the empowerment of Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State, and Iranian support for the Houthis. Following a Saudi airstrike that killed numerous children in 2018, Lieutenant General Michael Garrett went to Saudi Arabia to pressure the government to investigate this accident. The Saudi-led coalition found that the accident violated the coalition's rules and recommended that it comes with punishment. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo additionally stated to Congress that authorities from both Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are taking action in preventing the danger imposed on Yemeni civilians and infrastructure. 

U.S. arms sales and military support to the Saudi-led coalition have sparked debate within U.S. Congress. Proposed foreign military and commercial arms sales aligning with the Arms Export Control Act (AECA) have been criticized by several Congress Members because Saudi Arabia has been using them for airstrikes in Yemen, which violates international humanitarian law. Congress has also attempted to investigate an instance where an exception was made under the AECA, allowing the Trump administration to continue selling weapons to Saudi Arabia without a required congressional review period. Those critical of the arms sales argue that the U.S. should instead share more advanced U.S. technology and increase training and intelligence support to the Saudi air force. Other members offered for the implementation of conditions for the Department of Defense activities and U.S. support for the coalition. Another proposed solution is for President Trump to withdraw U.S. military forces from Yemen missions. Numerous members proposed to require more oversight reporting on U.S. activities, disallow deployment of U.S. military personnel or U.S. funds to be used for specific goals in Yemen, and prohibit sales of a specific type of weapon to Saudi Arabia. On the other end of the debate, several members argue that U.S. support lessens Yemen civilian casualties by encouraging more human rights.

The U.S. is in a difficult position in the Yemen conflict. On one hand, both U.S. officials and Saudi Arabia have concerns about the Houthi movement due to its ties with Iran. Houthi forces additionally operate cross-border attacks to Saudi Arabia, which also threatens American citizens there. Both countries are concerned about armed threats from Al-Qaeda and Islamic State supporters in Yemen. Despite these concerns, there have been civilian casualties, mass displacement, and infrastructure damage caused by Saudi intervention using U.S. weapons. 

There should be a sense of compromise to this debate. The U.S. should not discontinue arms sales to Saudi Arabia. If Saudi Arabia does not purchase U.S. arms, it will seek out other partners such as Russia and China. Russia and China would be less likely to have human rights concerns in Yemen and would not make any effort to hold the Saudi-led coalition accountable for its actions. However, the U.S. could terminate the sale of a specific type of weapon used in Saudi airstrikes. That way, it is a stronger signal to the Saudis that they should be careful of where they target. It is additionally important to not single out Saudi Arabia and claim that they are committing all of the humanitarian violations in the conflict. The Houthis and Iran are equally responsible. Therefore, it would not be tangible to simply discontinue arms sales to Saudi Arabia, because it would imply that Saudi Arabia is not there to bring a political solution to the issue. On the diplomatic side, the U.S. should continue encouraging a United Nations negotiated resolution that incorporates the GCC transition document which was signed and agreed to in 2011. 

Aside from Yemen, Saudi Arabia has a low record of domestic human rights as well. The Kingdom is run by Islamic sharia law, which does not allow freedom of expression, press, religion, or association, and political parties are prohibited as they are seen as going against the Kingdom. Saudi Arabia gives death sentences to crimes committed by minors and uses torture to interrogate alleged criminals and force confessions out of them. The government also unlawfully interferes with the privacy of families and homes. The government decides which media content can be public in order to maintain internal security and prevent chaos or division. Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi journalist who lived abroad in "self-exile," was murdered by government agents in Istanbul, Turkey. In 2016, Saudi authorities banned Khashoggi from writing, appearing on television, and going to conferences because he had made critical statements about Saudi government officials. Per the U.S. State Department's 2018 report on human rights in Saudi Arabia, human rights activists were detained and later released but warned not to use social media for their activism or reach out to foreign diplomats, international human rights organizations, and travel outside the country. The use of torture has also been employed against detained human rights activists, including women who fought for the right to drive.

Dana Stroul, a former senior professional staff member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, states that human rights in Saudi Arabia can progress with the U.S. simply encouraging change. While the U.S. does not have a say in how to run another government, their assistance can help promote long-term change. For example, the Two Holy Mosques Scholarship Program admits 50,000 Saudi students each year to attend U.S. universities, which provides them an American-style education. These students go back home with ideas they have learned through this education. Though this is a catalyst for long-term change, it is better than telling Saudi Arabia what it should and shouldn't do. If there were a situation that went against U.S. interests, U.S. policy should be direct and question Saudi Arabia's actions. For example, the U.S. should condemn and outright state that it believes that Saudi imprisoned civil-rights activists should be let out. Additionally, the U.S. must be more forward with holding Saudi Arabia accountable for the murder of Jamal Khashoggi. Overall, it is better to maintain positive relations with Saudi Arabia to encourage human rights, because if the U.S. severs its economic, military, and strategic relations, then Saudi Arabia would turn towards powers such as China and Russia, which would not have much interest in encouraging respect for human rights. 

After discussing U.S. policy and interests in Saudi Arabia, it is reasonable to argue that the U.S. should continue keeping Saudi Arabia as a close security partner in the Middle East. Saudi Arabia has the potential of being an even stronger U.S. ally in counterterrorism efforts and containment of Iran because it is a wealthy and influential nation in the region. In regards to human rights, there is a more likely chance that Saudi Arabia would cooperate with the U.S. rather than other powers, which may not consider the issue. Lastly, it is important to maintain economic relations with Saudi Arabia for the world market for oil and to take advantage of emerging economies in the long run. Though there are disagreements and a difference in views between the two nations, there are more benefits than disadvantages in their relationship.

Nationwide Internet Blackout Showcases Iran’s Increasing Digital Authoritarianism, Inefficacy of Trump’s ‘Maximum Pressure’ Campaign

In what has become an increasingly common theme across the world, citizens took to the streets last month to protest price hikes ordered by a conservative national government, in this case, that of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Just like their counterparts in Chile and Lebanon, Iranians demonstrated principally in response to economic austerity measures, but they also indicated broader distrust toward government rule; “We will reclaim our rights but not be oppressed,” Iranians chanted in Ahwaz, a city of over one million near the Iraqi border. Dissimilar to manifestations elsewhere, however, was the manner in which the Iranian regime responded; on November 17th, just two days after the protests had begun, Iran’s central government shut down internet access for virtually all of its 80 million inhabitants.

The nationwide blackout marked a substantial development in Iranian domestic cyber suppression technology, as well as its willingness to use it. Iran’s development and heightened aggression forms part of worldwide trend toward ‘digital authoritarianism,’ a loosely defined term that refers to the censorship and surveillance of a population by a government via its cyber capabilities as a means of political control. From Africa to Asia, several states have harnessed the power of budding technology–not to advance the interests of their people, but to dominate them. With its unprecedented attack on its own citizens, Iran joins these ranks.

The Rise of Digital Authoritarianism

Digital authoritarianism is loosely defined as the censorship and surveillance of a population by a government via its cyber capabilities as a means of political control. A 2011 study, among the earliest on the subject, observes that the global rise of information technology (IT) over the latter half of the 20th century sparked hope that liberal democracies would flourish; the logic goes that authoritarian regimes, rendered incapable of suppressing dissent, would go extinct. Clearly, this has not been the case; not unlike interstate cyberwarfare, the IT revolution only offered a new theater of competition in which intrastate opponents –the state and its dissidents– engage.

Unlike interstate cyberwarfare –in which sabotage of financial and government institutions provides perpetrators with diplomatic leverage– censorship plays a central role, as dissent alone can jeopardize a state’s grasp on society. In the absence of robust government cyber capabilities, domestic-based dissidents can communicate freely, allowing them to plan rebellious-natured activity; by blocking messaging apps like Telegram and WhatsApp, states stifle protests and coordinated attacks on security targets. Furthermore, censorship is among the least offensive weapons in the repertoire of state oppression, so states choose it to avoid condemnation from trading partners and other members of the international community relevant to their interests. Fredrik Erixon and Hosuk Lee-Makiyama, the authors of the 2011 study, also make note of the “wide net” authoritarian regimes cast when they perceive a viable threat to their power; targets of censorship may “range from telecommunication and broadcasting networks to infrastructure and simpler conveyors of information.” In short, censorship in cyberspace can be a low-cost, high-efficacy means for authoritarian regimes to maintain political control.

China as the Digitally Authoritarian Superpower

Cyber specialists and political analysts widely agree that the first and most egregious perpetrator of digital authoritarianism was China. Erixon and Lee-Makiyama posit that China is “increasingly reshaping” the internet’s “usage, regulation, and role in society,” underscoring its influence on other authoritarian states’ domestic cyber policy. In 2013, researchers analyzed Chinese online censorship practices, concluding that the state allows “even vitriolic” criticism of the state but snuffs out any move toward social mobilization, evidence of the state’s sinister desire to maintain a semblance of freedom while safeguarding its centralized political structure. Adrian Zenz, whose research centers primarily on China's ongoing ethnic cleansing of the Uyghurs, more recently warned of Chinese facial recognition technology and identification scanners outside of mosques and churches, in addition to an algorithmic “social credit system” that “could result in a nationwide apartheid-like system.” 

China’s domestic cyber policy has far-reaching effects; some have argued that depreciating costs for cyber censorship and surveillance as a result of rapid advances in artificial intelligence will only make digital authoritarianism more appealing for anocratic states, and those already headed down the autocratic path –like Iran– will be extremely difficult to influence for the better.

Origins of Iran’s ‘Halal’ Internet

Iran’s 2009 ‘Green Movement,’ which saw thousands of citizens take to the streets of Tehran in defiance of the government, is not only significant in itself –demonstrations were among the largest since the 1979 revolution– but in relation to the development of Iranian domestic cyber policy as well. The flurry of protest videos and photographs posted to social media prompted Western observers to refer to the movement as the “Twitter revolution,” and although the impact of networking sites on the protests’ proliferation is contested, the international media hubbub induced the Iranian government to ban Twitter and Facebook. A decided shift toward cyber authoritarianism soon followed.

Writing for Wired, Lily Hay Newman notes that historically autocratic countries like China and Russia “architected their internet infrastructure from the start with government control in mind.” Iran did not, but since the Green Revolution a decade ago, it has sought to centralize its national internet by “retrofitting traditional private and decentralized networks with cooperation agreements, technical implants, or a combination.” The result is an increasingly closed, easy-to-police network known as SHOMA. Jon Gambrell, the Associated Press’ lead reporter on Iran, refers to SHOMA as ‘halal’ internet, a reference to Islamic law. “It is essentially a net neutrality supporter’s nightmare: The network has some 500 government-approved national websites that stream content far faster than those based abroad, which are intentionally slow,” Gambrell reported in 2018. “Search results also are gamed within the network, allowing the government to censor what users find.”

What’s Next? The U.S. ‘Maximum Pressure’ Campaign and Iranian Domestic Repression

SHOMA’s highly-centralized structure enabled November’s nationwide blackout, which then served as a shroud for the arrests of thousands and murders of at least 200. Previously, the Iranian state had been either unwilling or incapable of disabling internet access for its 80 million people; protests at the start of 2018 resulted in the blocking of popular mobile messaging applications, but nothing occurred on the scale of a countrywide blackout.

Iran’s move toward digital authoritarianism may have been inevitable, as the country has long shown little compunction in cracking down on its citizens. President Donald Trump’s ‘maximum pressure’ campaign, however, has only accelerated this trend; in its 2018 withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the Trump Administration reinstated crippling economic sanctions on the Iranian government, which eventually led to the recent fuel hikes and widespread civil unrest.

President Trump would probably tell you his plan is working –indeed, he tweeted solidarity with the protestors in early December and lamented the Iranian government’s violent response– but in actuality, the demonstrations are unlikely to unseat the present regime or influence it toward more responsible behavior. The administration’s aggressive policy only serves to score political points at home by creating a self-fulfilling prophecy; in other words, the crackdowns serve as justification for current policy, not a consequence of them. President Trump can present himself as a defender of human rights and a courageous commander-in-chief – all the while, common Iranian citizens suffer heavy-handed oppression, on the streets as much as in cyberspace.

What's Next? A Recap of Israel's Elections and What Lies Ahead

 It is unlikely, but not impossible, that Israel will return for the third round of elections this year, with the most likely outcome being a unity government with power-sharing between Blue and White and Likud, with Yisrael Beytenu leader Avigdor Liberman maintaining a senior cabinet position. It remains to be seen whether Blue and White leader Benny Gantz will give up his opposition to splitting the premiership while Likud Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is under indictment, or whether Likud will buck Netanyahu as the head of their party in order to form a government.  

On October 24, 2019, it was announced that Netanyahu and Gantz will meet in the near future to discuss the possibility of forming a unity government. After Netanyahu’s failure to form a coalition, President Reuven Rivlin has tasked Gantz with doing so. Blue and White has said that Gantz has spoken with each of the leaders of the various factions elected to the Knesset. Likud confirmed there would be a meeting between Gantz and Netanyahu, but Netanyahu would be negotiating on behalf of the bloc of right-wing and religious parties loyal to him and stressed he would not enter a coalition without those 55 members behind him. Blue and White previously rejected this negotiation. 

The Knesset is Israel’s unicameral parliament which is made up of 120 lawmakers. The prime minister is the coalition leader of the Knesset, generally the head of the party with the greatest number of seats. In an election, voters vote for a party rather than individual candidates, with seats in the Knesset apportioned according to the percentage of votes each party receives in the election. After the election, a coalition government must be formed by the elected representatives in the Knesset. A ruling coalition generally must have at least 61 members to ensure a majority of the 120 seats, though it is possible to form a “minority government” with less than 61 seats, provided opposition parties approve the coalition from the outside. 

The president of Israel formally asks whichever party leader he or she feels is most likely to be successful in forming a government to attempt to form a governing coalition. Since no party has ever achieved a 61-vote majority on its own, they have always relied on other parties to join the coalition. Following the September 17th election, President Rivlin gave Netanyahu the first mandate to form a government, which lasted 28 days and ended on October 21st when Netanyahu returned the mandate, having failed to form a coalition. 

The 22nd Knesset was elected on September 17th, 2019 and features nine political parties, represented by 120 members of Parliament. There are three main political groupings: Blue and White, Likud, and Orthodox parties. Blue and White, with 33 seats, is a newly formed party led by formed Israel Defense Force (IDF) Chief of Staff Benny Gantz, a political neophyte who ran on a centrist platform primarily against perceived corruption by Netanyahu and his government. Gantz pledged on the campaign trail that he would not form a government with Netanyahu, who will soon face indictment on several alleged corruption cases. Next is Likud with 31 seats. Likud is Prime Minister Netanyahu’s party and is the largest right-wing party in Israel. The party remains committed to keeping Netanyahu in office despite the pending indictments. Finally, there are 17 seats held by two primary Orthodox parties: Shas and United Torah Judaism (UTJ). Shas has previously joined coalitions led by Likud, supporting Netanyahu in the elections. The party has no stance on a two-state solution, and they lean right on other social issues. On the other hand, UTJ is a non-Zionist faction which does not endorse the creation of a secular Jewish state, but which supported Netanyahu in the elections.

Additionally, there are also other factions playing a role in the elections. Joint List, with 13 seats, is a unified ticket of four major Israeli Arab parties that have become the third-largest faction of the Knesset. There is the communist party Hadash, the secular Arab interest party Ta’al, the conservative Islamist United Arab List, and the nationalist Balad party. Then there are Left-wing Zionist parties with 11 total seats. The Israeli political left is represented by the Labor-Gesher and the Democratic Camp, two smaller parties who adhere to leftist domestic and foreign policies but also embrace Zionism as opposed to the Joint List which is generally anti-Zionist and made up of majority Arab-Israeli parties. There is also Yamina with seven seats, which is a united list of right-wing parties who are in support of Netanyahu, and Yisrael Beiteinu with 8 seats. Yisrael Beiteinu is the right-wing political party led by Liberman that was founded to represent the concern of Israel’s million-plus Russian-speaking immigrant community. The party is a proponent of Lieberman’s plan to achieve a two-state solution, which calls for Israel to annex large parts of the West Bank in Israel that are predominantly Arab.

To summarize all of the competing parties, the Israel Policy Forum groups them into three blocs. The first is the pro-Netanyahu bloc, which is a united front of right-wing and ultra-Orthodox parties that has 55 total seats. The second bloc is comprised of a group of centrist, left-wing Zionist and Arab political parties that oppose Netanyahu with a total of 57 seats. The last bloc is Yisrael Beiteinu who controls eight seats and whose secularist leader Liberman has pledged not to sit in a coalition that includes either the religious parties or the Arab ones. In all, there are four potential outcomes to the elections: a unity government (Gantz, Netanyahu, Liberman); a unity government minus Netanyahu (with Gantz, Gideon Saar, Liberman); a Minority government with Gantz, Liberman, and Arab parties in minority, or a bloc of the left and religious parties. 

A unity government between Kachol Lavan (33 seats), Likud (32 seats), and Yisrael Beiteinu (eight seats) would total 73 seats. This would require compromises from both Likud and Kachol Lavan. Netanyahu and Likud would be required to cede control over the right-wing “bloc,” the smaller parties the prime minister is currently negotiating on behalf of. There is also President Rivlin’s proposal, which calls for a rotating premiership, something Kachol Lavan adamantly opposed on the campaign trail. Mr. Netanyahu would serve as prime minister first, but if charged, he would declare himself incapacitated while he sorted out his legal troubles. Mr. Gantz would then serve as acting prime minister with full powers. Finally, there is Liberman’s plan, which is somewhat like Rivlin's proposal. Like Rivlin, Liberman calls for a rotating premiership between Netanyahu and Gantz. However, Liberman’s plan would also require Netanyahu to back out of an agreement with the religious right-wing bloc. These parties (Shas, United Torah Judaism, and the Ayelet Shaked-led Yamina alliance) could only join the government later based on agreements that the three parties will have to reach amongst themselves. As a part of his plan, Liberman also hopes for this unity government to focus on two key issues. First, he wishes to reach an agreement with Likud and Kahol Lavan to pass a law that would force ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students to draft into the military and nix a law that would keep supermarkets close on Shabbat. Second, Lieberman wants the parties to discuss minimizing budgets, raising taxes and finding a permanent solution for the situation in the Gaza Strip. 

For a unity government without Netanyahu, there would be Gantz, Gideon Saar, and Liberman. Theoretically, Likud could have joined a unity government without Netanyahu and with Kachol Lavan.  However, the party supported the prime minister’s push for new elections instead. Likud MKs like Gideon Saar and Michal Shir, perceived as critical of Netanyahu, ultimately voted in favor of dissolving the Knesset and moving to new elections. 

Gantz could form a minority government with Liberman and Arab parties in the minority. Likud said in its campaign that both Liberman and Joint List chairman Ayman Odeh had spoken about recommending Gantz as prime minister. However, a government that includes both those parties, which despise each other, seems impossible. Liberman has said he won’t join a coalition with the Arab parties, and most factions within the Joint List reacted with outrage to Odeh’s comment about possible political cooperation with Gantz. Gantz has the option of forming a minority government with outside support from the Arab parties — a course advocated by Democratic Camp’s Ehud Barak — but neither side would be thrilled with that arrangement and the resulting government would be on extremely shaky ground. 

A coalition government between the Left and Religious blocs is unlikely, but at this point could very well be possible. The question remains what would it take to get the left-wing bloc without the Arab parties, but concessions to get the orthodox parties onboard? One option could be for the ultra-Orthodox parties to join Gantz, Labor-Gesher and the Democratic Camp. Similar center-left governments with the Haredi parties existed in Israel decades ago, but Shas and United Torah Judaism (UTJ) have in recent decades become automatic supporters of Likud. UTJ already declared it stood by Likud “all the way.” Another problem is that as it stands, those parties seem to add up to a very narrow majority — not a recipe for a stable coalition.  

Israel is returning for the third round of elections, signaling a second failure by Netanyahu to form a government, as well as a failure by Gantz in his first test as a political leader. The responsibility to form a unity government shifted to Gantz and he had 28 days to do so. The 28 days passed and no coalition was formed, so a third election is the last resort. If Gantz couldn’t form a government within his allotted time, the president also had the option to hand the task to Parliament, giving lawmakers an additional 21 days to come up with a candidate who can command a majority. Many thought this was the more likely option, as no one desired another election. Netanyahu was also reliant on the fact that the public and political pressure to avoid a third election would have persuaded the half-dozen additional lawmakers, whose support he needed, to come to his side. 

Israel could have avoided the third round of elections if any of the major parties dropped their necessary conditions for an agreement: Likud’s retention of Netanyahu as head of the party, Gantz’s refusal to share the premiership with Netanyahu under indictment, and Liberman’s refusal to serve with the Arab parties. As a dual kingmaker and spoiler, Lieberman will likely prevail with his demands.  

The early polls for the third Israeli election in the span of a year, scheduled for March 2, 2020, predict another inconclusive result: that is, neither the Center-Left-Arab bloc (to the extent that such a thing actually exists) nor the Right-Religious bloc, minus Avigdor Liberman’s Yisrael Beiteinu party, are expected to win a majority in the Knesset. Likud and Kachol Lavan are still in a horse race with the latter having a slight edge. There will be nearly three months of campaigning, which can always make a difference, but if the election were held today the needle would barely move.

Israeli politics should not be where it is today. The second election was an unnecessary embarrassment, brought on by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s refusal to play by the same rules applied to his immediate predecessor, Ehud Olmert, and the prospect of a third vote is out-and-out shameful for the very same reason: think what you will of Kachol Lavan’s inconsistent and muddled negotiating strategy, it is Netanyahu’s insistence on serving as prime minister through at least the early stages of an indictment while requesting the Knesset grant him immunity, that has prevented a new coalition from being formed. Gantz has a slight advantage in the blame game, but the anger that may erupt with the dissolution of the twenty-second Knesset (perhaps exacerbated by President Reuven Rivlin’s intervention, in which he blamed both sides equally) can turn on anyone in a volatile news cycle.

Russia’s New Role as Mediator in the MENA Region

President Donald Trump made the abrupt and heavily criticized decision to pull American military personnel out of the Turkey-Rojava border in early October 2019, allowing Turkey to invade the Kurdish-controlled land and for Russian troops to quickly occupy the space that had previously been occupied by United States (U.S.) troops. Since then, the international community has been speculating about Russia’s new role as a mediator in the Middle East, as their rocky past of national-interest-driven policy in the Middle East/North Africa (MENA) region has led some to call for an examination of Russia’s priorities in the MENA region. If  Russia’s future endeavors prove successful, Russia has the potential to replace the United States as the most influential non-regional power in the Middle East.

As the successor state to the Soviet Union, Russia inherited all of the experience and influence that the Soviets had earned when politicking in the Middle East. During the Cold War, the Soviet Union and the United States were constantly participating in proxy wars. Many of these proxy wars took the shape of civil wars and political coups in the Middle East and Africa, including the Congo Crisis and the Angolan Civil War. However, Middle Eastern and African allies of the Soviet Union were often “disappointed” with the quality of their support: weaponry and training provided by the USSR was less advanced than those provided by the U.S., and the Soviet Union failed to prevent the defeat of their allies. As a result, the general opinion of the Soviet Union--and later, the Russian Federation--gradually declined among Arabs and many states instead turned to the U.S. for monetary and military assistance. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia’s influence and involvement in the region has diminished as the state’s leaders focused on domestic growth and reform. The United States assumed the helm of the most influential non-regional power in the MENA region and has managed to protect this title without serious competitors until President Trump withdrew American troops from the contested area in northern Syria in October 2019.

Now, the tables have turned. Russian involvement in Middle Eastern politics was renewed in the early 2000’s, shortly after Russian President Vladimir Putin took office. Attempts to regain influence in the MENA region were generally unsuccessful, as before 2011 the only significant mode of influence that Russia pursued were arms sales. Middle Eastern politics were not a priority of Russia until the Arab Spring of 2011, when the protests and revolutions that occurred during this tumultuous time had the potential to destroy any remaining allies that Russia had been able to retain in the Middle East. As their allies in the region began toppling one by one, Russia began to support Syria in earnest through their diplomatic powers in the United Nations. When faced with the possibility of being deposed, the Syrian President, Bashar al-Assad, began using violence against Syrian protesters and revolutionaries. Kurdish forces in northeastern Syria fought forcefully for their lands, resulting in Assad withdrawing troops from the region (now called Rojava), leaving nearly ¼ of Syria’s territory to the People’s Protection Units (YPG), a mostly-Kurdish militia. Thus, Russia’s eventual military intervention on behalf of Assad in September 2015, ordered under the guise of fighting terrorism in Syria, was welcomed by the Syrian president, and the deployed Russian forces were ordered to put down the rebels that were threatening Assad’s grasp on the rest of the country. It was this military intervention that cemented Russia’s role as a major player in Middle Eastern politics.

Russia’s decision to support Assad was not simply an attempt to retain allies in the Middle East; it was also a political power play of Putin to indicate Russia’s dedication to sovereignty and centralized government, which simultaneously affirmed Russia’s disapproval of Western leadership structures and military interventions. During the Arab Spring, protests in defiance of Putin and the illiberal policies of the Russian government were occurring throughout the Russian capital of Moscow. Instead of supporting the newly created liberal democracies like Western states (particularly the U.S.), Russia made a point to support the centralized, autocratic governance of Bashar al-Assad and, in doing so, was defending Russia’s own domestic interests. Allowing liberal democratic reform to completely destroy any relationships that Russia had in the Middle East would not only lessen the power and influence that the Kremlin had in the region, but would also diminish Putin’s own legitimacy as a strongman president.

Since the intervention in 2015, Russia has helped Assad regain control of nearly every major Syrian city outside of Rojava, launched peace talks, negotiated a demilitarized zone with Turkey, and maintained a significant military presence within Syria. Russia’s intervention is widely accepted by foreign policy experts as the only thing that ensured the continuation of Assad’s presidency, and the creation of de-escalation zones has helped Assad recapture large areas of land within Syria. Both Assad and Putin have also been heavily criticized by the international community for their use of drones and chemical weapons throughout the duration of the conflict. Russian drone strikes are estimated to have killed around 7,000 Syrian civilians alone, and more than 150 cases of chemical warfare have been reported within Syria since 2015. Although the international community has attempted many times to hold Bashar al-Assad responsible for these war crimes, Russia has proven itself to be both a difficult obstacle for the West and a steadfast ally of Syria. Turkey has been particularly vocal in their condemnation of Erdogan’s and Putin’s actions, as more than 3.6 million refugees of the Syrian Civil War have already fled to Turkey.

Turkey protested heavily when Assad allowed the lands in northern Syria to be occupied by the YPG, as the Turkish government believes the YPG to be associated with the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), a recognized terrorist organization that has been leading an insurgency in Turkey for many years. When the U.S. troops withdrew, Turkey’s military was able to stage an incursion into the Kurdish-controlled lands of northern Syria, displacing thousands of Kurdish people. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has stated that he plans to resettle Syrian refugees in the northern Syrian lands occupied by Turkish soldiers. Outraged and at risk, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), Syria’s Kurdish militia alliance with whom the U.S. had partnered with in an effort to fight the Daesh in Rojava, were forced to make a deal with Assad that allowed his army to advance to the border of Turkish-claimed territory. Thus, the U.S. withdrawal has incited anger and conflict in a region where they had once hoped to prevent further violence.

Acting as a mediator, Russian forces directed the SDF and the Syrian army to the land which had been besieged by Turkey for the past month. On October 22nd, Russian President Putin and Turkish President Erdogan met in Sochi to negotiate a ceasefire. They reached an agreement which created a 75-square mile “safe-zone” along the Turkish-Syrian border, away from which the YPG militia was forced to fall back. Since then, a joint force of Russian and Turkish military has been patrolling the new safe-zone and nearby borderlands to ensure the YPG doesn’t return, and the U.S. has promised to assist in keeping the Kurdish out of the area. As of the time at which this article was written, clashes within the safe zone continue.

Although the Turkish incursion into Kurdish territory has upset many in the West and caused many deaths, Turkey, Russia and Syria have all benefited from the strife. Turkey received a new swath of land in which they can resettle refugees, Syria has further cemented their alliance with Russia, and Russia has gained a new role in this important region. The incursion also occurred during a time in which Russia was already seeing an increase in approval in the Middle East, which can be largely attributed to their “Astana process” dialogue between nations in the region and their well-trained diplomats. Now, having filled the space that the U.S. has abandoned as a mediator, Russia may be able to exert more influence than ever before.

In contrast, the U.S. is showing a decline in popularity within the region due to various foreign policy errors and military failures. President Donald Trump’s ban on migrants from several Muslim countries outraged the Arab community, and the U.S.’s failures in Afghanistan and Iraq have led some to doubt the American military’s ability to succeed in Middle Eastern conflicts. American approval in the region plummeted from 63 percent in 2016 to 41 percent in September 2019, before the U.S. troops were even removed from Northern Syria. This recent misstep, preceded by several years worth of unsuccessful operations and uncertain foreign policy have granted Russia many opportunities to improve their standing in the MENA region--all of which they have used to their advantage.

Since the Cold War, Russia’s foreign policy in the Middle East has been defined by competition with the West. Now that the U.S.’s influence has diminished and their reputation in the Middle East damaged, Russia is taking on the role of mediator between Syria, Turkey, and the Kurds. So far, Russia has taken to this role rather well by using the mistakes that the U.S. has made to their favor and putting the national interests of Russia ahead of the interests of the region.

Most of the actions that Russia has already taken thus far in the MENA region have been entirely self-serving in nature, and either directly or indirectly serve to improve Putin’s grasp of leadership on the world stage. The jihadist threat that created conflict in Chechnya and Dagestan has contributed to Russian foreign policy in the Middle East, as part of their national defense strategy is to prevent terrorism within Russia by fighting jihadist and Islamic terrorist groups while they remain outside of Russia. Additionally, having allies within the Middle East will give Russia access to negotiations regarding oil; as a major oil exporter, Russia would gain from the ability to negotiate international oil prices with other oil rich countries throughout the Middle East.  

By courting Turkey and Syria simultaneously, Russia accomplishes two goals--maintaining influence and power within the MENA region, and pulling Turkey away from its NATO allies. And they’re succeeding--Turkey’s western allies have been withdrawing arms deals, expressing outrage, and threatened sanctions for their recent treatment of the Kurds, engagement in Russian arms deals, and Erdogan’s newfound friendship with Vladimir Putin. Despite the complicated relationship that Turkey and Russia have had in the past, both Erdogan and Putin are more than likely to agree to a new, more friendly relationship if it proves beneficial for both leaders in the long run. Currently, Russia provides Turkey with more than half of its natural gas and almost a quarter of its oil. Additionally, a flourishing trading agreement and the status of Turkey as a popular tourist destination for Russians give Russia and Turkey a very positive economic relationship. This relationship couldn’t come at a better time for the two countries, who are both languishing under Western sanctions. All of these factors are only certain to push Turkey further into the grasp of the Kremlin, as they will be more than happy to continue providing Turkey with arms while simultaneously pulling them away from NATO.

Russian influence and presence in the MENA region is self-serving and interest-driven; however, the presence of the Russian military in Syria and the negotiations and peace talks occurring under the Russian flag have caused some to wonder whether or not a new influence is needed in the Middle East. Others argue that if the non-Western solution means selling out the Kurds, the solutions aren’t worth ponderance. Many opportunities to mediate the conflict have arisen from failures on behalf of the West, and Russian President Vladimir Putin’s skillful navigation of the relationship between Syria and Turkey has astounded policy makers throughout the international community. As Russia continues to engage in peace talks and negotiations, the world watches with bated breath. If Vladimir Putin truly wishes to restore Russia’s status as a major player within the Middle East, he’ll have to continue successfully mediating a conflict that seems to have no easy solution. 

Social Media and Guerrilla Warfare Make for a Lethal Insurgent Mix in Somalia

In the midst of the twenty-first century, it is arguable that the greatest threat to the international community is that of transnational terrorism. Defined as “such action when carried out by basically autonomous non-state actors, whether or not they enjoy some degree of support from sympathetic states,” transnational terrorism spans national boundaries and presents itself as a formidable challenge to nation-states. While the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) is still a prominent threat, they have slightly faded from international media attention in the past few years and their recent loss of territory has pushed them out of the bigger picture, making way for a new focus group: Al-Shabaab. Known in Arabic as “the Youth” or “the Guys,” al-Shabaab is a jihadist insurgency group based in Somalia that largely operates in many states throughout East Africa, including Kenya, Tanzania, Mozambique, and Yemen, with occasional violent activity in Ethiopia and Uganda. Active since 2006, al-Shabaab’s main objectives are to replace the current Somali federal republic that is supported by the United Nations (UN) with an Islamic government. As part of their efforts to achieve that, the group’s distinctive mobilization schemes, including their use of guerrilla warfare and sophisticated public relations arm, allows them to target disadvantaged populations, recruit fighters on both the domestic and global scale, and ultimately elevate their status to one of the most dangerous insurgent groups capable of largely impacting East Africa.

Public Relations Arm

While al-Shabaab is based in Somalia, its online presence makes it just as much of a threat as its physical presence does to nearby states in East Africa. After the devastating events that transpired in September 2001, the term “terrorism” has become synonymous with social media, particularly interactive platforms such as Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook. However, while al-Qaeda was the first extremist group to truly capitalize on the use of social media, al-Shabaab is no stranger to online recruitment and cyberterrorism. 

Al-Shabaab’s use of “electronic jihad” is extensive as their public relations arm is extremely sophisticated, utilizing a particular pro-Muslim framework in order to appeal to a certain religious group and identity that people hold. In actuality, this framework helps explain why al-Shabaab’s recruitment efforts are so effective. Starting in 2007, Al-Kataib, the group’s media branch, has produced propaganda aimed at recruiting new fighters, as well as enhanced its audio-visual production in order to produce “polished films” alongside written, radio, and photographic content. But the internet’s inadvertent allyship also extends to Twitter. In 2011, al-Shabaab created its Twitter account under the username “@HSMPress,” which it uses to coordinate information and mobilize its members as a form of collective action. For example, the account attempted to appeal to the interests of all Muslims as seen by a tweet stating that “To propound, propagate and promote the forgotten obligation of Jihad among the Muslims around the globe is the essence of #JihadPhilosophy,” adding that “Sheikh; Jihad is an individual obligation; so all Muslims, and Somalis in particular, must march forth for Jihad.” This call to action specifically used an “obligatory” anti-Western jihadist framework in order to try and appeal to the greater Islamic community and their inherent responsibilities as Muslims to fight back against those who try to oppress them and all that they stand for.

The group’s Twitter account also serves as a platform where they can regularly confront foreigners and opposing forces and denounce intervention efforts by primarily Western states. In one instance, @HSMPress tweeted a link to an article and captioned it “Decades of interference-and not a single success… Foreign interventions have never succeeded in Somalia.” In a later response to a follower, the account wrote that “Western Media has spent years inculcating derogatory anti-Islami views into ur minds.” The group’s overall decision to focus on decades of failed Western interventionism allows them to highlight the strength and resiliency of the Somali people. It also serves as some sort of justification for al-Shabaab’s violent behavior. They are not simply acting out against enemies of Allah, but also in response to numerous attempts to, as they view it, infiltrate Somalia.

However, despite their online presence, al-Shabaab’s recruitment efforts generally focus on nobody and everybody all at once. Their multifaceted social media campaigns and their “construction of specific media operations narratives” allow them to have multiple target audiences, demonstrating their ability to interact with others on both a domestic and international scale. However, certain populations are targeted to a higher degree than others. As part of the diaspora, approximately 145,000 Somalis have settled in the United States as of 2017, particularly in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area of Minnesota. While the group has not outright mentioned them, the mass assembly of Somalis in the state makes it far easier to implement recruitment methods there. In fact, Somali-American’s feelings of marginalization and homesickness make them the most susceptible targets to al-Shabaab’s framing efforts. 

Furthermore, al-Shabaab’s media apparatus has also continued to try and attract foreign fighters from the East Africa region, particularly those who speak a local language such as Swahili. And, because they are primarily a group with a large number of youth, al-Shabaab has been known to target orphans and abandoned children in Mogadishu, the state’s capital city. Not only does social media increase an organization’s ability to reach people online, but its usability and reachability make it easier to employ selective recruitment efforts where al-Shabaab is able to openly recruit foreign fighters from specific communities. While al-Shabaab is relinquishing a lot of its territorial hold in Somalia, its online presence is as strong as ever.

Warfare Tactics

Composed of several thousand members, al-Shabaab relies on guerrilla warfare fighting techniques rather than a traditional combat approach because the group is unable to match the power of pro-government forces in Somalia and elsewhere. A form of irregular warfare, guerrilla warfare is when a small group of rebel combatants is dispatched to confront government forces, often utilizing ambushes, raids, and hit-and-run tactics. Al-Shabaab’s structure is also more decentralized in nature, meaning that responsibilities and tasks are delineated to lower-level members by upper management, making it easier to instruct members. Furthermore, despite its transnational rhetoric and affiliation with the larger, more prestigious al-Qaeda, al-Shabaab’s domestic focus on the Somali government and local clan issues enables them to carry out successful high-profile attacks. 

With guerrilla warfare as one of their staple battlefield strategies, al-Shabaab has been extremely successful in making a name and reputation for themselves through a few well-executed attacks. In September 2013, armed militants killed 67 people and injured more than 200 during a four-day siege at the Westgate shopping mall in Nairobi, Kenya. Then in 2015, Garissa University College in northeastern Kenya was the site of another major attack orchestrated by the group. A number of gunmen entered the campus and murdered 147 people after separating students by religion, immediately killing Christians while releasing Muslims in the deadliest terror attack on Kenyan soil since the U.S. embassy was bombed in Nairobi in 1998. Kenya was, yet again, the target of another shooting in early 2019 as five al-Shabaab members struck the DusitD2 hotel in Nairobi. Three vehicles were bombed in a bank parking lot inside the hotel complex while a suicide bomber detonated inside the hotel lobby, resulting in a 20-hour siege and the deaths of 14 people. These are but a few of al-Shabaab’s deadlier attacks, and while none come close to the impact that al-Qaeda’s September 2001 attack had, they still illustrate the group’s attempts to show both African and American military forces that they are a formidable threat and should be taken seriously.

By bypassing conventional fighting techniques in favor of low risk, small-group attacks, al-Shabaab is relying more on the use of tactics such as improvised explosive devices, patrol ambushes, and assassinations to demonstrate to both the region and the world that they are still able to inflict significant damage. In fact, al-Shabaab was reportedly responsible for over 1,457 deaths in 2017 alone, and their success can be attributed to their rigorous training process. Currently, recruits go through a six-month training program that includes “reading and interpreting the Koran, physical exercise, and weapons handling.”  This process is aided by the group’s impressive adaptability as they employ a hybridization of violent attacks, which helps ensure their sustainability as an organization. Utilization of such methods means the group is unpredictable, making it more difficult for their adversaries to defeat them.

And while al-Shabaab did not form until 2006, their homeland of Somalia is well-known in the American psyche. Somali guerrilla fighters were instrumental actors in the infamous “Black Hawk Down” incident of 1993 which killed 18 American troops in Mogadishu. Somalia, in general, has been a target of American presidents for years, and only recently with the increased risk posed by al-Shabaab has the United States reiterated their commitment to the eradication of terrorism in the state. However, al-Shabaab’s attack history is unlike anything the area has experienced before. While al-Qaeda is known for its use of explosives, usually in the form of car bombs and suicide bombers in front of government buildings, al-Shabaab’s fighting methods center around close-quarter attacks, such as mass shootings at highly populated locations. Whether this makes them more or less deadly than their al-Qaeda affiliate is subjective, but it does indicate the diversity with which these types of groups carry out attacks, as well as the diversity of their targets.

However, despite the group’s sophisticated use of social media and employment of guerrilla warfare tactics, those are but two puzzle pieces in the greater picture that explains why al-Shabaab is a dangerous insurgency movement. While this piece touched upon the fighting tactics and the recruitment strategies utilized by al-Shabaab, there are a number of counterarguments that could be made regarding the limitations of this evidence. First, because al-Shabaab is based out of Somalia, there is very little information available concerning the group’s current numbers and mobilization plans. Insurgency groups tend to be so successful because they remain private, secretive, and often act without warning or notice. While some may argue that this piece fails to provide more concrete evidence and case study examples, it does so to the best of its ability due to a lack of available data and information online. 

Going forth, more research should be conducted on the new era of al-Shabaab because insurgency groups tend to morph over time and through generations. Around the time of their 2013 attack on the Westgate Shopping Mall, the group had endured a reformation and resurgence of sorts under the new Amir, Ahmed Abdi aw-Mohamud Godane. This “reformation” essentially made the group more asymmetrical in design in regards to their fighting strategy, as well as more extremist in nature, as they are now considered “an al-Qaeda franchise in Somalia, imbued with the ‘takfiri’ ethos that legitimizes the killing of other Muslims, and a recommitment to the cause of international jihad.” Further researching this fundamental shift in the way in which the group operates and thinks, as well as their values and goals, may better help scholars understand their behavior and be able to counter it. The international community as a whole must also change the way in which they examine al-Shabaab as an organization. Currently, the international community views al-Shabaab through an “international terrorism” frame, but they fail to acknowledge their “transition toward a greater governing role” in the region. In addition, studying the various elements of transnational terrorist organizations in a general sense allows for an analysis and foundational understanding that can apply to other fields of work that pertain to al-Shabaab, such as rebel governance and state collapse. 

Finally, even though they have only existed for the last 13 years, al-Shabaab has managed to climb the ranks and situate themselves towards the top of the terrorist threat ladder. While ISIS, al-Qaeda, and Boko Haram continue to reign supreme in the world of transnational terrorism, al-Shabaab’s unique fighting tactics and multifaceted recruitment strategies elevate them far above the rest, increasing their threat potential in East Africa. Their sophisticated use of guerrilla warfare and social media, as well as their employment of certain frameworks and rhetoric, demonstrate that al-Shabaab is a transnational terrorist organization that should not be taken lightly. They ultimately pose a serious threat to not only East Africa and the African Union, but also the international community as a whole due to the success of their online outreach efforts.

So Bountiful, So Little: The Paradox of Plenty in Iraq

One would commonly think that countries with an abundance of resources would be economically developed and have a large number of opportunities. This theory, however, is the complete opposite for many countries that have an abundance of high-value natural resources. The resource curse is a common economic theory used to describe the lack of economic development in a specific country despite the abundance of natural resources. Normally the exporting of these natural resources generates high levels of government revenues. Dating back to periods of colonialism, the resource curse is seen contemporarily in developing economies. The challenges to escape the resource curse prove that it is a multifaceted issue that must suffer through a long arduous process. 

Within developing countries, the resource curse is manifested through a country’s allocation of all resources towards the production of one particular good. Resources such as fossil fuels are a prime example of a natural resource where economies place all their efforts towards the production of one specific good. Given the high demand for oil globally, improper management of these natural resources could negatively impact nations politically and economically. Dependency on volatile markets such as oil transitively makes countries more vulnerable to any shift within the market. Economies with these characteristics, economic shocks will cause countries to be inept to face these challenges. Valued commodities like fossil fuels only perpetuate the resource curse in developing countries even further. With an abundance of these high valued commodities, countries commonly fall under revenue mismanagement, corruption or political instability. 

One way that citizens feel the burden of the resource curse is through the lack of economic mobility or opportunities. Other burdens citizens feel are undeveloped or non-diverse economies where job opportunities are concentrated on one specific country. Out of all parties which are affected by the resource curse, citizens arguably could be impacted the most. The lack of contribution citizens to have to better manage these natural resources results in citizens facing consequences made by national governments. In some instances, efforts made by governments to better manage their natural resources end up being more harmful than beneficial. It is for this reason escaping the resource curse could be so challenging or complex. 

While all countries experience unique forms of the resource curse, there are still fundamental qualities that can be seen throughout all of them. First, there is an abundance of a natural resource which generates a substantial amount of economic activity. Second, there is an immense dependency on one sector of the economy. Third, an identifying factor of the resource curse in countries is revenue mismanagement. Specific countries such as Iraq which have experienced extreme cases of these three factors make the country a balanced case study to show the harsh consequences of the resource curse and the many strategies which need to be met for the country to elevate themselves from the resource curse. 

Located within the Gulf region, Iraq is one of the highest fossil fuel producing countries in the world. As a founding member of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), Iraq has found itself to be in a position of great significance in the global oil market. This significant role however in the market as well as being one of the top exporters in the country has not benefited the country overall. Iraq’s economic strategy in their fossil fuel sector are examples of mistakes many countries who are under the resource curse take. More specifically, Iraq’s lack of economic diversity, historical problems with revenue management, and political instability intensify the effects that are felt by the citizens. 

Common to most countries who are caught under the resource, Iraq is completely dependent upon the revenues generated from the oil sector. More specifically, Iraq’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in 2017 was 89 percent reliant on the revenue of the oil sector. This dependency on the oil sector has caused Iraq to be economically vulnerable to any shock the economy faces. The lasting impacts of different political or economic shocks in Iraq’s society reflect its inability to recover from these shocks. Iraq’s lack of economic diversification and efficient revenue management has only negatively impacted its citizens. 

Iraq’s most impactful consequence of the resource curse is its historical process of revenue management. When countries have a significant amount of revenue from a single industry, revenue management will allocate any surplus of revenue into different parts of the economy for a sustainable economy. Iraq, however, has experienced extreme cases of revenue mismanagement. In 1995, Iraq was placed under harsh sanctions by the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) in light of their invasion into Kuwait. Noticing how impactful these sanctions were to Iraqis, the UNSC established Iraq’s “Oil for Food Program” which allowed Iraq to export oil and the revenues from these transactions would be used to increase the food supply and other necessary commodities for citizens. This ideal situation of revenue management, however, never occurred. The money generated from fossil fuel transactions were used by dictator Sadam Hussein to increase the country’s military capacity. Due to the lack of oversight of this program corruption surrounding the sales made from oil in Iraq and little of the sales made were allocated for resources for citizens. 

Another factor that stunts Iraq’s economic development is their dependency on the fossil fuel sector and the little which has been done to diversify their economy. Countries outside of Iraq, face similar situations where a significant amount of their GDP stems from one sector of the economy. To lessen the burden of this situation, countries have established different financial tools to mitigate the effects of economic shifts. One common tool used by countries in similar predicaments as Iraq is the establishment of sovereign wealth funds. Sovereign wealth funds are state-owned funds that are compiled through excess revenues of a flourishing economy. These funds could hold different purposes: social safety nets for citizens, pensions funds, or economic resilience usage. While the purposes are different, at the heart of it all, sovereign wealth funds allocate revenues from successful sectors and put aside for the betterment of the country in the long run. Despite the pattern neighboring countries have taken, Iraq has not established an official sovereign wealth fund. Without any form of safety net in place, it only makes Iraq more vulnerable to economic shocks. 

Policy Recommendation

Given Iraq’s history in the global oil market as well as the fundamental challenges which follow the resource curse, Iraq should reconsider the management of their revenues from their exports in trade. At the core of all recommended reforms are needed to cater to different policies towards the benefits of citizens rather than key elites or dominating sectors. Through the establishment of a sovereign wealth fund, it would ensure that future generations are given the necessary tools to be economically resilient. While the cost and process may be long and arduous, economic diversification will allow for Iraq to diversify its GDP., which will subsequently cause a positive ripple effect to spread out through different sectors of the economy and society. Reforming Iraq’s most powerful economic sector will harness the success generated and invest back into society to benefit citizens more than trading partners.

Rogue Ally: Despite Turkish Aggression, the U.S. Should Support the SDF in Syria

On July 20, 2019, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called his Turkish counterpart, Mevlut Cavusoglu, to discuss the growing list of issues between the pair of longtime allies. While no transcript was provided, the State Department released a summary that, despite its brevity, managed to encapsulate the Trump Administration’s stance on Turkey and Syria: ever ambiguous and deficient in courage. As Turkish troops amassed on the Syrian border, threatening an invasion of territory liberated from the Islamic State (ISIL) by the U.S.-allied Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), Secretary Pompeo “reaffirmed” U.S. commitment to Turkish national security while also “reiterating” its support of allied forces in Syria.

What these contradictory statements mean for said American allies –particularly the Kurds, who, in spite of their integral role defeating ISIL, are frequently labeled “terrorists” by Turkish pro-government media– is highly unclear. It is notable that since President Donald Trump’s abrupt call for a total withdrawal of American forces in Syria, then subsequent flip-flop two months later, Washington’s foremost think tanks have gone conspicuously silent on the issue of U.S.-Turkey relations as they relate to Syria, focusing instead on President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s apparent gravitation toward Russia following his government’s purchase of the S-400 missile systems. One can hardly blame them; it is, in fact, quite difficult to analyze a policy when the policy doesn’t appear to exist.

That isn’t to say that the U.S. has been entirely inactive. After Germany declined an American request to deploy ground troops to Syria, both France and the United Kingdom pledged 10 to 15 percent more soldiers, a victory for a president that campaigned on promises to lighten the burden on the U.S. military. However, one report notes that such an increase translates to only “several dozen” troops, an inadequate quantity considering the size of SDF-controlled territory. Additionally, top U.S. officials have visited SDF officials in Syria twice in the past two months, but discussions reportedly centered on counterterrorism strategy rather than political solutions to the Syrian conflict or the looming threat of a Turkish invasion. These are the questions that need answering. No one doubts U.S. desire to combat terrorism.

What the Trump Administration fails to realize –or at the very least, is too content with a tenuous status quo to do anything– is that good counterterrorism requires robust and lasting support, politically as well as militarily. The U.S. certainly desires the enduring defeat of ISIL, but its failure to develop tangible policy reflects a lackluster, fragile commitment to preventing the revival of an extremist safe haven. With multiple regional parties demonstrating aggression toward the SDF, the U.S. needs to act quickly and decisively in support of its ally by pressuring all parties involved into a fair, multilateral deal grounded in citizen security and civil liberties. Continuing down this path of inaction will only result in the perpetuation of conflict, the prolonging of the refugee crisis, and the potential for a revival of a territorial ISIL.

Current Threats to Stability in Northeastern Syria

Presently, the SDF-held territory in northeastern Syria –known as the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (NES)– rests in an extraordinarily precarious position. Its western border is shared with two parties, the Turkish-backed Free Syrian Army (TFSA) and Bashar al-Assad’s Syrian Arab Army (SAA), both of which –though in conflict with one another– oppose the SDF. The TFSA, in congruence with the anti-Kurdish sentiments of its patron, has launched two major operations that targeted Kurds, the latter of which resulted in “widespread human rights violations” and displaced over 150,000 people from Syria’s Afrin district. As for the Syrian regime forces, Assad has stated that he intends to retake all territory within Syria’s pre-war borders, an undertaking that would take years, but, considering his backing from Russia, is a credible threat nonetheless.

Internally, the SDF struggles against remnants of ISIL. Having been territorially defeated in March, its militants now resort to asymmetrical warfare in the form of urban bombings and rural arson; the former disrupts a sense of rare, cherished stability in a region engulfed by conflict, while the latter destabilizes an already feeble economy. ISIL cells have destroyed some 50,000 acres of NES land since May, reportedly costing the nascent governing administrations $50 million worth in crops.

Turkey’s Historical Oppression of the Kurds and its Contemporary Relevance

While the TFSA, Assad regime, and ISIL cells make for pressing threats, the NES’ greatest challenge emanates from its northern neighbor. Since the decline of the Ottoman Empire and the founding of the Republic of Turkey, Turkish authorities have sought national unity through societal homogeneity, or Turkification. This policy essentially criminalizes cultural diversity; from the Armenian Genocide in the early 20th century to today’s ongoing anti-Semitism, minorities in Turkey have long faced persecution at the hands of the government. In Turkey’s Kurdish Question, a 1998 book by Graham E. Fuller and Henri J. Barkey, the authors point out that the government’s anti-Kurdish sentiment was not just rhetoric, but law:

In the 1924 [Republic of Turkey] constitution, the terms “citizenship” and “citizen” had been equated with Turkishness. Accordingly, the document stated that one had to be a Turk to become a member of parliament and the like. Certainly Kurds could qualify as “Turks,” but only at the expense of denying their own ethnic identity.

Rather than do so, Kurds organized and revolted, most notably in the form of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). In 1984, after years of preparation and intra-Kurdish strife, the PKK launched its insurgency against the Turkish state, striking military checkpoints and barracks in the towns of Semdinli and Eruh. It was the start of a decades-long conflict that, despite the 1999 capture of PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan and the occasional ceasefire, endures today.

Herein lies Turkey’s issue with American partnerships in Syria. The SDF is a pluralistic organization consisting of Arabs, Syriac Christians, and Yazidis, among others, but it is predominantly Kurdish, having originated from the People’s Protection Units (YPG), a well-organized Syrian Kurdish militia dating back to 2004. The U.S. listed the PKK as a terrorist organization in 1997 but never extended its designation toward the YPG. Turkey, on the other hand, views the YPG as an extension of the PKK, and given its proximity to Turkey’s southeastern borders, as a viable threat to its national security. 

The Case for the SDF

I suppose this is the world we live in: one in which a state can spend nearly a century attempting to erase the identities of its indigenous ethnic groups, then throw a tantrum when one of them decides to revolt. The only catch here is that the SDF, unlike the PKK, does not aspire to harm Turkey, its well-armed bully of a neighbor; in fact, the U.S. formed its alliance with the SDF on the condition that it would not target Turkish state forces, as such an attack would require an American response under the North Atlantic Treaty Organization charter. All NES residents want is for the Assad regime, ISIL, and Turkey to leave it alone.

Why should the U.S. stand by the SDF? For one, the U.S. is safer with a stable Levant. ISIL’s rise was only possible because of the vacuum created by the Syrian Civil War. With a well-governed political entity positioned in its former territory, the vacuum closes, and the region is less susceptible to extremist violence. This is especially critical given the SDF’s protection of the al-Hol camp, a facility holding some 70,000 displaced individuals, many of whom are family members of former ISIL militants. Deputy major commander of the U.S.-led coalition called inhabitants of al-Hol the “next generation” of ISIL, but the international community has taken no major steps to resolve the problem. The U.S. could take the lead by assisting the SDF and human rights organizations in maintaining and securing the camps while administering rehabilitation programs and returning foreign fighters to their native countries for trial.

Secondly, U.S. presence in the region acts as another theater to indirectly confront Iran. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s government has real influence in Syria and Iraq via its support of the Assad regime, its regional militias, and the transnational shipping route often referred to as the “land bridge.” A capable, U.S.-supported SDF can deter the Assad regime and Iranian militias from encroaching in northeastern Syria, and its presence also inhibits Iranian arms, supplies, and fighters from reaching the Syrian regime or Hezbollah, Iran’s proxy force in Lebanon and a principal threat to Israel.

Lastly, the SDF’s territories is the antithesis of its enemies. NES is a multiethnic, religiously diverse entity operating on principles of feminism, secularism, and local governance, all of which are in sharp contrast to Erdogan’s nationalism, ISIL’s extremism, and Assad’s autocracy. It is rare that the U.S. arms militants whose values reflect a fervent interest in human rights and democracy.

Reevaluating the U.S.-Turkey Relationship

Whereas the SDF has proven itself as an accountable ally, Turkey’s domestic political trends and ties to Syrian-based extremist groups suggest that its relationship with the U.S. is not what it used to be. The U.S. cannot afford to be sclerotic in its foreign policy –realizing and adapting to changing realities is requisite to being a positive global force– and at the present, it must respond to Turkey’s gross incompetence in combatting terrorism and clear democratic backsliding. 

Known as the “gateway to Jihad,” the Turkish-Syrian border became a port for the 40,000 foreign fighters that traveled to participate in the conflict. With ISIL recruits pouring over the Turkish border into Syria, the Erdogan government played dumb, refusing to implement even basic measures that would stem the flow of fighters. Scant oversight at the border allowed active militants to retreat into Turkey for health services. “We used to have some fighters — even high-level members of the Islamic State — getting treated in Turkish hospitals,” an ISIL commander told the Washington Post in 2014.  “And also, most of the fighters who joined us in the beginning of the war came via Turkey, and so did our equipment and supplies.”

Turkey stood to gain from an extremist insurgency in Syria in the most cynical of senses; the republic shares two common enemies with Da’esh and like-minded groups, the Alawi government in Damascus and the majority Kurdish population in the northeast. Now that its initial strategy to defeat Kurdish-led forces via extremist proxies has failed, President Erdogan’s government is transitioning to plan B, applying significant political and military pressure on the SDF in an effort to bring the U.S. to a detrimental agreement. The aforementioned TFSA invasion of Afrin in 2018 was not a direct threat to American ground forces, but it drew Kurdish SDF militias out of NES territory who wanted to protect Kurdish civilians, weakening the region’s security. In early July, Turkey began amassing troops along the NES border, and shortly after, Foreign Minister Cavusoglu warned of an attack if his government’s proposed “safe zone” was not established. As of today, Turkey’s aggression has met little U.S. resistance.

Recommendations: Robust Military, Economic, and Political Support for the SDF

Turkey hopes that its acts of aggression will force the U.S. to accept its proposed “safe zone,” a plan that roughly translates to Turkey unilaterally annexing of a large portion of SDF-controlled territory. This is a nonstarter for Syria’s Kurds, who justifiably expect persecution under a Turkish occupation. Thus, the U.S. needs to move quickly and definitively against Turkish pressure by supporting the NES with increased military presence, as well as valuable economic and political assistance.

In regards to military support, the U.S. and coalition members should increase the number of ground troops in the NES. While thousands of Turkish troops are gathering on the border, U.S. coalition forces are said to only number in the hundreds. This is not an endorsement of armed conflict with our NATO ally. The issue is that Turkey believes the U.S. is susceptible to persuasion, and with good reason; after all, President Trump’s decision to withdraw forces in December came immediately after a phone call with President Erdogan. By succumbing to pressure, President Trump demonstrated uncertainty about supporting the SDF, an uncertainty that Turkey is currently exploiting. An increase in troops would signal firm commitment to the SDF, robbing Turkey of its diplomatic leverage and granting NES residents peace of mind.

Economic well-being is closely related to citizen security Northeastern Syria, with its sprawling agricultural fields and oil reserves, has unique potential to thrive economically, but it lacks the adequate technology to do so; currently, Syrian farmers use antiquated methods to harvest their wheat and have no way to effectively fight the crop fires ignited by Da’esh arsonists. Destroyed roads can inhibit the transportation of goods and aid, and damaged sewers create sanitation problems. The U.S. should formally declare its backing of the SDC and provide it with the resources it needs to develop sustainably.

Political recognition and assistance would permit the SDC a seat at the negotiating table, giving northeastern Syria a say in its future. As of the publication of this article, Syrian opposition parties have not allowed SDC representatives to participate in talks with the Assad regime and its international backers. Demonstrations of international support for the SDC, such as a Swedish delegation visit in early July, have reportedly warmed opposition parties to the idea of inviting SDC representatives to talks. A clear demonstration of American support would influence them further.

Final Thoughts: Support of SDF is Worth the Diplomatic Rift

In April, I wrote that the U.S. should revise its policy toward Saudi Arabia given its perpetration of human rights abuses and continued failure to curb extremism. The U.S.-Saudi relationship runs deep, but American policymakers are too keen to turn a blind eye to the Kingdom’s transgressions for the sake of the relationship. Turkey’s case is similar; as with the Saudi regime, we could bend to its wishes, defer to the judgment of its leaders, and dismiss undemocratic and harmful policies as irrelevant or untrue. President Erdogan’s behavior in his region is his prerogative, the thinking goes; as an ally, we trust him to act broadly in our interest.

However, this is clearly not the case, and it’s time to turn a new page in U.S.-Turkey relations. Its faults are egregious and well-documented, and its enemies are our friends. The U.S. should not fear divergence from an ally if that ally diverges from American values and goals.

The Myth of the Mideast Ally: The Moral and Strategic Failure of American Foreign Policy Toward Saudi Arabia

As a student of Latin America, I am in no way blind to the historical moral shortcomings (to put it lightly) of American foreign policy. When I lived in Asunción, Paraguay, my school’s first field trip was to the Museo de las Memorias, a museum housed in a former detention and torture center used by the Alfredo Stroessner regime. Stroessner was a Cold War-era dictator responsible for the deaths of thousands of his own citizens, and like many of his regional contemporaries, he was supported by the United States solely because he opposed communism. (A recent World Mind article brilliantly questions the legacy of Henry Kissinger, the architect behind these alliances.)

One would hope that the American foreign policy establishment recognized the damage wrought by decades of autocratic rule, learned from its mistakes, and then ceased the practice of abetting dictators in exchange for money and influence. Unfortunately, this iniquitous style of transaction remains in the U.S. foreign policy toolkit, as evidenced by the current American partnership with Saudi Arabia. In spite of a laundry list of human rights abuses and an enduring legacy of violent extremism perpetrated or enabled by the regime, the Trump Administration has not shied away from Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (known as MBS), the charismatic young heir to the throne. Since taking office, President Trump has expanded operational support to the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen, significantly increased weapons sales, and refused to acknowledge the crown prince's involvement in the gruesome assassination of Washington Post columnist and U.S. resident Jamal Khashoggi.

The Administration argues that in our alliance with Saudi Arabia, the benefits outweigh the costs. Popular talking points center on money and combatting extremism; according to the executive branch, increased defense sector employment, cheap oil, and counterterrorism cooperation are invaluable to U.S. interests.

However, upon closer examination, all of these arguments fail to justify the American alliance with the Saudi regime, especially when placed in the context of the Kingdom’s atrocious domestic and foreign policies. By analyzing these policies, it becomes clear that such an alliance is not only immoral to the liberal internationalist, but also counterproductive for the conservative realist. The U.S. stands to gain nothing – neither as devout moralists nor cutthroat strategists – from the robust commercial, political, and military partnership with the Kingdom that the current administration goes great lengths to maintain and defend.

Saudi Human Rights Abuses and the Global Perception of the U.S.

During the spring of 2018, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman embarked on a three-week tour of the United States as part of an ambitious attempt to revamp Saudi Arabia’s global image. Eager for a piece of the royal family’s opulence and influence, American investors, politicians, and movie stars rolled out the red carpet. Harvard University and MIT both welcomed the young prince. He visited Wall Street, Washington, and the Silicon Valley. He sat down with Oprah and dined with Morgan Freeman and Dwayne Johnson.

Would these individuals still entertain the crown prince if they were provided a detailed report of the Kingdom’s human rights record? If they could see the contrast between MBS’ extravagance and the plights of Saudi Arabia’s tremendously disadvantaged citizens? If they understood the extent of the humanitarian crisis in Yemen sparked by the Saudis and exacerbated by U.S. arms sales?

Although MBS’ American tour came some 10 months before the highly publicized October 2nd assassination of Jamal Khashoggi, Saudi Arabia’s prior transgressions were already widely known. According to the 2018 edition of the Human Right Watch (HRW) World Report, the Kingdom “has committed numerous violations of international humanitarian law” in Yemen, including scores of “unlawful attacks… some of which may amount to war crimes.” The report notes that coalition airstrikes have repeatedly struck “homes, markets, hospitals, schools, and mosques.” To date, an estimated 10,852 civilians have been killed or injured by coalition airstrikes.

Domestically, Saudi activists and dissidents are silenced, and women are subject to some of the most archaic laws in the world. The same HRW report details the arrest of numerous peaceful, pro-reform activists, some of whom received multi-year prison sentences and travel-bans. The Kingdom is known for its use of the death penalty, performed inhumanely and often for non-violent offenders, as well as torture; as recently as March 31st of this year, The Guardian reported that leaked medical documents describe up to 60 political prisoners suffering from “malnutrition, cuts, bruises and burns.” While Saudi women were recently granted the right to drive, the most critical regulation barring gender equality in the Kingdom remains in place: according to the BBC, under the “guardianship law,” a woman’s male relatives “[have] the authority to make critical decisions on her behalf.” As long as such a law exists, any concessions the regime makes to Saudi women’s rights activists should be considered insincere.

What do the crimes committed by one distant nation have to do with the U.S.? 100 years ago, when even the world’s hegemons largely operated within their own geographic regions, human rights abuses in a nation as far away as Saudi Arabia might not have demanded the attention of U.S. policymakers, but today is a different story. As long as the U.S. supports Saudi Arabia, it cannot expect to have the respect or cooperation of fellow nations as it attempts to shape the world order. Any American policies put forth in the name of peace, freedom of speech, or women’s rights are liable to objection by even our closest allies; for example, suspension of aid toward a nation due to human rights violations could be easily deemed hypocritical given the overwhelming security assistance we provide the Saudi regime. In such a case, the effect of American aid suspension would have diminished impact, as the international community might not be compelled to join.

In short, a lack of global moral standing means a lack of global influence, too. Surely, arms deals that have limited impact on the American economy are not worth our ability to enact beneficial international policy.

Wahhabism and the Perpetual War on Terrorism

The instances of regime-led crackdowns on dissent outlined above are typical of a highly-centralized power structures terrified of losing control (think North Korea and Venezuela). In addition to brutality and oppression, however, the royal family employs another form of social control: ultra-conservative religious ideology.

The rise of the House of Saud, Saudi Arabia’s namesake and longtime ruling family, is indebted to the 18th century merging of politics and religion on the Arabian peninsula. In 1744, Muhammad ibn Saud, an influential tribal leader, and Muhammad ibn Abd al Wahhab, an iconoclastic Muslim scholar, swore an oath to form a state guided by Islamic principles. Al Wahhab’s interpretation of Islam was not widely shared –in fact, it condemned many Muslims then inhabiting the peninsula– but Saud was desperate for a “clearly defined religious authority” he could use to establish authority. This authority would stretch far into the coming centuries, as noted by a 2008 CRS report on what is now known as Wahhabism:

[After 1930,] Wahhabi clerics were integrated into the new kingdom’s religious and political establishment, and Wahhabi ideas formed the basis of the rules and laws adopted to govern social affairs in Saudi Arabia. Wahhabism also shaped the kingdom’s judicial and educational policies. Saudi schoolbooks historically have denounced teachings that do not conform to Wahhabist beliefs…

Saudi-born professor Madawi al-Rashid of the London School of Economics echoed this analysis in a 2015 BBC article:

The Wahhabis were given full control of the religious, social and cultural life of the kingdom. As long as the Wahhabi preachers preached that Saudis should obey their rulers, the al-Saud family was happy. In the 1960s and 1970s the Arab world was full of revolutionary ideas. The Saudi government thought the Wahhabis were a good antidote, because they provide an alternative narrative about how to obey rulers and not interfere in politics.

By relinquishing significant societal control to Wahhabist clerics, the regime created a united and obedient populous over which it could rule. Additionally, it cultivated and promoted an intolerant and often violent ideology that would later form the basis for violent extremist groups.

Following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and fearing the global spread of secularism, the Saudi regime weaponized Wahhabism, imploring its citizens to travel to fight the spread of communism. Terence Ward, in his book The Wahhabi Code, describes how the Kingdom funded Wahhabi schools in Pakistan to indoctrinate both Pakistani youth and Afghan refugees fleeing the Soviet invasion. These foreign fighters, inspired by the Wahhabist interpretation of holy war, are the first example of the exportation of Wahhabism and violence. Future examples include al-Qaeda, Daesh, and related fundamentalist groups operating in Syria.

The connection between Saudi-promoted Wahhabism and global terrorism is not a new revelation. For years, analysts have commented on the absurdity of our relationship with the country that produced 15 out of the 19 9/11 hijackers; one Brookings Institute scholar quipped that the Saudis are “both the arsonists and the firefighters”, and a 2015 New York Times op-ed refers to Saudi Arabia as “the ISIS that made it.”

In defending their sustained support of the Kingdom, the Administration again points to arms deals, in addition to joint counterterrorism efforts, as justification for our partnership with Saudi Arabia. My argument regarding U.S. arms sales to the Kingdom is simple –quick profits are not worth a long-term fight against extremism– but what about the Saudis’ counterterrorism operations?

A 2018 CRS Report identifies the Kingdom as a strong partner in the fight against extremism, claiming that the “U.S. government now credits its Saudi counterparts with taking terrorism threats seriously and praises Saudi cooperation in several cooperative initiatives.” There is little evidence to suggest otherwise; in 2014, the Kingdom’s leading Islamic authority denounced Daesh and al-Qaeda, and a 2017 State Department report detailed Saudi Arabia’s “strict supervision” of illicit funding of terrorist groups. Furthermore, Saudi Arabia itself is frequently the target of terrorist attacks perpetrated by extremists.

However, multiple reports suggest that Saudi Arabia’s promotion of Wahhabism and religious intolerance domestically carries global effects. A 2016 New York Times article details the role one Saudi-funded mosque in Kosovo played in sending 314 men, women, and children to join Daesh, and 2017 Voice of America article cited experts linking an uptick in terrorism in Africa to Saudi scholarships provided to regional youth. Another Times article cautions observers from heaping blame on solely on Saudi Arabia, as grievance-related factors also contribute to radicalization. Still, it notes that Daesh used official Saudi textbooks in its schools until it was able to publish its own, much to the embarrassment of the regime.

Thus, while Saudi Arabia deserves credit for its kinetic counterterrorism efforts, it is losing the long-term ideological war against extremism by funding and promoting religious intolerance. In partnering with the regime rather than pushing it to alter its policies, the U.S. is losing as well, effectively implementing a counterterrorism strategy that neglects the root of the problem and perpetuates terrorism. CNN’s Fareed Zakaria might have put it best: “The Saudi monarchy must reform itself and its export of ideology,” he wrote in 2016, “But the reality is, this is far more likely if Washington engages with Riyadh rather than distancing itself, leaving the kingdom to fester in isolation.”

Moving Forward: Talk to Saudi Arabia, But Don’t Reward Them

In Ben Rhodes’ memoir, The World as It Is, the former national security adviser and speechwriter recalls one particular instance of Barack Obama’s frustration on the 2008 campaign trail. Members of the foreign policy establishment had just ridiculed the young senator for suggesting he would engage in diplomacy with historically hostile nations, much to his bewilderment. “It. Is. Not. A. Reward. To. Talk. To. Folks,” the future president emphatically argues, pounding his palm on a table as he does. “How is that working out with Iran?”

Obama’s point was this: a U.S. presidential administration can engage with an undesirable foreign government without promoting its detrimental interests. His flagship piece of foreign policy, the Iran Deal, is a perfect example of this in that it edged Iran toward membership in the responsible international community without granting it nuclear weapons or excusing its autocratic domestic policies.

The U.S. should handle Saudi Arabia in a similar fashion. Cooperation can continue in the areas that it has worked well, such as counterterrorism, but U.S. officials should not hesitate to publicly criticize and seek to curb the regime’s oppressive domestic policies, illegal military strikes in Yemen, and exportation of intolerance. Thanks to the Texas shale revolution, an abysmal economic outlook in Saudi Arabia, and significant U.S. commercial investment in the Kingdom, the regime has little in its arsenal to counter hypothetical demands from American policymakers; the U.S. is insulated from OPEC’s whims, and sanctions leveled on U.S.-Saudi business interactions would seriously damage the Kingdom’s economy.

It’s clear that the Trump Administration has no interest in molding Saudi Arabia into a respectable ally, otherwise it would have already started down that path. Whether Mr. Trump’s eagerness to buddy-up to MBS is the result of greed, myopia, or personal affinity is anyone’s guess – presently, the most that Americans can do is hope that the next president, Republican or Democrat, does not perceive the Kingdom through the same ignorant lens. Such perception will only result in further human rights violations at the hands of the regime, the continued implementation of an ineffective counterterrorism policy, and lastly, almost irreparable damage to U.S. global standing. After all, as Asunción’s Museo de las Memorias demonstrates, history does not forget those who side with tyrants.

Fixing an International Dilemma in an Unstable Region: U.S. Mitigation of the Turkish-Kurdish Conflict

The Dilemma

The long-standing relationship between the United States and Turkey continues to deteriorate due to the intensifying armed conflict between the Turkish military and Kurdish insurgent groups in Syria, Iraq and Iran who desire an independent Kurdistan that would give them greater political and cultural rights.

To combat the Islamic State (IS), the United States supports the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union (PYD) and relies on the PYD’s military wing, the People’s Protection Units (YPG). Yet the main reason for the ongoing U.S.-Turkey military conflict lies in US support of the PYD. Because Turkey is battling the Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK), a listed terrorist group that President Erdoğan believes is an offset of the PYD, Turkey sees American support for these Kurdish organizations as undermining their interests and regional power.

It is imperative that the United States act immediately to de-escalate the tensions between Turkey and various Kurdish insurgent groups while continuing the fight against the Islamic State, who, despite recently losing territory and influence in the region, continues to pose a threat to nearby countries and the US. The United States in particular is one of the leading actors in this issue, and must continue to be a primary fighting force, because national interests are at stake. As long-term NATO allies, the US and Turkey not only share an allyship, but Turkey is in a key geopolitical position, serving as a central point between Asia, Europe, and Africa. By mending their relationship with Turkey, the US will continue to be able to rely on Turkey as the only Muslim NATO member to serve as a bridge between the Western and Muslim worlds, which can help stabilize the volatile Middle East. Furthermore, Turkey similarly relies on the United States and its Western forces to battle the IS, a group that continues to engage in violent terrorist attacks within the country.

Failure to immediately rectify the situation may result in the degradation of the US-Turkey alliance and the growth of the Islamic State. Should the US side with the Kurds, they run the risk of Turkey strengthening their political and economic relationship with Russia, and it could push Turkey to further retaliate against the YPG and ultimately the US. Yet, the United States relies heavily on Kurdish insurgency groups, such as the PYD, as the main fighting forces against the IS on the ground, especially in aiding local Arab militias in Syria. Therefore, if the United States sides with Turkey, they may lose critical Kurdish trust and military support in the fight against the IS due to the tension between the Turks and the Kurds. Nevertheless, fixing the rising tensions is possible and can be done three ways: by revising the current Turkish Constitution, continuing to supply Kurdish fighters with American weapons, and utilizing the US-Turkey relationship as NATO allies to begin talks of a ceasefire.

First Recommendation: Modify the Turkish Constitution

The United States should encourage Turkey to make changes to its 1982 Constitution to grant basic rights back to the ethnic minority groups that reside in Turkey. Successfully updating the constitution should be a priority in solving the Turkish-Kurdish dispute. The conflict’s origins and subsequent intensification stems from the lack of rights attributed to the Kurds in the country’s constitution. The Turkish government historically oppressed Kurdish cultural identity and language through impediments in the process of assimilating them into society. After declaring itself a republic in 1923, Turkey’s capital of Ankara adopted an ideology with the goal of eliminating non-Turkish elements within Turkey, all of which were primarily Kurdish. The country’s efforts to “Turkify” individuals by relying on Turkish ethnicity to define citizenship resulted in the mass persecution of the Kurdish population, which is one of the driving forces behind the desire for an independent Kurdistan today.

As of now, the Turkish Constitution is authoritarian and alienating to those who aren’t of Turkish ethnicity, but unfortunately the discussion and possibility of revising the constitution has decreased. The lack of an inclusive constitution with rights and protections that extend to minority groups has been a factor in causing social unrest among the Kurdish population and furthering the mission of the PKK. This, again, contributed greatly to the Kurds’ desire to create an independent Kurdistan that would allow them to have greater political and cultural autonomy. Therefore, the Turkish Constitution should be revised immediately. Significant changes would make it more democratic and establish that all differences, such as ethnicity or language, are protected under the constitution. With this, the improvement in the view and treatment of the Kurds may lay the foundation for peace talks in the future.

Second Recommendation: Return to Supplying Arms

The United States should return to supplying weapons to Kurdish fighters in Syria who are combating the Islamic State. As of late 2017, President Trump announced that the US will no longer provide arms to the Kurds. However, the supply of weapons by the US is vital in creating a strongly armed group of Kurdish fighters that can successfully defend themselves as they counteract the IS. For example, in May 2017 President Trump approved a plan to arm the Kurds, and therefore the YPG, directly to prepare for their assault and capture of Raqqa, which was the IS’ de facto capital of the caliphate. Subsequently, after arming them with machine guns and other warfare weapons, the American-backed YPG successfully seized Raqqa in October of 2017 in what was a major blow to the legitimacy and control of the IS.

However, a drawback of this recommendation is that it could cause even more tension between the US and Turkey. Due to US support of the YPG, a group Turkey believes to be an extension of the PKK, Turkey’s President Erdoğan could see the supply of arms to the YPG as a threat to the country because those weapons could end up in the hands of the PKK. Yet, a benefit of this recommendation is that it aligns with America’s desire to decrease the number of troops deployed in Syria. By providing the Kurds with more weapons, the US can rely more on local forces and slowly begin to withdraw American troops from the conflict zone.

Third Recommendation: Negotiate a Ceasefire

Lastly, the United States should take advantage of its relationship with Turkey as NATO allies to lead a political peace process that negotiates a ceasefire between Turkish military forces and the Kurdish YPG in Syria. The YPG are instrumental in fighting the IS on the ground, yet they are suffering immense losses due to air and land attacks by Turkey’s military force.

However, a downside of this recommendation lies in the fact that Turkey views the YPG’s presence in Syria as a security threat to the country. Turkey’s President Erdoğan also considers the US’s support of the YPG militia to be a betrayal as he sees the YPG as an offset of the terrorist group PKK. Furthermore, the ceasefire would only provide a temporary solution to the complicated conflict so that the two sides could focus on defeating the IS.

An upside of this recommendation is that previous ceasefires between the Turkish government and the PKK succeeded for many years before they were eventually broken. While a ceasefire may be temporary, it would help centralize the fight around the IS and provide the foundation for more comprehensive peace talks and a long-term ceasefire in the future between the two groups.

Looking to the Future

The Turkish-Kurdish conflict began the moment Turkey failed to make a provision for a Kurdish state, thereby leaving the Kurds, a population of around 15 million in the country, with a minority status and a lack of both representation and rights. The tension between the two sides has been ongoing ever since, and as an ally to the United States politically and militarily, as they are instrumental in fighting the Islamic State, the US is heavily interested and involved in the conflict as well. As a result, all three recommendations for ways in which the United States can mitigate the Turkish-Kurdish conflict are presented with the following goals in mind: first, by successfully mitigating the conflict between the two groups, the US can begin to minimize the threat that the IS poses to them, as combating the IS would be easier when the two sides are working together with the same goal in mind; second, the US can start to decrease the volatility of the Middle East, as there will be one less pair of warring groups, and consequently states, to add to the mix.

The conflict continues in 2018, thirty-four years after the insurgency began, with little change. Since President Trump took office and called for a halt on the provision of arms to the Kurds, the Islamic State has lost territory, but still remains a threat, and tensions between the Turks and the Kurds remain high. Not much progress has been made between the two groups to de-escalate the situation, and the United States has failed to enact any significant changes. Unless these recommendations are made, the future for these two warring groups and the prospect of an independent Kurdistan looks to be the same as it currently is now: bleak.

The Global Struggle to Accommodate Displaced Persons: Options for U.S. Policy Towards the Syrian Refugee Crisis

In 2011, a civil war broke out in Syria displacing an estimated 11 million people from their homes. The war led to one of the largest humanitarian crises of the century. As a result, six million people have dispersed inside Syria, and another 4.8 million are seeking solace in neighboring states such as Turkey and Jordan. Further effects on the international community include: the rise of extremist groups like the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and a change in the United States’ relationship with Russia and China. As a superpower, to help reduce the number of refugees worldwide, the United States must continue to mitigate the effects of the crisis under President Donald Trump. One option is to expand the country’s current “open door” policy. Another option is to implement changes to the current resettlement program. A third option is to increase the aid given to the countries that are hosting the majority of refugees. The preferred method is to reform the current resettlement program.

Background

When the Arab Spring uprisings began, President Bashar al-Assad responded by sending tanks into cities and using regime forces against civilians. Yet, the UN Security Council has since failed to reach a successful diplomatic solution; fighting has escalated, the death toll has risen, and human rights violations such as chemical weapons attacks, torture, and barrel bombing of civilian areas have continued to occur. The war has caused mass displacement. There are over 8 million refugees in Syria, 1 million in Lebanon, over 245,000 in Iraq, and 2 million in Turkey. While the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has provided medical supplies and food, the United States’ focus has been using military airstrikes against ISIS targets. Since the election of President Trump, the U.S. has increased military intervention. With the death toll unknown, the Syrian Civil War shows no definite signs of ending, and the continuation of the conflict will likely result in a greater number of refugees worldwide, prompting action from the international community.

“Open Door” Policy

One approach to mitigating the Syrian refugee crisis is to revitalize the United States’ commitment to accepting refugees with an open door policy. Essentially, this means the U.S. will greatly increase the number of refugees they accept annually. Such a policy has a plethora of benefits, including economic growth and urban revitalization. According to the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development, the Turkish economy will expand by 3.5% in 2017-2018 despite spending nearly 5.37 billion euros funding 2 million refugees. While there were expenses, the costs to the stable country proved to be more social and political than economic. If the United States were to take in a fraction of the refugees that Turkey has, the economy would prosper at an even greater level. It is also important to note that an influx of refugees helps to revitalize urban cities that are facing early signs of deindustrialization. While the primary concern is that refugees steal American jobs, in many cases, refugees often take the jobs that Americans don’t want, and can transform “desolate areas into thriving neighborhoods” by increasing the population, expanding the tax base by setting up their own businesses, and providing more customers for domestic companies.

Yet there are several problems with this policy. First, an increase in the number of Syrian refugees in the country does not seem plausible amid the current political climate. As Europe takes in more refugees, violent attacks occur within the European Union (EU). Ever since the September 2001 attacks, the public has viewed refugees through a terrorist lens. After the 2015 attack in Paris, 53% of Americans said the U.S. should stop accepting refugees, which differs when compared to the 75% that supported Obama’s refugee efforts earlier that year. The coverage of the European attacks has caused increased feelings of fear and hostility among the public, who are seeing the risks that go with the acceptance of undocumented refugees in the EU.

On the international level, this policy seems unlikely as the United States is not lawfully obligated to take action. According to the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, states are only told what not to do with refugees, which is to return them to their native country. International law also proclaims that the first country a refugee reaches is responsible for hosting them, and is usually where they will reside. Legally, the U.S. is not required to act beyond accepting those who make it to the border. However, as a global superpower, the U.S. faces international backlash and shaming if they don’t take action. While an “open door” policy seems like a simple answer, accepting more refugees only decreases the number abroad, and does not provide a solution for solving the refugee crisis in its entirety.

Reform the Resettlement Program

Implementing changes to the United States’ current resettlement program furthers the open door policy while remaining both feasible and practical. While a thorough process is necessary to weed out threats, the current vetting process is extensive and arduous. As of now, refugees must wait 18-24 months for acceptance into the country. Refugees must go through comprehensive interviews and security checks by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and nine nonprofits before being granted asylum. To speed up the adjudication process, the government should perform background investigations with more force and resources. The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) interviews applicants abroad to see if they are eligible for resettlement. Placing more USCIS groups on the ground has proven beneficial thus far; for example, in Maryland and Virginia, over 2,400 Syrian refugees arrived in 2016 due to upgrades in processing facilities and an increase in DHS teams in Jordan and Turkey. As Syrian background checks can take up to three years, the more applicants interviewed, the greater chance they have in moving on in the process. The government must also expand the USCIS’s reunification program to allow Syrian-Americans to bring extended family into the country. The USCIS grants refugees the ability to petition for relatives to stay with them, but it’s limited to their spouse or children. By making petitions available for extended family, such as grandparents or cousins, the number of refugees abroad will decrease, giving DHS teams the chance to quickly send certain refugees to the process’ security screening step.

Making changes to quicken the resettlement process has numerous benefits. For one, it reduces the death toll by immediately taking in the most vulnerable victims of the Syrian war. Those individuals are usually women, children, and the injured. Improving the program also holds symbolic importance by demonstrating solidarity among the United States and other countries within the international community. Simply increasing the number of accepted refugees can alleviate the pressure that refugee-heavy states feel and could convince alternative states to take in refugees themselves. By reforming the system to increase admission, the United States is also affirming their support for refugees and human rights, which improves their standing and reputation among other states in the international system.

Nonetheless, there are several obstacles with this policy. First, given the current hostile climate of the American public, it is unlikely that Congress will increase refugee admissions. Furthermore, the U.S.’s lack of action could prompt international shaming, and can undermine other countries’ efforts to provide asylum. While the U.S. has pulled its weight before when they took in over 700,000 refugees post-Vietnam War, their indecisiveness over Syrian refugees shows state selectivity and a lack of continuity when it comes to assisting in humanitarian crises. Overall, while making changes to the resettlement program lessens the number of displaced persons abroad, it doesn’t serve as a concrete solution to the Syrian war itself.

Increase Aid Abroad

Rather than accepting more refugees or reforming the resettlement program, the United States should provide more aid to the countries that are hosting the highest number of refugees. During the war, close to four million refugees were resettled in Lebanon, Turkey, and Jordan, with more than 1.3 million in Europe. The war has spilled beyond Syria’s borders, which undermines the security in the volatile region, allowing for extremist groups like ISIS to gain power and traction. Due to its severity, many refugees are living with little food, water or shelter. If the hostile environment in the U.S. continues, the country’s objective should shift to ensuring that refugee-heavy countries have the resources to effectively provide for them. To help one such country, the U.S. sent $1 billion to Jordan to help provide military and economic aid. Internationally, multiple donors have contributed $14.6 billion in aid over the past four years, with the United States providing $4.5 billion. Much of the U.S.’s assistance comes in the form of non-governmental organizations relief efforts like UNICEF and the UNHCR, to which the U.S. donated over $1.4 billion. By providing more aid towards asylum countries, the U.S. is furthering efforts that work on crucial issues of displacement, humanitarian relief, and food aid.

If President Trump were to abide by this policy, there would be many benefits. First, there is the potential for the U.S to help prevent the destabilization of countries in the region. Many of the asylum countries are heavily reliant on international support. By providing food, shelter and medical care, the U.S. is slowing refugee travel, and mitigating the war's impact on local governments that are struggling to cope with the influx of refugees. These relief efforts also give the U.S. the chance to prove its ability to lead without directly accepting any risk to its own well-being. As most of the distressed states are western allies, namely Turkey, Lebanon and France, U.S. relief efforts place them in a favorable light in their international relationships.

Yet, despite its advantages, this policy method is not infallible. The current aid provided by the U.S. is not enough to ease the pressure felt by asylum states, and the provision of that aid fails to fix the main source of the crisis. According to the World Food Program (WFP), it became necessary to reduce the value of food vouchers for Syrian refugees due to a shortage of resources and funding. In Lebanon, the ration allowance decreased from $27 per month per person to $13.50. The UN, despite requesting $8.4 billion to fund efforts in Syria in 2015, only received $3.8 billion, which is not enough to help everyone in need. Furthermore, while sending aid relieves and supports in the short-term, it fails to address the root of the refugee crisis. As withdrawing resources is not a practical option, the U.S. must continue to increase assistance while the statuses of refugee camps and states are still known. If the violence were to suddenly escalate, refugees would disperse, aid or not, and chances of survival for displaced people are higher if they have the resources to start with rather than not at all.

Preferred Method

The United States’ best option for effectively dealing with the Syrian refugee crisis is to reform the current resettlement program, as it involves a combination of options one and two. This policy would make procedural changes to increase the number of refugees accepted into the country, while also limiting the burden felt by refugee-laden countries and protecting the economic well-being of the United States. If the U.S. pursued option three, they run the risk of severe economic consequences. Increasing aid is not a practical solution as President Trump has repeatedly pledged to slash non-defense program spending, which includes emergency aid. Furthermore, both President Trump and the Republican party believe that reducing the current $21 trillion debt is imperative for the well-being of the country, and that progress is achievable by enacting cuts within the federal government. Thus, providing even more money to struggling states does not seem feasible in the current political climate, as it only serves to increase the debt.However, since the Syrian refugee crisis is a worldwide concern, it’s important that the United States utilize their available resources and take progressive action. As a global superpower, the U.S. has an international responsibility to protect and aid countries that are unable to do so themselves. By reforming the resettlement program, which then allows for the admission of more refugees, the U.S. is helping to decrease the number of displaced people abroad. Moreover, while reforming the resettlement process has financial consequences, it has the potential of enacting long-lasting change to an immigration process that could prove beneficial in the future if another dire situation arises.

The Sochi Dialogue; A Pathway for Russian Neo-Revisionism in the Levant

“Victors do not investigate their own crimes, so that little is known about them…”― Noam Chomsky

On the eve before the Syrian Congress of National Dialogue on January 30th, 2018, representatives of the Assad regime’s main opposition group, the Syrian Negotiation Commission (SNC), arrived to their terminal at the Sochi International Airport. As the group’s representatives met with their Russian hosts and prepared to be escorted to the conference, they sighted promotional billboards mounted atop the baggage claim caravels displaying the Syrian Arab Republic’s flag—the primary symbol of the Assad regime. The offended SNC representatives refused to step outside the airport and denied their invitation on spot, citing the conference’s disingenuity to any resistant forces in the way of Assad. Within an hour, the most important opposition delegation invited to Sochi was booked on the next flight to Ankara.

Two days prior, a Turkish mission—ironically coined “Operation Olive Branch”—invaded the Kurdish northern province in Afrin, Syria. The Turkish government issued a statement citing the Sochi Conference’s deference; the inclusion of Syrian Kurds in diplomatic dialogue without consent from the Erdogan government, was a red line for Turkey. Turkish intervention in Afrin was strategically designed to blockade Syrian Kurdish Peoples’ Protection Units (YPG) representatives from attending the dialogue, crippling the Kurds with reconnaissance airstrikes and ground force invasion.  Turkey’s sortie triumphed. The YPG’s spokesman, Fawza al-Yussef announced that Turkey—one of the conference’s hosts—violated the talks’ principle of political dialogue and that no YPG official, under any circumstances, would attend the talks. 

While the conference was quick to invite several local leaders of the ethnic Kurdish community and hosted the regime’s ‘Loyal Opposition’ delegation, Sochi was barren of any contrariety or deliberation. The television screens in the conference lobby—purposed to broadcast the delegates’ speeches and statements—were turned off at the start of the opening ceremonies. Journalists present at the dialogue grew concerned of the lack of interaction with the conference’s host, the Russian government, and lack of access to what little dialogue took place. Many within the international community regarded Sochi as an emblematic failure—a diplomatic disaster that began before the conference commenced, rooted in a conflict far more complex than its proponents realize. Yet, within the contextual framework of Russian neo-revisionism in the Levant, the conference brought unparalleled success. 

The Neo-Revisionsist Vision

While Sochi proved to be a diplomatic failure from its start, it still achieved a number of Russian objectives that, in the long-term, seek to revise the regional order and political expectations in the Levant. While Russian forces initially sought to ‘fill’ the political vacuum in the dawn of the Syrian civil war, they recognized immense capital if Russia were to become a major proponent in the region, eclipsing the United States. Russia’s objective aligns with what Richard Sakwa deems “neo-revisionsim.” Vladimir Putin’s government does not seek to unilaterally challenge or undermine current embedded frameworks of the regional order; rather, Moscow has made its mission to alter decades of Western dominance in the Middle East and ensure Russian strategic interests are equally recognized. 

Shrouded Objectives

The Syrian Congress of National Dialogue at Sochi was designed by the Russian, Turkish, and Iranian governments to serve as a complimentary step—possibly a diplomatic alternative—to ongoing reconstructive talks in Geneva, serving as the eighth round of the Astana negotiations. The talks were originally hailed among members in the international community for its diverse guest list; Sochi called on not only the twenty-member SNC delegation, but also upon participation from the Syrian Kurds, a force that had been absent in diplomatic talks despite their integral role in the civil war. The inclusion of the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) in the dialogue was a watershed in reconstruction efforts, sowing seeds of optimism among many negotiators and lending confidence to Russia’s emerging role as a diplomatic heavyweight in the Levant. 

In advance of Sochi, experts and policymakers overlooked the dialogue’s ulterior intent to manipulate the lack of “strategic incoherence” embedded in the policies, agendas, and objectives of Syria’s actors. Dr. Aaron Stein of the Atlantic Council introduced the concept of strategic incoherence in the wake of Operation Olive Branch, pointing to the tunnel-visioned policies of the Syrian crisis’ most valuable players, unengaged in adequate multilateral coordination. Syria’s disaster has yielded local actors the latitude to pursue diverging aims: while the United States’ regional strategy has primarily focused on driving out the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) through cooperation with YPG and Peshmerga militias, Turkey has made its mission to stave Kurdish territorial influence, no matter the cost. While Iran and Russia have dually empowered the Assad regime to keep its reins on power in Damascus, with the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps’ (IRGC) and Russian ground forces assisting pro-government Shabiha factions and Shi’a paramilitaries, they contradict an international community that insists upon Assad’s removal. Disorder has reigned supreme in Syria since 2012, and the Russian government has capitalized upon elements of discontinuity and strategic incoherence to pave its own path to a new Levantine order. 

Sochi, while a diplomatic breakdown, was an invaluable diplomatic measure of distraction for the Russian government. While Moscow’s chief diplomats arranged Sochi’s diverse guest list—to great fanfare—pro-Assad’s militant factions prepared dropped mortar shells and rockets on the besieged enclave of East Ghouta, displacing an estimated 30,000 civilians and isolating individuals from international aid convoy trucks and supplies. While Russians forces present in Syria have offered the city’s residents a safe passage out from the bombardment in what it calls a “humanitarian corridor,” Moscow has not ceased its assistance to retake eastern Ghouta, deploying warplanes in a series of bombing and ground assaults. 

An Impossible Order

While many experts have lamented the retracted international role in Syria, enabling Russia to capitalize upon its goal empowering its geopolitical stature in the region. Alina Polyakova of the Brookings Institution defined Moscow’s chief objective as one that transcends ISIS’s defeat and securing Assad’s grip on power; “preserving Assad’s rule was always less about Assad, and more about safeguarding what Putin saw as another domino in a series of U.S.-orchestrated revolutions in Russia’s backyard.” Russian President Vladimir Putin was reportedly agitated by U.S. interventionist strategies in Libya and Iraq during the Bush and Obama administrations, and recognized the strategic value in hybridized, low-cost, asymmetric proxy war. The lack of political coherence is attractive to Putin’s foreign policy agenda; Syria’s geostrategic position between East and West, as well as their warm-water ports, satisfy Russia’s overarching political and economic interests. Securing Assad in Moscow’s corner will retain Russia as a major influencer in the regional order.

While the Russian government has flexed its ability to redefine the Levant under its own terms, there is no certainty that this political order can survive. Moscow has pursued shuttle diplomacy with Israel and Iran, constructed alternative diplomatic dialogues outside of the Geneva Conference, and has established multiple frameworks for a new Syrian constitution and federal elections. It has proven its ability to serve as a power broker in a time of crisis. Yet these reforms cannot remain permanently in place; while the Assad government has maximized its territorial control, opposition still remains in tact and the regime’s repeated use of chemical weapons—facilitated by Moscow—will remain sealed in the memories of the conflict’s survivors.

The Struggle to Accommodate Refugees in the Global South

The nations accommodating the unprecedented number of refugees in the world do not possess the resources required to adequately meet the challenge before them. The host countries of refugees face a monumental task, no matter their circumstances. Migrant networks share information about modes of transportation and border-permeability. This allows ethnic and religious communities to reunite, even after forceful displacement from their countries of origin. Once refugee communities begin to coalesce in new cities, those cities are ethically obligated to attend to the needs of the displaced population that they are now accommodating. Federal governments may develop systems to distribute these communities to different cities throughout a nation in the face of a substantial influx, but this tests cities’ public infrastructure in cases of unprecedented numbers or extended duration. Destination cities for refugees are obligated to provide vocational training, labor market integration, social housing, security for such housing, language courses, health services, and supplemental programming such as athletic and cultural events. The strain that accommodating these needs puts a government under depends on the capabilities of that government.

Meeting these needs constitutes an enormous task for any city, but this challenge is especially pronounced for governments in the Global South. While Western nations are entangled in policy debates concerning how many refugees they should allow across their borders and how to properly integrate refugee communities into society, nations of the Global South struggle to muster the financial means to materially support refugees already within their borders. Nations in the Global North have the luxury to debate their moral imperative to support refugees. Nations of the Global South are not afforded such a choice. Countries of the subaltern, meaning those pushed to the social, economic, and political periphery in postcolonial theory, already spurned by global economic systems, presently support a disproportionate portion of the global refugee population. The number of refugees in the world has increased exponentially during the 21st century, rising from 21.2 million in 2000 to 40.8 million in 2015. The weight of this substantial increase in refugees rests squarely upon the back of the already strained governments of the Global South, with the Database for Institutional Comparisons in Europe reporting that the Global South currently hosts “86 percent of all the refugees registered worldwide and 99 percent of all internally displaced persons.” The approximately 35,000,000 refugees currently accommodated by nations in the Global South mark a stark contrast to the 50,000 refugees that Donald Trump mandated be allowed to enter the United States, the lowest number since 1986. The restricted resources commanded by governments of the Global South result in initiatives that often focus solely on the immediate needs of refugees, ignoring factors that are key to fostering long term stability. It is important to explore and understand the struggles that governments of the Global South face when accommodating refugees in order formulate the policy options available to them.

Context: Refugee Support in the Global North

The intense fiscal challenge of supporting refugees is best illustrated by an examination of the systems used by Western nations, such as Germany, to properly support their refugee population. The German model of refugee accommodation is highly bureaucratic, which, although providing some of the most comprehensive care for refugees, also comes with high administrative costs. This intense institutional support relies on Germany’s economic strength and rigorous tax structure, thus inhibiting nations of the Global South from replicating the system. Germany became an ersatz-haven for Syrian refugees in 2015 after invoking the “sovereignty clause” of the European Union’s 2013 Dublin Regulation (Regulation No. 604/2013, Dublin III Regulation) to opt out of relocating asylum seekers to their country of first entry into the EU. This was enacted to ease the challenges that accommodating the influx of Syrian refugees placed on EU border nations such as Greece and Italy.

Germany’s economic strength allows it to finance multiple levels of government agencies responsible for supporting its refugee population. Upon arrival, Germany’s Federal Office of Migration and Refugees (Bundesamt für Migration und Flüchtlinge) allots refugees to different states, and then municipalities, depending on the local tax revenue and population. State governments cover the costs of schooling, initial registration, and the creation of reception centers. Municipal governments provide for long-term housing, health care, and integration measures. This spurred some municipalities to create their own further municipal offices to attend to such needs, such as Freiburg’s “Office of Migration and Integration” (Amt für Migration und Integration), which handles issues such as social welfare, volunteer coordination, and labor market integration. Immediately after applying for asylum in Germany, refugees are issued identification paperwork (Aufenhaltsgestattung), and receive social housing, government welfare, and employment assistance while their application are processed. During their first months after arrival, refugees live in a reception center where food and clothing is provided for, and they receive an additional roughly €150 per month for living expenses. Soon after, refugees move into social housing (Wohnnheime) with social workers on site, and can receive roughly €350 per month to cover all of their living expenses. If their application for asylum is accepted, Germany issues refugees a residence permit (Aufenhaltserlaubnis), allowing refugees to continue to receive government welfare funds for more than a year. Even if a refugee’s application for asylum is rejected, Germany does not deport them from the country. Instead, refugees receive toleration papers (Duldung) that allow them to remain in the country, still residing in social housing and receiving welfare funds, but for a more limited amount of time. This highly bureaucratic system adeptly attends to the needs of refugees arriving in Germany, yet it relies on strong federal and local governments supported by an impressive economy. This model of refugee accommodation cannot be replicated by countries of the Global South that do not have the same immense resources at their disposal, and thus a different approach is necessary.

The number of Asylum-Seeker welfare recipients per 1,000 inhabitants, demonstrating the strength of the German government support system. From the Brookings Institution.

Iraq: Supporting Internally Displaced Persons while in Conflict

The challenges that Iraq’s government faces diverge sharply from those supported by the well-funded German system, with the colossal challenge of supporting an internally displaced population resulting from decades of conflict and exacerbated by the emergence of Daesh in recent years.  Iraq’s history with internally displaced persons (IDPs) can be divided into three separate phases. Phase One encompasses the roughly 1.2 million people displaced by nearly four decades of Saddam Hussein’s rule in Iraq. Beginning as early as 1974, Hussein engaged in a campaign of ethnic cleansing and intentional displacement that was primarily enacted against the Kurdish population in the country’s north and the Marsh Arabs in the country’s south, in an attempt to homogenize and Arabize the nation. Phase Two of Iraq’s IDP struggle coincides with the United States’ invasion of Iraq in 2003 and Hussein’s departure from power. During this time, the American invasion displaced 200,000 new Iraqis, while another 500,000 simultaneously returned to their former homes following the end of Hussein’s rule. The majority of new IDPs created during this phase resulted from the sectarian violence between 2006 and 2008, ignited by the bombing of the sacred Shi’a Two Askari Imams in Samara. Retributive violence against Sunni Muslims increased the number of new Iraqis displaced during the second phase to 1.6 million people by the middle of 2008. After this new swath of sectarian-provoked displacements, the International Organization for Migration estimated that the total number of IDPs in Iraq reached 2.8 million. Finally, Phase Three of displacement in Iraq began with the fall of Fallujah to Daesh in 2014 that displaced more than half a million people in Iraq’s Anbar province, after which the number of IDPs skyrocketed due to the prolonged conflict with the terrorist organization. That same year, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees reported that Iraq suffered the greatest number of new displacements in the world, with at least 2.2 million new displaced persons. The crisis has not relented in recent years, with the current IDPs numbering 3.2 million Iraqis, roughly one in ten people in the nation. The number of IDPs in Iraq reached an all-time high around June 30th, 2017, as the military effort to retake the city of Mosul in the Ninewa province concluded. More than one million people were displaced in the Ninewa province in total, and the same number of people in the Mosul area were estimated to be inaccessible to humanitarian aid. The Iraqi government is ill-equipped to support such a large internally displaced population while simultaneously fighting Daesh.

During the summer of 2017, an amalgamated 7.3 million people in Iraq were vulnerable and in need of required assistance across the country. Currently, in the Salahuddin province, municipal authorities have evicted nearly 600 families of Daesh militants from their homes. Despite condemnations from Iraqi politicians across the country, the policies of the Salahuddin province only exacerbate the problem of IDPS within their own country. Children comprise half of the recently expanded displaced population, with more than half a million forced to miss more than a year of education as a result of their displacement. In refugee camps, a scant 50 percent of children are attending school, and that number drops to 30 percent outside of refugee camps. Missing crucial education and at risk of physical harm, sexual violence, and radicalization, the situation of these children creates yet another challenge for the success of an Iraqi state in the future. In 2015, only 9 percent of Iraqi IDPs lived in refugee camps in Iraq, with between 60 and 90 percent living in private accommodations such as rented rooms and host families, and the rest in critical shelter arrangements such as former schools and hospitals. The large population of IDPs in Iraq living in private accommodations is characteristic of the distinctly different struggle of refugees in the Global South, for this population faces eviction if they are unable to pay for their accommodations. The Iraqi government attempts to mitigate the costs of such accommodations, providing an initial cash payment of 1 million Iraqi dinars (approximately $850) for each displaced family. However, this amount can only cover the cost of a meager few weeks of food and shelter, and this hardship is intensified by the fact that 40 percent of the new IDPs in Iraq have not received this payment. A large amount of the IDPs moved to the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, due to the region’s more stable economy and a history of accepting religious minorities, causing the population of the region to swell by 30 percent. This unprecedented increase in population puts host families under intense strain, leading to negative coping mechanisms such as child labor and early marriages. The tenuous status of IDPs in Iraq and the lack of reliable infrastructure to support the displaced community resulted in a paucity of necessary health care resources, culminating in a cholera outbreak that pervaded 15 of the 18 governorates in 2015. The protracted nature of conflict in Iraq destroyed local infrastructure and created successive waves of IDPs that the state government is unable to adequately support.

The displaced persons of Iraq who fled the country overwhelmingly reside in other nations of the Global South that have similarly scarce means of supporting them. In 2008, there were roughly 1.5 million Iraqi refugees living in Syria, 500,000 in Jordan, and 250,000 more in other countries. Syria was the primary destination for Iraqi refugees due to its close geographic proximity, which allowed Shi’a Iraqis to avoid the majority-Sunni Anbar province when fleeing sectarian violence after 2006. Furthermore, the Syrian government allowed Arab nationals, including Iraqis, three months’ stay without documentation, during which time they could apply for residence permits. Syria, as a whole, had a history of accepting the Shi’a population and had a more established health and education infrastructure. Syria also possessed a larger informal economy than other destinations, which afforded greater work opportunities to displaced Iraqis. But as civil conflict flared in Syria, the Iraqi refugee population was displaced once again, with the UNHCR reporting only 44,000 Iraqi refugees still in Syria as of 2013.

In Jordan, the 500,000 Iraqi refugees face an even more difficult struggle to achieve legally recognized residency. The two most common ways of attaining stable status in Jordan are to either receive a residency permit (iqama) or a work contract. Yet to receive a residency permit in 2003, Iraqi refugees were required to deposit $150,000 into a Jordanian bank account. Although this amount was later lowered to $20,000, only 25,000 Iraqi refugees acquired a residency permit by 2011. Attaining a work contract is an even more arduous process, as it requires mobilizing significant social capital (wasta) such as familial and political connections, such that only 2,000 Iraqis have received work contracts. These struggles resulted in 80 percent of the wealthiest bracket of Iraqis receiving residency permits, as opposed to 22 percent of the poorest bracket, further stratifying an already divided community. Between the conflict in Syria and a regressive residency system in Jordan, the governments of the Global South are ill-equipped to accommodate the refugee populations that they are forced to support.

The government of Iraq is unable to support the vast internally displaced population within its borders due to the ramifications of decades of conflict, such as eroded public infrastructure, significant brain-drain, and inadequate documentation. The capacity of the state in Iraq has been under assault since the time of Saddam Hussein, who expelled all non-Ba’athist government officials. This problem was further aggravated by the de-Ba’athification enacted by the American government after its ouster of Hussein that removed most remaining experienced government officials from power, compounded by American efforts undertaken to decentralize the Iraqi government. During this time, opportunistic militias emerged and seized the assets of institutions and extorted the local population. As these militias looted both hospitals and universities, the system of rentierism that had prevailed under Hussein collapsed, leaving the government unable to repair the devastated public infrastructure. What remains of the oil industry that previously supported the government is wrought with rampant corruption, further hampering state capabilities. The middle class of Iraq is disappearing, resulting from hyperinflation and targeted attacks. In 2007, a New York Times report expounded that 26 out of 30 students surveyed at the University of Baghdad intended to leave the country to start their careers. The militias took advantage of the state’s weakness and specifically targeted the middle class for kidnappings, believing that they would be more able to pay a ransom. In 2006, there were more than 30 kidnappings a day in Baghdad, and the majority of those targeted were academics, lawyers, and media professionals. The shrinking intellectual community and middle class in Iraq poses a direct threat to state capabilities in the future, for it is this population’s skills and tax dollars that are key to rebuilding a stable state. The health infrastructure in the country is similarly eviscerated, with many hospitals ransacked indiscriminately. The Iraqi Red Crescent reported that more than half of the nation’s doctors fled the country between 2003 and 2007. Daesh’s rise both contributed to the further destruction of state infrastructure, and prevented the repair of infrastructure previously damaged in sectarian violence. What remains of the state operates on a basis of innate discrimination, with the occupying Kurdish forces in Ninewa and Diyala preventing Sunni Arabs from returning to their homes. In Baghdad, security forces are equally suspicious of Sunni Muslims and even ignore crimes perpetrated against them. According to victims’ reports, Sunni homes have been burned, and eight Sunni men were blindfolded and executed behind a school in 2015 without any official investigation. Even when operating as intended, the government faces the obstacle of a dearth of documentation among IDPs, which prevents IDPs from utilizing what services do exist. The Iraqi legislation (Resolution No. 36, 1994) guarantees and protects citizens’ right to their property, yet without any documentation verifying their right to their property, IDPs may be unable to reclaim their homes. Government policies that diverge from the priorities of IDPs exacerbate this problem. While the International Organization for Migration reports that 87 percent of IDPs experiencing extended displacement hope to integrate in the communities that they were displaced to, government policy offers better financial support for IDPs returning to their homes and de-registering as IDPs. Thus, due to its lack of financial means, collapsing social infrastructure, and improper policy priorities and implementation, the Iraqi government requires new policy options to adequately support its internally displaced population.

Internally Displaced Persons in Iraq, as of June 2015, demonstrating the scale of the internally displaced population Iraq is supporting while still in conflict. From the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center.

Syria: Unprecedented Scale

Governments accommodating the Syrian refugee population face a struggle that similarly diverges from those faced by Western governments, due to the enormity of the displaced population in need of assistance. Currently, more than half of Syrians are displaced. The displaced population consists of 6,300,000 IDPs within Syria and 5,500,000 refugees who fled the country. Of the refugee population, one million have applied for asylum in Europe, with the two largest host nations, Germany and Sweden, respectively receiving 300,000 and 100,000 applications for asylum. Yet, the number of refugees in Germany and Sweden combined is still less than the number of refugees hosted individually by Turkey, Lebanon, or Jordan.

Displacement in Syria began with a drought that lasted from 2006 to 2010. According to Francesca de Chatel in Middle Eastern Studies, “the government’s failure to respond to the ensuing humanitarian crisis…formed one of the triggers of the uprising, feeding a discontent that had long been simmering in rural areas.” Fifty years of poor water management combined with aggressive agricultural development efforts plunged the northeast region into poverty as groundwater reserves emptied. Syria suffered drought during almost half of those fifty years. This drought caused 800,000 people to lose their jobs, sparking widespread displacement. The drought also heightened the pressure on the central government and exacerbated pre-existing tensions. In 2011, civil war broke out after the Syrian public learned of the government’s torture of peaceful protesters and Syrian government forces responded to massive protests by laying siege to Dara’a. As opposition forces dissolved into hundreds of groups, the constantly shifting frontlines of battle displaced constantly growing segments of the local population. The civil conflict lengthened and was complicated by the emergence of Daesh and the fracturing of opposition forces. As a result, repeated displacements became commonplace, with some refugees forcefully displaced up to 25 times before they could finally find refuge. Due to the devastated social services and quickly depleted personal resources, displaced persons entered into a destructive pattern of cyclical displacement, forcing refugees to rely entirely on scarce international aid. Refugees are sheltered in woefully inadequate camps, where the International Displacement Monitoring Center reports that “fifty-seven per cent of collective centres do not have sufficient water, 50 per cent lack sufficient sanitation facilities, and 54 per cent are overcrowded.” Early in the conflict, restrictions prevented external humanitarian access. Even now, it is difficult to obtain reliable data due to intentional inaccuracies from Syrian authorities, contrasting figures from independent sources, and vast areas controlled by violent insurgents where data collection is impossible. This lack of reliable information is especially pronounced for the population of ar Raqqa, where military operations to liberate the city from Daesh control have recently concluded. The population of ar Raqqa, however, is in critical need of help. More than half of the city’s population was displaced and the majority of the city was destroyed by the relentless shelling of American and Syrian forces. The size and extent of conflict in Syria has created the largest humanitarian crisis of our time, with governments of the Global South supporting the majority of the refugees created by the conflict.

The Syrian refugee population in other countries of the region has tested government institutions within the Global South. An examination of these governments’ successes and failures to provide services is essential to recommending the best policy options for the future. In Jordan, official numbers report around 650,000 Syrian refugees reside. This number is likely incomplete, for King Abdullah II declared at the Plenary Session of the United Nations’ 70th General Assembly that Syrian refugees compose 20 percent of Jordan’s population. Syrian refugees in Jordan utilize health services at a high rate and, when combined with the number of refugees in the country, Jordan’s public health infrastructure is under dangerous duress. A survey by UNHCR found that 86.6 percent of families who needed health care in the month prior to their survey sought care. The high cost of these health services, however, inhibits some refugees from utilizing them. Further refugees are precluded from receiving the care they need after the government of Jordan responded to the heightened pressure on their health infrastructure by terminating free access to health services for refugees in 2014. The switch to subsidized health services in Jordan has contributed to the deterioration of the economic status of refugees in Jordan. This results from inadequate international support for the Jordanian government, for while supporting a refugee population that accounts for 20 percent of their population, the Jordanian government has footed the $53 million bill for refugee care, while only $5 million in support was provided by UN agencies. The congestion of health facilities became a source of social tension in Jordan, with 60 percent of Jordanians and 39 percent of Syrians reporting it as the main source of tensions between the groups. This overcrowding is exemplified by the situation in the Mafaq Government Hospital in close proximity to the Za’atari refugee camp, wherein of the 16 neonatal incubators, 12 are used by Syrian refugees, two are used by Jordanians, and the final two are used other foreign nationals. Such struggles make it clear that Jordan’s current policies are inadequate to support the large number of Syrian refugees within the nation.

In Lebanon, the situation of Syrian refugees is similarly fragile. Official numbers report 1 million Syrian refugees in the country, yet the number could be as high as 1.5 million. The small nation is struggling to support the refugee population it now hosts. The nation suffers from a marked decline in trade and tourism due to the Syrian conflict, with its national debt totaling 141 percent of GDP in 2013, and annual GDP growth plummeting from 10 percent in 2010 to 1 percent in 2014. Rent in the country skyrocketed due to limited supply and increased demand from the refugee population, causing a 44 percent increase in rent between 2012 and 2013. This increase in rent has proven catastrophic for both Syrian refugees and poor Lebanese. Within the refugee population, roughly one third do not have the proper documentation to stay in the country, and 92 percent are working on the black market, subject to exploitative underpay and devoid of state regulated labor protections. The Lebanese government uses the financial support it does receive “to directly provide immediate needs to the affected populations, contributing to their dependency and not using their inherent capacities,” according to scholars in the Risk Management and Health care Policy journal. This further prolongs the damaging circumstances for refugees by offering no mode of exit. By failing to offer opportunities for refugees to secure upward mobility, Lebanon’s policies fail to adequately address the problems refugees face.

In Turkey, close proximity and positive border policies have contributed to the formation of the largest Syrian refugee population, numbering approximately 3,250,000. The undocumented incorporation of Syrian laborers into the Turkish economy has forced refugees into chronic poverty, putting them in an acutely precarious position with ever decreasing means of returning home. Despite collaborative efforts by the Turkish government and the European Commission, Syrian refugees living in Turkey are not offered the capability to support themselves. The support provided by the European Neighborhood Policy intends to assuage migration into the European Union, but this results in international support operating on skewed priorities. There are efforts to house Syrian refugees within Turkey, yet there is a paucity of adequate efforts to legitimately integrate these refugees into the Turkish economy.

Information insecurity is widespread throughout the Syrian refugee populations in Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey. The International Red Crescent administers a phone calling program in refugee camps that it operates in, allowing refugees a three minute call home every two weeks, but these services are underutilized due to the necessity of NGO supervision and the limitations imposed on topic of conversation. Refugees thus resort to alternative practices to mitigate their informational insecurity, such as calling home on private cellphones to verify any information from news sources. Problematically, practices such as this incur new costs for refugees, such as the need for a SIM card from the country they are residing in as well as one from Syria, and payments to marketplace vendors to charge their phone or download an app. The lack of reliable sources of information for refugees forces them to expend limited financial resource.

In summation, the Syrian refugee community demonstrates concerning signs of chronic poverty due to their protracted displacement. Endemic indebtedness and asset selling signifies decreasing welfare and inhibits long-term self-reliance. Given the overtaxed governments of the Global South’s dearth of fiscal means, policies priorities must be developed to enable limited government resources to better support the Syrian refugee community, so that refugees are not compelled to engage in activities such as under the table labor to offset medical and housing expenses.

Statistics demonstrating the immense scale of the Syrian refugee population. From the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

The Rohingya: Little Hope to Return Home

The government of Bangladesh faces a unique challenge as it struggles to support the displaced Rohingya population of Myanmar, given this population’s diminished possibility of ever returning to their homes in Myanmar. Myanmar is 90 percent Buddhist, with small Muslim and Christian minority populations numbering roughly 4 percent each. The majority of the Muslim Rohingya minority community resides in the northern Rakhine State of Myanmar, yet they are the subjects of a targeted, intentional displacement campaign by Burmese authorities. This state is one of the poorest and least literate in the country, with the Rohingya Muslim community therein facing institutionalized discrimination such as restricted movement and limited access to education.

The state justifies its discrimination against the Rohingya community by propagating the false narrative that the Rohingya are illegal immigrants from the Myanmar’s majority Muslim neighbor, Bangladesh. Since the 1990s, extremist and ultra-nationalists Buddhist organizations, such as the Organization for the Protection of Race (MaBaTha), have spread hateful propaganda against the Rohingya and the Muslim community in Myanmar as a whole. These groups portray the Rohingya as a “threat to race and religion” who threaten to destroy the Burmese “Buddhist state.” Even politicians in Myanmar have mobilized hate against the Rohingya population to garner support, with one politician in 2015 calling for his cheering crowd to “kill and bury” all Rohingya.

The greatest threat to the Rohingya population of Myanmar is the government enacted displacement campaign that UN Human Rights chief Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein has called “a textbook example of ethnic cleansing.” Government forces, primarily the military (known as the Tatmadaw) and the Border Guard Police Force of Myanmar (BGP), have undertaken extensive “area clearing operations,” which became especially egregious following attacks perpetrated by Rohingya militants’ on security forces on August 25, 2017, which killed 12 members of the security forces. These forced displacements are undertaken on the premise that the Rohingya villagers are hiding or supporting members of the Rohingya Solidarity Organization, a small rebel group that has fought for Rohingya rights since the 1980s. The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights reports that local Buddhist villagers have been given military uniforms and armaments to assist in the brutal forceful displacement of Rohingya Villagers. It is also common place for local Buddhist Rakhine villagers to participate in the looting of villages, as well as the beating and sexual assault of Rohingya villagers. It is hypothesized that these civilians are a part of the Burmese “969 movement” which opposes the expansion of Islam into Myanmar. As a result of such forced displacement efforts, more than 1,200,000 Rohingya have fled to Bangladesh, paying smugglers and boatmen exorbitant fees, or holding on to plastic gasoline containers and attempting to float across the border if they cannot afford the price of a boat. These refugees have been subjected to some of the most heinous violations of human rights and dignity of our time at the hands policies officially sanctioned by the Government of Myanmar.

The actions taken by the Tatmadaw and BGP to forcefully displace the Rohingya population make it clear that the Rohingya population’s return to Myanmar is impossible without total regime change. The Tatmadaw locks down villages prior to clearing them, preventing villagers from leaving for up to ten days, thus closing off all access to food and forcing the local population into starvation. Once the actual clearing is underway, the atrocities escalate. Men are killed indiscriminately, beaten, and shot at close range. Grenades and random gunfire are used to torment the local population, and helicopters are often used to drop grenades and fire on civilians. Rohingya refugees report the military using long butchering knives to cut the throats of elderly relatives attempting to flee. Widespread reports tell of houses set on fire with families still inside of them, villagers pushed back into burning houses, and grass set alight around Rohingya villagers who have been beaten.  Rocket propelled grenade launchers are widely used to set homes on fire. Social and religious leaders have been the targets of forced disappearances, and are suspected to have been killed. Children are similarly attacked, with reports of babies being stabbed to death with knives and newborn children being stomped to death with heavy military boots. One woman recounts how her baby was torn from her arms and thrown into a fire, after which she and her two sisters were raped, with her two sisters murdered and her mother and 10-year-old brother shot. The majority of women interviewed in an OHCHR report experienced sexual violence, with instances of gang rape being reported by the majority of the victims. The women and girls who are the victims of such sexual violence do not have access to medical services in the northern Rakhine State, due to a dearth of doctors, high health care costs, and the social stigma tied to the sexual violence they have experienced. The material situation of the Rohingya population is being intentionally, irreparably eroded by government forces. Elderly members of the population report being beaten and then forced to give their personal belongings to Buddhist Rakhine villagers. In locked-down areas, schools and mosques are occupied by security forces. Food and cooking utensils such as pots and pans are destroyed, and livestock is killed to destroy potential food sources for any surviving villagers. Religious violence, such as the forced shaving and burning of the beards of religious leaders, is prevalent. Holy Qurans have been desecrated and burnt in public spaces. Women and girls have been deliberately raped inside of mosques. The intentionality of the government of Myanmar is clear, given that humanitarian aid is banned inside the Rakhine state. These atrocities are perpetrated before the Rohingya population leaves their own borders, which is exceedingly difficult to do as the journey to Bangladesh costs roughly $120 and a significant portion of the local population lives on less than $1 per day. These numerous atrocities leave the Rohingya population a nearly stateless people, compounding the difficulties for the large Rohingya refugee community living in Bangladesh.

Bangladesh faces a challenge that differs from those faced by most Western nations, for the refugee population it is accommodating is unlikely to ever return home. Thus, in addition to supporting the refugee population, Bangladesh must develop a plan for the Rohingya population’s future in the nation. The Burmese Social Welfare, Relief and Resettlement Minister cited the nation’s Natural Disaster Management Law to argue that any burnt land becomes the government’s land, thus robbing Rohingya refugees whose homes were burned by the Tatmadaw and BGP of their property in Myanmar. Official figures from the government of Myanmar report that of the nation’s 471 Muslim villages, 176 have been entirely vacated, with more than 7,000 homes burned down. The Rohingya forcefully displaced by these actions walk up to 14 days to reach Bangladesh, and the sanctuary they find there is piecemeal. The government of Bangladesh relies heavily on the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees to support the Rohingya refugee population, with the Bangladeshi Refugee Relief and Repatriation Commission providing derisory support such as basic first aid and water stations for new arrivals. The Rohingya refugees fleeing to Bangladesh arrive in Cox’s Bazar, which is one of Bangladesh’s poorest districts, with 33 percent of the population living beneath the poverty line. The refugees fleeing violence following the August 25th incident often bring few possessions with them, and exhaust what savings they do have to travel to Bangladesh and construct rudimentary shelters made of bamboo and thin plastic once they arrive. This forces Rohingya refugees that have recently arrived in Bangladesh to rely exclusively on government and humanitarian aid for subsistence. Already strained prior to August 25th, institutional support in Bangladesh fails to keep pace with the rapidly growing Rohingya refugee population following the Tatmadaw’s intensified village clearing operations. The majority of Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh live in makeshift settlements and spontaneous settlements, such as sprawling tent cities. This lack of adequate accommodations is a self-perpetuating problems, for the vast makeshift communities are not conducive to developing infrastructure, such as clean water and food distribution sites. While new refugee sites are constantly being planned to accommodate the influx, refugees arrive to new sites before any humanitarian support infrastructure is established, and a critical lack of roads within these new sites inhibits the construction of such infrastructure.  Refugees react to the lack of clean water and sanitation facilities by resorting to drinking stagnant water from nearby paddy fields. Humanitarian interventions primarily target refugee camps and makeshift communities, yet the United Nations Development Programme reports that before August 25th, 76 percent of refugees in camps and makeshift communities had no access to clean drinking water. This number rises to 92 percent in host communities, due to the lack of humanitarian assistance. Such precarious conditions leave the population severely vulnerable to a diarrheal epidemic. A lack of space for health and sanitation facilities in makeshift settlements is an acute problem. Women and girls among the Rohingya refugees, who constitute 65 percent of all new arrivals following August 25th, are especially vulnerable. The lack of sanitation facilities forces many refugees to bathe and defecate in the open. This causes women and girls to combat the lack of proper sanitation facilities by limiting the amount they eat and drink, and by rarely leaving shelters during their menstrual cycles in order to preserve their privacy. Children represent a large portion of the refugee population, and more than 400,000 Rohingya children do not have access to education. Child labor is becoming more prevalent due to the dire conditions refugees face. Such insufficient accommodations clearly demonstrates that the Rohingya population in Bangladesh requires more proficient aid efforts.

International aid works to offset the duress that the government of Bangladesh is subjected to, yet such efforts are not entirely successful. Aid is constrained by the lengthy process that obtaining approval for humanitarian projects entails. The government of Bangladesh is inundated with project approval (FD-7) requests, and does not have the capacity to respond to them quickly enough. More than 80,000 refugees did not receive their full food rations due to this lengthy and time-consuming application process. In October, 2017, twice as many government counterparts applying to provide water, sanitation, and hygiene resources awaited clearance paperwork than received it. The United Nation’s priorities include the installation of shelter, water, and sanitation facilities, such as well and latrines. The United Nations also hopes to strengthen the capacities of local communities, but aiding local communities in accommodating refugees is not synonymous with providing refugees the means to succeed within such communities. Both the United Nations and the government of Bangladesh foresee the repatriation of Rohingya refugees as the solution to the crisis. Yet while the United Nations Assistant High Commissioner for Protection, Mr. Volker Türk, discussed facilitating the voluntary and sustainable repatriation of refugees with state officials in Myanmar, the Asia Pacific Refugee Rights Network reports that there is “a growing realization that repatriation is unlikely in the short-term.” The government of Bangladesh and international nongovernmental organizations must recognize that the Rohingya population’s stay in Bangladesh is unlikely to be brief, and develop policy options that respond accordingly.

Bangladesh’s infrastructure is subjected to such strain because Rohingya refugees have few options but to relocate to Bangladesh. Other neighboring nations in the Global South, such as Thailand, have enacted policies mandating that the boats of Rohingya refugees be pushed back away from their shores, fearing that they could not handle an influx of refugees. Thai efforts to eliminate people-smuggling have also created further problems for Rohingya refugees, for smugglers now abandon boatloads of people at sea. Even if the Rohingya in Bangladesh desired to return to Myanmar, security forces have laid landmines along the border to Bangladesh, inhibiting the return of refugees. Within Myanmar, the displaced population is not supported, but instead imprisoned. The official government spokesperson Zaw Htay expounds that the camps where the displaced Rohingya reside are actually “for Bengalis,” thus supporting the government narrative that all Rohingya in Myanmar are illegal immigrants from Bangladesh. The camps in the Rakhine State are far from adequate refugee camps, likened to “open-air prisons” by commentators as they are little more than areas surrounded by barbed wire and security forces to confine the detainees. The government of Myanmar’s rejection of aid agencies prevents any support that might allow the refugee population to regain self-sufficiency, demonstrating that it has no intention of ever allowing a Rohingya population in the country again. While refugees’ stays in Western nations are often confined to the duration of conflicts in their nations of origin, the Rohingya population’s eventual withdrawal from states in the Global South such as Bangladesh is unlikely. Efforts that allow Rohingya to succeed in their new communities must be planned in response.

A small sample of the total number of Rohingya villages destroyed by government forces in Myanmar, demonstrating the implausibility of Rohingya repatriation. From the Myanmar Information Management Unit.

Policy Discussion

There are clear disparities in the challenges faced by governments in the Global North and Global South when supporting refugee populations, thus necessitating the advancement of new policy priorities for governments of the Global South. Raphi Rechitsky of the Center for Comparative Immigration Studies elucidates that governments of the Global North often invoke policies that deter refugees from reaching their borders and therefore confine refugees to the Global South. This puts governments of the Global South under increased strain when attempting to accommodate the refugee populations they host with already limited resources. The divide is most prominent when comparing the singular $850 initial cash payment that the Iraqi government gives to each internally displaced family to the more than €5,000 euros that refugees can receive in Germany over the course of 15 months. While refugees living in Jordan combat information insecurity by paying market vendors to charge their mobile phones, the ‘taschengeld’ given to refugees in Germany can be used to pay for mobile phone services. Feasible policy options must be developed for governments of the Global South such as Iraq, Syria, Jordan, and Bangladesh that currently support significant refugee populations. If these governments solely focus on providing for the immediate needs of refugees without providing means of status improvement, the cycle of poverty is perpetuated. Successful refugee support in the Global South requires identifying clearly delineated and achievable policy goals so that governments can focus their limited capabilities where they will be most impactful.

One of these crucial policy goals for supporting refugees in the Global South is providing opportunities for upward mobility. This is attainable through a commitment to education, labor market integration, and cash assistance programs.

Education is crucial to giving refugees opportunities to find employment in the local economy of their host country, as well as providing better opportunities for voluntary repatriation in the future. Education also can help mitigate the effects of displacement on refugee children, providing an increased likelihood of stability in their countries of origin after repatriation. The Sri Lankan refugee population living in India has found exceptional success after they lobbied the Indian government to allow them to attend public schooling even without documentation from their schools at home. The Sri Lankan refugees also organized their own higher education and vocational schooling programs. The upwards mobility that this schooling provides helps to allow refugees to overcome the psychological ramification of their protracted displacement. One key component of such upward mobility is offering education in the local language of refugees’ host nations. Proficiency in the local language drastically improves refugees’ labor market access, allowing them to better provide for themselves in the long term. Education also alleviates the burden on local governments by enabling upward mobility, combatting both the material and psychological ramifications of forced displacement.

Another key component of upwards mobility is local labor market integration. Compensating for the situation of refugees by providing work permits at a low cost and with a decreased amount of required documentation allows refugees to begin to work and provide for themselves, further reducing the strain on government support institutions. Relaxed regulations on refugees entering the labor market has positive effects for refugees by providing a source of income and workplace protections, and for the local economies by taking advantage of the proficiencies that refugees bring with them.

Prioritizing cash assistance programs enable an increased concentration on the needs of each individual refugee. In Lebanon, each dollar of cash assistance spent by Syrian refugees resulted in $2.13 created in the local economy. When combined with access to bank accounts, cash assistance provides greatly increased stability in the lives of refugees. Paul Spiegel of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees writes that “cash assistance has the potential to transform aid effectiveness, support local economies, improve relations between refugee and host communities, and provide more choice and dignity.” In isolation, cash assistance programs only succeed in reducing the risk of poverty for refugees, but do not eliminate the risk of poverty in the future. When combined with other enablers of upward mobility, however, cash assistance can make a difference. Education, labor market integration, and cash assistance programs are all components of a broader prioritization of enabling refugees’ upward mobility that should be a focus of governments in the Global South.

Creating sustainable health care systems is the second policy goal necessary for governments of the Global South supporting refugee populations. The eroding capabilities of states’ health infrastructures poses an acute risk to human security. A widespread respect for refugees’ right to health is critical to protecting human security, which includes actively removing barriers to refugees’ health care access, such as cost. Instead of adhering to a single parallel program of health services, nations of the Global South must prioritize developing migrant sensitive health services. Migrant sensitive health services entail accounting for the unique health needs of the disparate refugee populations that nations accommodate. Even in areas still embroiled in conflict, where state governments have little capacity to support their internally displaced populations, humanitarian and government efforts are best served by identifying populations’ precise needs. This allows the resources mobilized to create the largest impact possible. Adequately adapting existing health services to the needs of specific populations necessitates broader public health assessments. Thereby, services offered align with the needs of the populations that they are serving. Health care can also provide a form of cursory documentation that can be key to allowing refugees to utilize greater segments of the services available. While Syrian refugees utilize health services at high rates, it must be destigmatized for the victims of sexual violence within the Rohingya refugee population. If differences in health seeking are identified by public health assessments, services that specifically accounting for such differences can be offered. Such services may include offering intercultural mediation and building health literacy. Initial health screenings are often lauded as essential to refugee health, yet the epidemiological vulnerability of populations must first be accounted for. If populations are sufficiently vaccinated and at low risk of communicable disease, resources used for health screenings are better spent improving living conditions. While Jordan’s initial health screenings of Syrian refugees diagnosed Tuberculosis at an incredibly high success rate before the disease could spread to larger segments of the population, health services must not be limited to health assessments. Such health screenings are key to reducing the strain on local health institutions in populations at specific risk of communicable diseases, yet health care must go beyond initial screenings by offer treatment for diseases and injuries identified in such screenings. The emphasis on initial health screenings dominates discussions of refugee health, problematically enabling governments to lackadaisically attend to refugee health needs by singularly providing such screenings. Wider public health assessments allowing for the more educated coordination of humanitarian actors, preventing oversights that result from an ad hoc approach to refugee health care. When screenings are necessary, they must holistically address the needs of refugee communities, including providing psychosocial services and care for noncommunicable diseases. Expending resources to improve refugees’ living conditions can dramatically reduce the strain on health care systems in the Global South, for a lack of clean drinking water and adequate shelter in refugee accommodations are notable sources of refugees’ health instability. Creating health care systems that can endure the strain of large refugee populations and protracted displacements must be a specific policy goal for governments of the Global South, and is achievable by assessing the unique needs of refugee communities and preventing the causes of health insecurity.

Finally, government leaders in the Global South must create sufficient institutional support for refugees in the key areas of combatting human trafficking, providing reliable information systems and forms of documentation, and providing support for voluntary repatriation.

One key areas of institutional support is the fight against human smuggling, although policy responses must be carefully designed so that they do not exacerbate problems for refugees. Often, victims of human trafficking who have been forced into sex-work are deported back to their countries of origin. As previously discussed, current initiatives fail to protect the refugee populations exploited by trafficking networks. Instead of focusing on the results of human trafficking such as sex work, law enforcement agencies must focus on preventing the networks that force refugees into this situation in the first place. Furthermore, corruption must be combatted, for reports of police warning community leaders before raids and traffickers bribing police illustrate the threat that corruption poses to anti-trafficking efforts. Within legal structures, policies that stratify the victims of human trafficking into separate categories can result in institutions only focusing on the victims whose situation they deem more egregious, resulting in institutions overlooking victims of labor trafficking in favor of aiding the victims of sex trafficking. The rights of all victims must be prioritized, including efforts to protect victims’ identities, and the provision of additional support to victims post liberation. One major component of preventing human trafficking is educating refugees and government agents alike on the rights that are endowed to refugees.

The institutional support of refugees also entails maintaining reliable information systems. Refugees in poverty should not be forced to expend what little financial resources they have to obtain reliable information through expensive phone calls home or hard-to-find internet access. In addition, the majority of refugees lack official documentation verifying their identity, education level, employment history, and even country of origin. Governments of the Global South must prioritize providing such documentation to refugees so that they are not precluded from accessing the services available to them. Such documentation is also key to enabling entrance to the local labor market, which promotes self-sufficiency within refugee populations. Where possible, governments of the Global South must also mobilize legal aid to give refugees adequate asylum support. Without achieving the administrative classification of "refugee status," refugees are left open to deportation, prevented from working, and may even be inhibited from accessing health care services.

Once conflicts pacify in refugees’ countries of origin, repatriation support must be offered for refugees who choose voluntary repatriation. While refugees’ intent to repatriate is debated, the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees reports that “Voluntary repatriation…is the solution of choice for a vast majority of refugees.” Indeed, between 19998 and 2008 fourteen times as many refugees chose repatriation over permanent resettlement in their host countries. The United Nations designates four key areas of focus necessary to ensuring repatriation success, including physical safety, legal safety, material safety, and reconciliation. The word “voluntary” is crucial to successful repatriation, and to make a fully informed and uncoerced choice, refugees require information on their home countries, legal aid, and peace and reconciliation efforts in their home countries. The choice to repatriate must be fully agentive. In the past, Bangladesh has avoided accusations of refoulment, or forcefully returning refugees to their countries of origin, by withdrawing food rations from refugees, thereby replacing their agency to choose to repatriate with necessity.  Successful repatriation support further entails ensuring a source of livelihood through labor market access in refugees’ country of return, as often their home governments provide little support. Governments must also ensure that refugees can attain equal citizenship status in their home countries, with respect to the differences between their culture and the predominant culture in their home nations. The protection of refugee rights, provision of reliable information systems and adequate documentation, and attention given to asylum and repatriation support can all work to minimize the strain on governments of the Global South.

Conclusion

As has been argued, the governments of the Global South face challenges that can confound even Western governments. These challenges are exacerbated by the fact that 86 percent of refugees and 99 percent of internally displaced persons remain within the Global South. This dichotomy between challenge and resources necessitates the creation of policy goals that appropriately respond to the struggles that governments of the Global South face in supporting their refugee populations. Iraq is supporting a vast internally displaced population while simultaneously rebuilding state institutions and combatting active conflict. The governments of Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey are supporting the largest refugee population in the world, with a Syrian refugee population numbering upwards of five million. Bangladesh must prepare to accommodate the Rohingya refugee population that is unlikely to ever return to Myanmar. To successfully support these and other refugee populations in the Global South, local governments must focus their efforts on providing means of upward mobility, sustainable health care services, and institutional support in critical areas. By adopting these clear policy goals, governments in the Global South will be able to utilize their limited resources where they will be most effective, thereby creating the greatest positive effect for the refugee populations that they support.

Oil and Opium: Exploitation of Natural Resources by the Taliban and the So-Called Islamic State

From Al-Shabaab’s exploitation of the charcoal market in Somalia to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia’s levies on mining activity in Columbia, extremist groups all over the world exploit natural resources as part of their funding strategies. This report will examine the natural resources harvested by the so-called Islamic State (IS) and the Afghan Taliban.

On the IS front, the oil fields of Iraq and Syria have turned into a lucrative funding mechanism for the group. The military victories of IS in the oil fields of Iraq and Syria left the group with an important network of oil-rich territory. Two thousand miles to the east, in Afghanistan, the Taliban has reaped significant payouts from their exploitation of the opium poppy industry. Both groups have a certain set of tradeoffs associated with their resource of choice, along with a portfolio of different buyers for their final product. The following sections will contain details regarding the oil and opium poppy production of each respective group, their buyer markets, issues related to each resource, and finally a discussion on how counter-terrorism strategies affect the local populations involved in the exploitation of each resource.

The Islamic State of Oil

IS has three primary revenue sources :  (1) taxes and fees, (2) confiscations, looting, and fines (3) and oil. Figure 1 illustrates how kidnapping ransom fees account for a small percentage of  IS’ revenue as well.

Figure 1: IS Revenue Sources

Oil was a smaller part of the group’s portfolio in 2014, but IS military victories secured a larger share in 2015. These temporary gains were short-lived, only to be set back by coalition airstrikes and military operations in 2016-2017. At the height of their success, the group was able to produce and sell up to $550 million worth of oil per year. After coalition air strikes against IS oil positions became more frequent and successful, revenue streams were reduced from upwards of $50 million a month to a meager $4 million.

In order to convert this oil into cash, weapons, or supplies, IS must find regional buyers for their product. The market for IS oil is muddled and contains some surprising partners.

Most of the oil produced is sold domestically. It is sold to IS fighters in order to power vehicles and homes, but also to civilians in areas under IS control. The group has monopolized the market in some areas, such as in Raqqa. While Raqqa was completely under IS control, the group could control a great deal of the goods being exported out of and imported into the city. This left little choice for consumers in the area, making IS the go-to seller for the purchasing of cheap oil.

Oil that cannot be sold domestically is sold to regional consumers. Senior U.S. Treasury official Adam Szubin describes how “a great deal” of IS oil is sold to the Bashar Al-Assad regime.  The rest of the oil is exported to foreign markets including Turkey, Kurdistan, Iraq and Jordan. The oil sold in these foreign markets is less profitable available than selling domestically. The oil must be smuggled and sold at a discount; meanwhile, much of the remaining profits go to intermediaries within the supply chain. Figure 2 illustrates a few of the various routes used to transport IS oil.

Figure 2: Oil Routes

Using oil as a major source of revenue has its pitfalls for the extremist organization. The fact that IS cannot sell oil openly in foreign markets limits the oil’s profitability. As mentioned before, the oil usually must be sold at a discounted rate, and the act of smuggling is expensive. Even more, coalition airstrikes severely hamper the productivity of the group’s oil industry. Under the airstrikes, the oil fields can only operate at a fraction of their typical capacity. Lastly and perhaps most importantly, IS does not have the technical specialists and manpower required to keep the industry functioning at a sustainable level. Even without the coalition’s airstrikes, productivity would still fall due to maintenance and logistical issues. With oil quickly losing its place among the group’s finances, it is likely that we will see an increase in other areas of funding such as kidnapping, taxes, or increased fines and extortion against populations still under IS control. These funding strategies will likely be more violent in nature since they depend on the abuse of local civilians and foreign kidnapping targets.

Figure 3: Russian Air Strike Destroys IS Oil Trucks, Along with a Civilian Family in Their Car

Opium and the Taliban

The Afghan Taliban benefited from opium poppy production and the opium trade for decades. By the end of the height of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, when the Taliban controlled a significant portion of the country during 1996-2001, opium production decreased significantly due to a ban by the Taliban regime in 2001. 

Figure 4: Opium Production in Afghanistan

Despite these drastic reductions, the Taliban still earned significant sums from the opium production that remained. This was due to soaring prices caused by the supply shock. After the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, poppy production returned to normal levels.

More recent studies show (although exact figures are elusive) that the Taliban may receive up to a third of their funding from opium poppy production. The UN Office on Drugs and Crimeestimates that the Taliban earned anywhere from $450 million to $800 million during 2005-2009. The extremist organization has developed a sophisticated taxation system on the production, processing, and transportation of opium. This taxation system includes direct levies on opium poppy farmers, tolls on transports, and protection fees for transports moving through Taliban controlled areas. The taxes range from a 10% tithe or ushr (a zakat on agricultural goods) on opium poppy, to a 20% zakat (a form of Islamic alms-giving, one of the five pillars of Islam)  on trucks transporting the harvested good. As previously mentioned, even when production is decreased, the taxes remain. This means that the Taliban still reaps significant sums from the industry due to the corresponding price increases associated with supply shocks.

The poppy plant accounts 13% of Afghanistan’s GDP. Since the plant sells for much more than the cost of the cheap labor required to produce it, it is popular amongst Afghan farmers. Afghan farmers and smugglers sell opium poppy and opiate narcotics all over the world. Figure 5 shows the typical trade routes of the crop.

Figure 5: Afghan Opium Poppy Trade

The destinations for Afghan opium poppy are much more widespread than the market for IS oil. This is likely because even the Afghan Government has a hands-off approach regarding opium poppy production. The Afghan Government taxes production in their territory as well, and these tax revenues are a significant source of income for local governments.

Civilians Caught in the Middle

The fight against IS and the Taliban includes cutting off their revenue streams. The coalition battling IS has been very effective in destroying sources of oil revenue for the extremist group. Destroying revenue from opium poppy production has been less effective, both due to the Afghan Government’s need for opium poppy revenue and the reliance on the crop by local Afghan farmers.

As one of the world’s poorest countries, shifting the Afghan economy from opium poppy production to another revenue source will take much more careful planning and strategy than simply destroying opium poppy fields in the same way that coalition forces have struck IS oil fields. The reliance of farmers on this crop will have to be replaced with a more favorable crop that is not detrimental to consumers around the world and also continues to bring in revenue for local farmers and local governments.

Even the fight against IS oil revenue leaves some civilians stuck in the middle. Since IS cannot maintain the oil fields on their own, many of them are operated by civilians. In fact, civilians are responsible for much of the refinement, transportation, and final sale of the oil leaving IS held territory. The Washington Post has reported that coalition attacks on the small makeshift refineries that Syrian and Iraqi civilians set up in IS held territory has contributed to the poverty in these areas by leaving civilians without any income and raising the price of oil.

Whatever the manner in which these two groups are stopped, it is important to remember that these wars take place in extremely poor areas populated by many more vulnerable civilians than enemy fighters. The same strategies that cut off the revenue streams of these groups may also harm the income of already poor local populations. In Iraq and Syria, returning control of oil fields taken from IS to civilian workers is vital to rebuilding the economy after the fight is over. In Afghanistan, cutting off the flow of funds from opium poppy to the Taliban would be a huge thorn in the side of the group, but equally important is maintaining the welfare of the Afghan farmers who rely on this crop for survival. A slow replacement of opium poppy with a more sustainable and less controversial crop, along with measures to cut the link between the Taliban and their revenue from agriculture in general would leave Afghanistan with a much more stable and prosperous agricultural industry, and in turn decrease the total supply of opiates flooding world markets.

The Kurdish Predicament; A Policy Prescription for a Fractured KRG

Introduction

For nearly a century, Turkish government officials and Erdogan nationalists have been overwhelmed by “Sevres syndrome” — a nationalist paranoia that ethnic Kurds, inspired by miscalculated borders and ethnic nationalism, would pursue separatism. The short-lived Treaty of Sevres and the central powers that signed the agreement laid the foundation for future treaties, such as the Sykes-Picot Agreement and the Treaty of Lausanne, to determine the fate of the regional order. Yet, unlike Sykes-Picot’s British and French zones of imperial ‘influence’, Sevres was much more self-deterministic; the treaty’s Section III, Articles 62-64, offered ethnic Kurds to conduct a referendum to chart their own course as a nation.

In 2017, the Kurdish nation is fragmented across Turkish, Syrian, and Iraqi state lines. While the Kurds have created a transnational identity, their statehood objectives differ across Syrian, Iraqi, and Turkish governmental constraints. A year ago I remarked how a unified Kurdistan in the Levant was nearly impossible — how the Syrian, Iraqi, and Turkish identities intercepted any uniform statehood strategy among the Kurds, and in many ways, complicated the chances for Iraqi independence. This is a truth that still stands. A year ago, Kurdish statehood, of any kind, was a near-impossible phenomenon — even with international recognition, thriving oil exports, and an Islamic State exterminated from Northern Iraq. Kurdistan’s geopolitical position— straddled between the crossfire of Syria’s civil war, Iraq’s battle against Daesh, and Turkey’s illiberal presidential republic — seemed too costly to pursue separatism.

The Kurdish President Masoud Barzani shocked the international community when he announced Iraqi Kurdistan would conduct an independence referendum on September 25, 2017. The announcement was met with rhetorical caution, derision, and even interventionist threats from Kurdish neighbors, Turkey, Iraq, and Syria, while the United States encouraged a delay so that war-torn Iraq would first be unified. Even though the referendum was non-binding and implicated no blueprint for negotiations, the international community perceived statehood as Barzani’s absolute objective. This is not the case; President Barzani recognizes Kurdistan’s internal setbacks and has crafted the referendum to achieve autonomy within the Iraqi government, not secession. Even if the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) can achieve greater leverage with the Iraqi government, the referendum has caused a schism in Kurdish theaters of trade, politics, and civil society. The very act of conducting the referendum has resurfaced many tensions, inequities, and setbacks that the Kurdish nation must face before pursuing concrete separatism. 

Photo: A worker in an oil field in Kirkuk

Obstacles in the Oil Sector

Despite the strides Kurdistan has made towards democratization and de facto control of disputed territories, there remain many signs of political immaturity and economic stagnation. While Kurdistan has operated a bustling crude oil industry and expansive network of international oil companies (IOCs), it’s economic output has been reliant on what Denise Natali deemed“political limbo.” The KRG has been able to operate under the Iraqi government’s radar through leaving trade agreements, territorial boundaries, and revenues ambiguous — leaving ample leverage for a bustling oil trade. The Kurdish government has been able to sell nearly half their crude oil in 2017 to Israeli private firms— recipients that cannot be legally targeted by the Iraqi government for violating trade agreements. The ambiguity that has surrounded the oil-abundant province of Kirkuk, Nineveh, and Diyala, has enabled the Kurds to produce as much medium-grade crude oil necessary for economic independence. Yet, these blurred lines of legal uncertainty and the anagram of the ‘correct’ territorial perimeter with Iraq, are only temporary fixes. Post-secession, an independent Kurdistan may find it challenging to retain many of its valuable trade partners, no longer free-riding on Iraqi revenues and unable to offer attractive rates per barrel. Furthermore, while the KRG regards Kirkuk as an incredible geopolitical and economic asset to their road to independence, the province is aligned with the ruling party’s rival, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), and is deeply fragmented along sectarian and ethnic lines. It is challenging for the KRG to even negotiate with Baghdad while the ruling party, the KDP, struggles to retain political control in Kirkuk. Kurdistan, while economically independent, is geo-economically splintered; the KRG should craft policy to appease the PUK in the Kirkuk province and confer with key trade partners — well before approaching the negotiating table in Baghdad.

Disappearing Political Unity

The Iraqi Kurdish government has been hailed as one of the most pro-democratic forces in the Levant, a stark contrast to Kurdish neighbors Iran and Turkey. The Kurdish parliament houses a plurality of factions, with the ruling Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP), opposed by the PUK, the Movement for Change (Gorran), and Kurdistan Islamic Group (KIG), and have pursued a special experiment in direct democracy.

While a large majority of elected officials support the objective of independence, the Kurdish parliament clash’s over the timing, process, and prerequisites are a reflection of the deep schism in Kurdish political unity. The very idea of the referendum was met with disdain by many parties that opposed the PUK, encouraging the Kurdish government to focus on democratic reform at home before pursuing a controversial road to separatism. Even a bi-partisan negotiation to determine the referendum’s date and conditions was boycottedby major elected officials in the Gorran party and the KIG, leaving KDP and PUK majorities to mitigate some of the most important conditions for Kurdistan’s fate. The Kurdish Parliament has not met as a body since

PHOTO: The entryway of the Iraqi Kurdish Parliament

October 2015, nor does the nation have a constitution to guide it. In 2009, the KRG’s parliament drafted a national constitution, yet did not ratify, rendering any referendum laws, parliamentary rules, and legislative procedures nonexistent in Kurdistan.

President Barzani’s KDP party shares a strained relationship with many of its rivals. Barzani and his supporters are perceived as opportunists, conducting a swift referendum for political support and re-election while gambling with the Kurdish nation’s fate. Furthermore, Barzani has presided the executive office for more than four years and has delayed the next election, stating the nation needs political consistency during their fight against the Islamic State (ISIS). Despite the 2005 decision to limit the presidency to two terms and require the speaker of parliament to succeed, the KRG extended Barzani’s term by two years in 2013. It will be increasingly difficult for any KRG delegation to represent the national interest with no blueprint, conditions, or terms approved by parliament, and will undoubtedly increase frustration among Kurdish officials and civil society.

Projections

As Kurdistan strategizes to contend with Baghdad across the negotiating table, the KRG should first establish definitive plans for the presidential election and a possible referendum for the 2009 constitution. Parliamentary elections are scheduled to take place on November 1, 2017, however, Barzani’s seat of power continues to be unrivaled. The KRG should also first assess their most paramount trade partners, such as Israel and Italy, to establish newfound conditions under different commercial routes, national taxation and revenue systems, and state alliances. Kurdistan is in dire need of economic diversification, and only its trade partners and few regional allies can aid such an endeavor. The political schism in Kurdistan is detrimental, but can only be remedied if the KRG reverses its autocratic tendencies, revives a dormant constitution, and re-calls parliament into session to discuss the conditions of separatism.

The Case for the Iraq War

“Nation-building” is often considered a loaded term in our modern lexicon that sets political pundits and experts alike off on riffs and rants that coalesce around how it has been done incorrectly. Talk of the continuing instability in post-Cold War attempts to assist in the emergence of democratic states in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and Syria dominates the conversation surrounding nation-building. This stigma suggests that nation-building is nearly always a recipe for disaster undertaken with foolish expectations in mind for the host nation. However, nation-building can be done with great success—exemplified no better than the postwar reconstruction of Germany and Japan—and carries with it lessons to be learned for future U.S. foreign policy initiatives. In this article, I will discuss three major points about U.S. nation-building efforts in Germany and Japan, the failure to emulate those efforts during the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and how the situation in Iraq can still be improved and serve as a point of improvement:

Planning for the occupations of Germany and Japan was meticulous, whereas the Iraqi plan was undercut by a lack of consensus. Advanced planning for the reconstruction of Germany and Japan began before World War II had even ended. This comprehensive approach allowed the U.S. to create hierarchical and sensible command structures, and American generals were cautious to revert power back to the postwar nations. Iraq’s management was far less detail-oriented. A failure to understand cultural and economic intricacies undoubtedly caused tensions between different religious and ethnic groups to spiral into intense struggles that threaten the stability of the country to this day.

A sense of national identity in Germany and Japan served as a benefit to the occupation.  The relatively singular cultures of German and Japanese nationals benefitted American planners by only having to consider each culture on its own. Economic and governmental stability were the major focal points of the U.S. nation-building effort after WWII. In Iraq, the U.S. occupation turned chaotic rather quickly due to the neglect of internecine struggles between various ethnic and religious groups. Because there was no singular Iraqi identity, failure to acknowledge these social hierarchies ultimately fostered an environment where open hostility could not be prevented.

There is still a means of achieving Iraqi stability, but the window is closing. As Iraq is mired by internal conflict, a glimmer of hope remains from the examples of Germany and Japan. America’s role as an advisory power may still serve to mediate discussion between different swathes of Iraqi culture, and complete detachment from their political sphere should be weighed by their readiness to govern. Lessons in planning and execution from Germany and Japan should dictate future U.S. policy, and Iraq now serves as a benchmark for improvement for future nation-building efforts.

Nation-building, as a general term, is often interpreted as the occupation and reconstruction of one nation—the host nation—by another with the end goal of making the host country resemble the occupying nation. In the United States, this definition is often associated with the effort undertaken by the U.S. to democratize the dictatorship led by Saddam Hussein in the aftermath of the 2003 invasion. The lack of anticipation of cultural and economic challenges created a stigma that nation-building is nearly always a recipe for disaster undertaken with foolish expectations in mind. However, nation-building can be done with great success, exemplified no better than the postwar reconstruction of Germany and Japan. American generals overseeing the postwar reconstruction of Germany and Japan had a detailed command structure in place working in tandem with experts on the host countries; the absence of familiarity with Iraqi political culture would hobble American attempts at nation-building after the 2003 invasion just as the proficiency of German and Japanese political culture had benefitted the American proconsuls in the aftermath of World War II. In addition to the rigidly planned and long-spanning implementation of nation-building efforts in Germany and Japan, the homogenous cultural and societal trends in the host countries also served as a boon to U.S. efforts that was not present during the occupation of Iraq. These diverging strategies ultimately caused two nation-building efforts to chart different courses, but lessons learned in both post-WWII Germany and Japan and post-invasion Iraq now serve as benchmarks of improvement for future U.S. endeavors in nation-building.

Before World War II had officially ended, the United States government had already been hard at work on three stages of preparation that were identical for German and Japan. This period consisted of “the first stage, 1942-43, a time of research and preliminary position papers, the general framework for a new world order and basic principles for the treatment of defeated enemy countries,” “the second period of more advanced work,” and “the third stage of planning [when] political solutions of the Japan specialists had gained wide acceptance.” This punctilious approach was designed in order to create an environment where experts on both host nations would draw upon knowledge of their cultures meant to be incorporated into the framework set up by the postwar governments. In the specific case of Germany, the U.S.-led allied powers “pursued nation-building in Germany by demobilizing the German military, holding war crimes tribunals, helping construct democratic institutions, and providing substantial humanitarian and economic assistance,” and the democratization effort was made easier due to consideration by American experts that Germans of the Weimar Republic had a basic understanding of democratic systems of government. The effort by American planners to create democratic nations that would resemble American structures was expert-driven and required a commitment in time and resources by U.S. military governors in order to keep economic and civil operations stable. Iraq would begin with similar goals of democratization, with Andrew J. Bacevich summarizing the American invasion of Iraq “as the initial gambit of an effort to transform the entire region through the use of superior military power, [and] it not only made sense but also held out the prospect of finally resolving the incongruities bedeviling U.S. policy.” While Iraq had the same general end goals of the postwar occupations of Germany and Japan, the results could not have been more different in Iraq due to inadequate preparation on the part of the U.S. that had been so heavily relied upon in Germany and Japan.

Operation Iraqi Freedom started in 2003 with the primary goal of unseating Iraq’s dictator, Saddam Hussein, in an attempt to create a democratic Iraq that would serve as a benchmark for other countries in the region and encourage them to follow suit. American interests in Iraq were nearly indistinct from the interest in creating stable nations of Germany and Japan, yet Germany and Japan are currently stable democracies and two of the world’s foremost economic powers while Iraq remains mired in intense regional conflict with a weak central government. In the post-9/11 world, there was certainly a desire to see the unpredictability of Saddam Hussein and his threats of possessing WMDs neutralized as quickly as possible. As the arguments of “no blood for oil” also arose in the lead-up to Operation Iraqi Freedom, economist Gary S. Becker dismisses this claim with the fact that “the U.S. would be better off if it encouraged Iraq to export more, not less, oil because that would lower oil prices.” In short, if the U.S. wanted oil from Iraq, war would be incredibly destructive to this objective. However, the Bush administration’s handling of the subsequent occupation of Iraq, according to Michael E. O’Hanlon, “surely includes the administration’s desire to portray the Iraq war as a relatively easy undertaking in order to assure domestic and international support, the administration’s disdain for nation-building, and the Pentagon leadership’s unrealistic hope that Ahmed Chalabi and the rather small and weak Iraqi National Congress might somehow assume control of the country after Saddam fell.” Juxtaposed to the time and resource commitment and intense knowledge of host nations by the American military governments present in Germany and Japan, the effort to nation-build in Iraq was negatively impacted by a less precise and incredibly blunt military intervention that dissolved the current structure without a suitable replacement. The failure of the Bush administration to enact a fully developed strategy only exacerbated the potential for chaos in a host nation O’Hanlon concludes as “still plagued by the continued presence of thousands of Baathists from Saddam’s various elite security forces who had melted into the population rather than fight hard against the invading coalition.” Germany and Japan had robust military governments that sought to create stability before turning power over to the host nation, but their homogenous cultural makeup was another major benefit that the Bush administration did not possess and failed to explore during the occupation of Iraq.

Economic and governmental factors played a large role in the bifurcated end results of post-WWII Germany and Japan and Iraq. U.S. proconsuls’ awareness of the need for a stable governing structure in the former cases and the intelligence gap in the latter case was paramount in determining the differences in end result. In post-WWII Germany, “the occupying powers continued to allow the German central bank to operate, but they, rather than the Germans, exercised control over it,” and “in the U.S. sector, General Clay devoted substantial effort and resources to restarting German factories and mines.” The American nation-building effort had taken great care in ensuring an economically stable system would be in place once occupation of Germany came to an end. This was undoubtedly due in part to the fact that economic blight had crippled Germany in the aftermath of World War I and made the people of Germany susceptible to authoritarianism. American proconsuls were right to address this as a primary component of their nation-building efforts as a means of preventing another politically gifted figure from demagogically exploiting the postwar disarray to promote their own ends in the way Adolf Hitler did during the Weimar period. For this reason alone, economic stability was a driving force for American planners during the reconstruction of Germany. Governance in Germany was also tempered, and American generals were cautious to introduce immediate German rule because of concerns that “a civilian would be lost that quickly after the close of hostilities.” American military governors had a command structure in place, and turning control over to the host nation too soon had the potential of resulting in a breakdown of the fledgling democratic system the U.S. was trying to build if pressured too soon. The invasion of Iraq proved to be a nearly polar opposite approach to the one taken in postwar Germany.

After the toppling of Saddam Hussein and the presence of U.S. troops in Baghdad, the politics surrounding economic structures in Iraq immediately came to the fore. Unlike in Germany, socio-economic development was undermined due to a lack of American knowledge of the major economic resource of Iraq—oil—as Anthony H. Cordesman of CSIS points out:

Iraq’s oil wealth has not been used to create the economic conditions for unity, and is a critical underlying problem in trying to heal its sectarian and ethnic divisions. The [Iraqi Prime Minister] Maliki regime strongly favored itself and Arab Shi’ites over Arab Sunnis, and wavered between efforts to bribe the Kurds and force them to put all petroleum development under central government control.

The failure to understand cultural ties to economic resources in Iraq meant that the United States was already at a disadvantage. Unlike in Germany, American forces had no reliable source to turn over economic control to in Iraq, and the lack of cultural ties to Iraqi economic resources almost ensured sectarian conflict would arise in the absence of the American military. The governing system of Iraq did not fare much better due to the lack of democratic foundation in the country. The nation-building effort in Iraq had the potential to see the new Iraqi government accommodate the multiple sects of its society by “endowing those institutions with popular legitimacy and widespread participation, not merely shifting power and access from one group to another.” Compounded by the insufficient amount of time spent integrating the civilian population into a democratic framework after the military intervention, murky American understanding of the multiple identities of Iraqi society did little to help an increasingly unstable environment.

A clear example of such murky understanding of the Iraqi political structure came from the slash-and-burn approach coalition forces took in the form of de-Ba’athification, or the dismantling of the Ba’ath Party in Iraq that espoused the principles of socialism and Arab nationalism under Saddam Hussein’s authoritarian regime. Any restructuring of the Iraqi political environment would require some degree of de-Ba’athification, but the American approach saw an abrupt shift for a nation that was not united under one national identity in the way the Germans or Japanese were and had deep-seated sectarian struggles. The goal of de-Ba’athification was, according to the Coalition Provisional Authority Order 1, “eliminating the party’s structures and removing its leadership from positions of authority and responsibility in Iraqi society” in order to ensure “representative government in Iraq is not threatened by Ba`athist elements returning to power and that those in positions of authority in the future are acceptable to the people of Iraq.” In doing so, the U.S. comprehensively rebuilt the Iraqi government on a foundation rooted in—among other things—sectarian struggles that would boil over under the Premiership of Nouri al-Maliki, a Shiite Muslim. As Prime Minister of Iraq, al-Maliki set the stage for the current volatility in the region due to what Council on Foreign Relations fellow Max Boot deemed the “victimisation of Sunnis [and] made them receptive to Isis, which was being reborn in the chaos of Syria.” Swaths of Iraqi Sunnis who were suddenly found out of the job as a result of de-Ba’athification were targeted by mass arrests and suppression tactics under al-Maliki that made them feel isolated and under attack. In 2011, AEI scholar Frederick W. Kagan and Institute for the Study of War President Kimberly Kagan wrote that “Maliki is unwinding the multi-ethnic, cross-sectarian Iraqi political settlement” in part due to his exploitation of the effects of de-Ba’athification. Such a comprehensive reorganization of the host nation’s government with no apparent sensitivity to centuries-long sectarian struggles was a major contributor to the failure to achieve political stability in Iraq.

While Germany and Japan had fairly simple ethnic and cultural breakdowns largely due to a sense of national identity, Iraq was unique in this case due to the fact that “oil, ethnicity, religion, tribes, militias, the insurgency, the Sunni Arab boycott of January 2005 elections, and old-fashioned power struggles combined for volatile post-Saddam politics” that had not been accounted for in Iraq. These cultural intricacies led to complications that were less contentious in the examples of Germany and Japan, and the lack of anticipation on the part of the U.S. for these factors made for a messy reorganization of post-intervention Iraq. In his reflections on the Iraq War, Robert Kaplan surmises that “better generalship and logical command chains would likely have improved the security situation, leading to less financial cost, less loss of human life, less opportunity for Iranian meddling, and thus a better geopolitical outcome.” The U.S. benefitted from a stringent chain of command and more homogenous host country in the case of Germany and Japan, but the inadequate anticipation for the dynamics of Iraqi culture and elite structure threaten to put the entire undertaking in severe jeopardy. There was no clear evidence that Bush administration officials were prepared to grapple with the competing sectarian interests present in Iraq that were absent from the nation-building effort in postwar Germany and Japan, and herein lies the issue. The central key to success for any nation-building effort is that the host nation is capable of creating a unified government, and Professor James M. Quirk appropriately observes that “for Iraq, that included Shiites confident that Saddam Hussein and the Ba’ath Party would not return to repress them, minority Sunnis that they would not be repressed by the rise of Shiites to power, and Kurds that much of their autonomy (and oil assets) would be preserved.” Being attentive to this dynamic was crucial at the time of the invasion, and not having a strategy in place to deal with the intricacies of Iraqi culture ultimately led to intense sectarian violence.

The future of Iraq is one that now seems uncertain with the rise of ISIS and internecine conflict between different regions of the country that are at odds due to their competing identities. While it is uncertain what, if anything, the U.S. can do to turn the deteriorating situation in Iraq around, a suggestion by Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL)—a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and Senate Select Committee on Intelligence—takes sectarian relations into account in order to “negotiate a power-sharing deal that will give predominantly Sunni provinces, such as Anbar and Nineveh, assurances that their rights will be respected by Baghdad.” Though this is imperfect as a sole solution due to the fact that sectarian divides are not the singular cause of Iraq’s current political instability, Sen. Rubio offers a perspective that incorporates sectarian conflict in a way not seen in the planning for post-invasion Iraq. Future U.S. sensitivity to the cultural identities and awareness of the power dynamics at play are paramount to establishing governmental structures that will in turn function constructively with respect to Iraqi culture. As with Germany and Japan, the U.S. withdrawal of forces in 2011 does not mean an end to advising, but the Iraqis are now—whether they were ready to in 2005 or not—beginning to govern themselves. For the future of Iraq to regain stability despite the instability in the region, the current U.S. nation-building effort should be conscious of the fact that “early difficulties, and even early failures, will not indicate long-term disorder as long as the key representative interests remain committed to this kind of politicking instead of retreating to coups, secession or open advocacy of violence.” The best course of action for U.S. planners in Iraq is to be cognizant of competing sectarian interests while allowing these differences to be dealt with politically as opposed to violently and facilitate discussion where need be.

The post-WWII German and Japanese nation-building efforts succeeded because of a logical chain of command and significant time and resource investments that sought to steadily revert power back to the host countries; Iraq’s failures resulted from a loosely-defined command structure after regime change and a lack of understanding by U.S. planners of the rudiments of Iraqi cultural diversity in a way not seen in the German or Japanese examples. Though the results of poor foundational handling after regime change are seen in modern-day Iraq, there are still lessons that can be gleaned from previous nation-building successes in Germany and Japan. Future U.S. foreign policy—if it is to still be one of championing democratization abroad—would do well to observe the future of Iraq and remember the lack of foundational planning as a benchmark for improvement if future nation-building efforts are to be beneficial to U.S. foreign interests.