Bolen C (Page 99)

On November 1, Pakistan began a nationwide operation to deport over 1.7 million Afghans it says are living in the country illegally. There are now an estimated 10,000 people returning to Afghanistan each day.

Pakistan has indicated the deportations are designed to reduce cross-border incursions from Taliban fighters based in Afghanistan. But it is more likely the interim military government is succumbing to populist politics around inflation, housing shortages and cost of living pressures in the country.

There were already over a million Afghans living in Pakistan before the Taliban came back into power in Afghanistan in August 2021. But the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has been unable to process all of the estimated 600,000 to 800,000 Afghans who have fled to Pakistan since then.

It is estimated only about a third of Afghan refugees in Pakistan are registered with the refugee agency.

The level of documentation that Afghans in Pakistan have varies extensively. Some entered the country without visas and passports. Some entered on visas and have been waiting indefinitely for renewal, others are on expired visas.

The UNHCR has subcontracted much of the registration of refugees to other organizations in Pakistan. Often, payment to a local broker is the only way refugees are able to get an appointment. This is entirely unreasonable when countries like Australia require UNHCR registration of refugees to facilitate priority processing.

Many refugees experience lengthy waiting periods to be registered, formally recognized as refugees and then issued an ID card, let alone referred for onward resettlement. Shelter, food and medical assistance are not even considered.

Refugee identity documents are not even enough to protect people from deportation. There have been reports of police detaining and threatening people with valid Pakistani visas. Activists told me of incidents in which police have torn up valid visas and Afghan passports.

Many Afghans have applied for resettlement in countries that were members of the NATO-led force that maintained security in Afghanistan, such as the US, Canada, Australia and countries in the European Union.

But as the world has turned its eye to other conflicts, those countries have fallen drastically short of their promises to Afghan refugees. It is estimated only 200,000 Afghans have been resettled globally since August 2021.

Trickle of visas

Human Rights Watch has also highlighted the unreasonably slow processing times for Afghan refugees in resettlement countries, such as the US, UK, Germany, Australia and other EU countries. This is particularly true for women and girls, the organization says:

Afghan women and girls have often faced greater barriers to obtaining asylum, as destination countries have often prioritised assisting Afghans – overwhelmingly men – who contributed to their military efforts.

Since the Taliban returned to power, only 12,200 Afghan applicants have received a humanitarian visa to enter Australia. During the 2022 federal election campaign, Labor promised to increase the total refugee and humanitarian intake to 27,000 people annually. But this hasn’t happened.

Australia has promised just 26,500 humanitarian and 5,000 family places for Afghans from 2021-26.

Yet, there are more than 147,000 Afghan applicants still in the queue waiting to be processed from the 189,000 applications received since August 2021. And earlier this year, the Department of Home Affairs quietly removed human rights defenders from its list of groups to receive priority visa processing from Afghanistan.

Former US president George W Bush said in the early 2000s that the US went to Afghanistan to liberate the country’s women, but those women have been forgotten now.

Today, Afghanistan remains in one of the world’s most dire humanitarian crises.

The United Nations has described a system of gender apartheid under Taliban rule, in which women are prevented from participating in any public life, education or economic activity outside the home.

Infant and maternal mortality rates have skyrocketed because women are not allowed to travel to seek medical attention, female doctors are not allowed to work and male doctors are not allowed to treat female patients.

Leaders of NGOs that work on women’s education and other women’s rights continue to be disappeared. Women who are brave enough to protest on the street are beaten. Journalists are routinely detained for covering such issues.

Last year, the UN Women’s Peace and Humanitarian Fund launched a new program dedicated to supporting women’s human rights defenders around the world. However, I’ve been told this program is now facing a US$14 million funding shortfall.

This fund provides small grants to a number of Afghan women’s human rights defenders to fund their ongoing advocacy work and relocate them or help them flee when their lives are in danger.

Often, these women need this money to pay exorbitant prices for visa extensions to stay in Pakistan, or for exit permits to leave the country if they are given a resettlement place elsewhere.

If countries like Australia and the US help make up this shortfall, more women will have access to these grants and be able to escape extreme security risks.

Afghans in limbo

Western countries must keep their promises to process refugee visa applications for Afghans in a timely fashion.

Australia refuses to grant refugee visas to people currently in Afghanistan. Yet, the government is still taking years to process the claims of incredibly high-risk individuals outside the country who meet several priority processing criteria. Those people fled to countries like Pakistan and Iran and are now being deported because the process has taken so long.

Similarly, Afghans who are eligible for special immigrant visas to the US can also wait for years. Even if they get an appointment with the US Embassy in Islamabad, there is no guarantee of a timeline for when they will be sent to the US.

These timelines have to change. Globally, poorer countries shoulder the burden as the hosts of the overwhelming majority of refugees. Pakistan is now deporting Afghans. Iran, host to more than three million Afghan refugees, will likely follow soon.

Susan Hutchinson is PhD Candidate, Australian National University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Continue Reading

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s decision to bar the Palestine Authority, which now governs parts of the West Bank, from administering the Gaza Strip after the war on Hamas ends is aimed at sinking a revived “two-state solution” peace plan to end the Middle East’s longest-running conflict. 

Formulated back in 1991 and favored by Israel’s chief ally, the United States, the two-state initiative was meant to create a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip at peace with Israel. Though long dormant, the formula is considered the region’s most viable path to peace.  

US President Joe Biden’s administration has indicated that the future state ought to be midwifed, if not ruled indefinitely, by the PA. Since the Gaza war began on October 7, Biden has frequently laid out a generalized vision for the solution, though without a roadmap to getting there.

“When this crisis is over, there has to be a vision of what comes next, and in our view, it has to be a two-state solution,” Biden recently said.

On November 8, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken not only repeated the administration’s endorsement of the two-state solution but added that Gaza should be “unified with the West Bank under the Palestinian Authority.”

Netanyahu, however, rejects both outcomes. He has opposed the two-state solution since its inception, though he appears reluctant to state so directly while Biden is supporting his war effort.

Instead, the Israeli leader is trying to preempt it by opposing a key element: a role for the PA, which happens to be the descendant of the Palestine Liberation Front that negotiated the original two-state plan with Israel.

Over the weekend, Netanyahu said the PA is unfit to govern even the West Bank, much less Gaza. “I think so far we haven’t seen any Palestinian force, including the Palestinian Authority, that is able to do it,” he said, attributing his veto to the PA’s unrelenting “hate” of Israel.

He went on to finger PA President Mahmoud Abbas, who negotiated accords designed to make the two-state formula a reality, as a key reason for eliminating the PA.

“After the worst savagery perpetrated on the Jewish people since the Holocaust, the Palestinian Authority president has yet – refuses to condemn the savagery. So, we need a different authority,” Netanyahu said. “We need a different administration.”

Netanyahu later expanded his objection. “We need to see the following two things: Gaza has to be demilitarized and Gaza has to be de-radicalized. And I think, so far, we haven’t seen any Palestinian force, including the Palestinian Authority, that is able to do it.”

Israel Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich elaborated on the sentiment, asserting that, “The Palestinian Authority is a body that supports and encourages terrorism and we will never again abandon the security of our citizens to the hands of our enemies.”

The veto raised the question of whether Biden is determined to revive a dormant two-state plan that for 22 years has crashed on the shoals of violence, suspicion and abandonment. He has yet to lay out a concrete path to making negotiations a reality, preferring to speak of a non-specific “horizon” lying somewhere in the distance as Gaza burns.

Biden’s sincerity has come into question. He has made no effort to actually institute a diplomatic formula to bring Israel and the Palestinians together during his 22 months in office. Indeed, the Palestinian issue seemed relegated to a diplomatic back-burner with no flame in sight.

Weeks before Hamas invaded southern Israel and massacred about 1,200 civilians, Biden’s chief security advisor, Jake Sullivan, published a paean to Biden in Foreign Affairs that declared the president’s Middle East policy as both easing tensions and “integrating the region through joint infrastructure projects and new partnerships, including between Israel and its Arab neighbors.”

He mentioned neither chronic Palestinian-Israeli disputes and violence nor the dormant two-state remedy. When war broke out in the Gaza Strip, Sullivan reworked part of his paean, suggesting that Biden’s policies “always included significant proposals for the Palestinians. If agreed, this component would ensure that a path to two states remains viable.”

Despite the apparent policy differences, Biden and Netanyahu share one political instinct: Both defended their pre-war expectations of Hamas’ deadly capabilities.

In an October 15 television interview, Sullivan insisted the US government had in no way ignored possible danger from Hamas. “At no point did the Biden administration take its eye off the ball of the threats to Israel,” he claimed.

Netanyahu, too, is trying to fend off accusations – from Israelis – that he had ignored Hamas’ activities that suggested violence was pending. Instead, he focused on expanding Israeli settlements on West Bank land, turning a blind eye to violence perpetrated by Israeli nationalist settlers and dispatching soldiers to quash armed Palestinian insurgents.

On October 29, Netanyahu argued that he was not responsible for failing to perceive possible threats posed by Hamas. Rather, he blamed the country’s security and intelligence establishments.

“The assessment of the entire security echelon, including the head of military intelligence and the head of Shin Bet, was that Hamas was deterred and was seeking an arrangement,” he wrote on social media.

A torrent of criticism greeted Netanyahu’s self-defense and he quickly retracted the post. “The things I said…should not have been said and I apologize for that,” he wrote in a follow-up mea culpa.

Netanyahu later said holding officialdom to account for its failings, including his own, will take place after the war ends, a time frame nowhere in sight.

Continue Reading

I keep hearing these days that the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is a “paper tiger,” and thus there’s no need to worry about an attack on Taiwan.

And anyway, I also keep hearing, the United States has plenty of time to get ready before the PLA is a real threat – rather than just a “near-peer competitor.”

The PLA’s problems? To name a few: no recent combat experience, corruption, too many “only children” in the ranks. The Chinese Navy can’t conduct combat operations in distant seas and is not able to master “amphibious operations” – supposedly the most complex and hardest of all military operations. 

Even China’s leaders complain about “peace disease.” The PLA hasn’t fought a war for decades. And too many senior officers can’t manage the demands of modern high-tech warfare.

Maybe so. But in the last 30 years, the People’s Republic of China has pulled off the biggest, fastest military build-up seen anywhere since World War II. China’s defense budgets are much greater than the roughly US$220 billion it claims and possibly exceed US defense spending. 

The PLA Navy is already larger than the US Navy and the gap will widen. China is launching five ships for every one the USN puts in the water. It has put more tonnage and missiles to sea as well. 

Beijing lavishes similar attention upon its air force and ground forces and its cyber and electronic warfare. And its missile capabilities, including hypersonic weaponry, probably exceed US capabilities. Its nuclear weapons build-up has finally got even the China experts worried. They dismissed it for years.

‘Eyes wide open’

China knows its problems but it has clear objectives. Defeating US forces is objective number one. And it trains hard to achieve its goals. Its ships are not rust buckets. Nor do they collide with other ships or burn up pierside every so often.

Yes, the PLA would have a harder time attacking Des Moines, Iowa, but that’s not the point.

It’s true that Chinese conventional combat power – or “power projection” – drops off rapidly beyond, say, 1,000 miles from the Chinese border. But its land-based missiles easily range Guam and Hawaii. Plus, it is operating ships and aircraft more often and farther out into the Pacific and beyond. 

China is setting up a network of ports and airfields to which it has access worldwide. And it is building more of the refueling ships and aircraft and long-range transports needed for global power projection – akin to what the Americans can do.

Play this out five or ten years and it is hard to be sanguine. And somehow, the “paper tiger” took de facto control of the South China Sea six or seven years ago. 

The US Navy can transit the area – as can the US Air Force – and even conduct exercises. But it’s like the New York Police Department going through Times Square back in the bad old days before Mayor Giuliani cleaned things up. The cops controlled only the space they actually occupied, and when they left the “bad guys” filled in and took control. 

Even now the PLA is shadowing (“escorting”) US ships and aircraft through the South China Sea.

It only has to be good once

Nothing to worry about? One of these days a US Navy destroyer skipper will have a dozen anti-ship missiles headed his way – at supersonic speed – and 12 seconds to respond. He might be forgiven for thinking the PLA is not a paper tiger and is more than just a “near-peer competitor.”

But here’s something to keep in mind when you consider the People’s Liberation Army: A military only has to be good enough to do a certain thing, at a certain place, at a certain time. 

Recall the Falklands War in 1982. The British outclassed the Argentinians in nearly every respect. Argentine hardware was often obsolete and many of the troops were “draftees.” 

Yet, the Argentines almost won. And they would have won if a few more 500-pound bombs and torpedoes detonated and sunk Royal Navy ships. 

Britain also had the good fortune that Margaret Thatcher was prime minister. The Falklands are about 200 miles from the Argentine coast at the closest point. Taiwan is only 90 miles from the Chinese mainland.

China’s not going after Des Moines

If it’s just Taiwan you’re after – as opposed to Des Moines – it looks possible. 

And an attack on Taiwan won’t just be an amphibious assault. It will also include massive and accurate missile barrages, total air and sea control, aggressive electronic warfare and cyber warfare. And internet and comms links will be cut. Fifth columnists will be causing chaos. And it will include threatening the US with nuclear war. 

China has practiced and prepared for all of this – and for years.

Sure, Xi Jinping would rather get Taiwan by not fighting, but force is on the menu and Xi has said so. It’s comforting – but dangerous – to assume that Xi and the Chinese just aren’t good enough, or are too frightened, or are just bluffing – which is the most commonly held belief in DC and even in Taipei. 

One detects the same sort of condescension as in 1950 when the experts – not least in General Douglas MacArthur‘s headquarters – insisted: “They (the PLA) will never come across the Yalu.” 

But they did. And nobody has ever heard a Korean War veteran say he wanted to fight the Chinese again.

You’d think US Marines, of all people, would know better. This writer recalls them rolling their eyes circa 2016 at the idea that Chinese equivalents of US Marine and US Navy amphibious units (the MEU/ARGs) would be making the rounds in the Indo-Pacific before too long. Just not our equals, you know. 

The Chinese navy is turning out amphibious ships at a rapid clip and could deploy two or three similar amphibious task forces if they wanted to.

As for the PLA’s lack of warfighting experience…

Proper training can also make up for that. 

And don’t forget that the US military has fewer and fewer combat veterans. And none of them have experience in high-end warfare against a high-end opponent in a largely maritime domain. Fighting Iraqis and the Taliban is not the same the same thing as going against a modern opponent. Nor were those campaigns huge successes.

It also helps to recognize that China has been conducting non-kinetic warfare against the United States and the West for decades. Political warfare, economic warfare, propaganda, elite capture, cyberattacks, espionage, chemical (fentanyl) and biological warfare (Covid?) are part of China’s “unrestricted warfare.” 

It is all intended to soften up the enemy and undermine his will and ability to resist. Kinetic warfare is only used if needed to finish things off.

But doesn’t the US have allies?

Yes, it does, and America’s allies are a huge benefit even if military capabilities are uneven and political interests are not always aligned.

But China also has allies: North Korea, Russia, Iran, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Cuba. And much of the Global South is at least sympathetic to the People’s Republic of China. 

These may not be the most lovable countries, not always the best of friends – but together they can cause trouble for the United States and its partners.

And, for now, their strategic interests align. 

The Japanese, who are regularly harassed and circumnavigated by Russian and Chinese planes and aircraft, can tell you that. 

And recently the PRC, via Iran and its Hamas and Hezbollah proxies, got the United States and the US military wrapped around another Middle Eastern axle – at the expense of the Indo-Pacific.

The PLA has other things working in its favor:

The US won’t cut economic dependencies on the PRC, which include many required for defense production. And Wall Street and the American business class continue providing the Chinese Communist Party with a few hundred billions in convertible currency a year – effectively funding the country (and the military) that is looking to drive it out of the Indo-Pacific, for starters.

But back to the main point – don’t underestimate the Chinese or the People’s Liberation Army. 

It’s not the first time America has underestimated an enemy: 

“Saddam Hussein won’t attack Kuwait”

“Once we take Baghdad everything will be fine”

“Putin attack Ukraine? He won’t dare.”

“China doesn’t want a blue-water Navy.”

“The PRC just wants to do business and make money.”

Only Xi knows for sure

No one except Xi Jinping knows what he will do. But it’s best to prepare for the worst – and now. 

And remember that a military just has to be good enough to do a certain thing at a certain time at a certain place.

Its government just has to be willing to absorb some economic punishment and political blowback.

If that’s the case, the PRC only has to pick its spots and its timing – and hope the United States keeps convincing itself that China wouldn’t dare attack.

Grant Newsham is a retired US Marine officer and former US diplomat. He is the author of the book When China Attacks: A Warning To America.

This article was first published by JAPAN Forward and is republished with permission.

Continue Reading

Leading politicians in the UK, including the prime minister, Rishi Sunak, are of African Indian descent. Other high profile examples include the country’s two most recent home secretaries – Priti Patel, who served from 2019 to 2022, and her successor Suella Braverman, whose tenure ended abruptly on 13 November when she was fired by Sunak.

The home secretary is responsible for law enforcement in England and Wales, national security and immigration.

Sunak’s grandparents left the Punjab in northern India for east Africa in the 1930s. His mother was born in Tanzania and his father in Kenya.

Patel’s parents were immigrants from Uganda; she was born in the UK and cherishes her “deeply held British values.”

Braverman, too, was born in Britain. Her mother grew up in Mauritius, a former French colony, and her father is of Kenyan Indian origin. Braverman calls herself “a child of the British Empire”.

All three are part of the African Indian diaspora. Do they tell us anything about the cohort of people who have had the same experiences as the children of migrants and as part of a diaspora?

I have researched the Indian and African diasporas and found that, in fact, members of diasporas have supple and dynamic political positions. Sunak, Braverman and Patel, among others, provide real life examples of how diasporic people exhibit a wide range of political affiliations, outlooks and opinions.

Some researchers used to believe that diasporic and immigrant communities would function as a “unified polity” – they might all vote the same way. This thinking holds true for many whose work focuses on diasporas and politics – but for those, like me, who research diasporas and migration, there’s been a shift in the last decade or so towards more complex understandings. My research is qualitative, allowing me to delve more deeply into the complexity and idiosyncrasy of diasporic communities.

Diasporas on the move

An African Indian is a member of the Indian diaspora whose family is or has recently been Africa-based.

In the early 1970s, former Ugandan president Idi Amin implemented several hostile, xenophobic policies. In 1972 he ordered all Indian Ugandans to leave the country. Many East African Indians, including those from Tanzania and Kenya, emigrated because of open discrimination against them, heading to countries like Canada and the UK in greater numbers.

It wasn’t just Amin who drove those of Indian descent from the continent. Throughout the 20th century, and especially after the second world war, Britain’s colonial subjects started arriving in the UK. In prior centuries, British imperialism and settler colonialism also spurred many waves of migration, including some of those of the African Indian diaspora.

A diasporic group lives in a geographical location other than its original homeland. Researchers have long been interested in whether members of ethnic or religious diasporas would act as a bloc of unified political actors in influencing their homeland politics or the political climate in their new adoptive countries.

Dynamic, discursive identity

Researchers have highlighted how diasporas can “rediasporise” as children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren move to new locations. Members of diasporas may choose to identify with multiple homelands and host countries over time.

But they may choose to identify with one more than the other or do something else entirely. Take Braverman: although a member of the Indian and African diasporas, she has been outspoken about tightening the UK’s immigration policy. She’s on record as having said:

Look at migration in this country – the largest group of people who overstay are Indian migrants.

Expecting her to have an automatic affiliation with her past isn’t reasonable. Recent scholarly work on diasporic identity has sought to understand identity not as static and “essentialist” but dynamic and discursive. It is also co-constructed, created as an interplay between the individual and the structures – of race, ethnicity, religion, national context and so on – in which she finds herself.

Real-life examples like those of Patel, Braverman and Sunak can help diaspora scholars like myself sharpen our analysis of diasporic communities. As scholars, we cannot presume to know how members of diasporas will identify themselves and what their politics will be without doing extensive research. This will build a better understanding of the complex ways in which diasporic communities will contribute to society in their new homes.

All we can say for sure is that diasporic identities and identifications are fluid, mobile and creative. Diasporic people cannot be pigeon-holed or put in a box.

Melissa Tandiwe Myambo is a research associate at the Southern Center for Inequality Studies, University of the Witwatersrand.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Continue Reading