Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on June 16-17/2023.
Pope Francis leaves hospital nine days after surgery
Reuters/Fri, June 16, 2023
Pope Francis was discharged from hospital on Friday morning, nine days after he underwent surgery to repair an abdominal hernia. Francis, 86, left Rome’s Gemelli hospital in a wheelchair, waving to reporters and well-wishers at the main entrance as he was taken to a waiting car.
“The pope is well. He is in better shape than before,” Sergio Alfieri, the chief surgeon who operated on Francis on June 7, told reporters outside the hospital after the pontiff left. Alfieri said the pope was well enough to travel. Francis has trips planned for Portugal at the start of August and Mongolia at the end of that month. His engagements have been canceled until June 18. The pope traditionally takes all of July off, with the Sunday blessings being his only public appearances, so he will have next month to rest before the August trips.--

Poverty, climate, regional stability on agenda as Saudi crown prince visits France
Associated Press/Fri, June 16, 2023
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman met Friday with French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris as part of an official visit, during which he will also participate in a global financing summit aimed at fighting poverty and climate change. Macron and the prince sat down for a one-to-one working lunch at the Elysee presidential palace. The French presidency said the talks would focus on bilateral relations between the two countries and on regional stability issues, especially after long-time rivals Saudi Arabia and Iran restored diplomatic ties earlier this year. France is a major weapons and defense supplier to Gulf nations. The leaders also are preparing for a global summit next week "aimed at bringing together private and public funding" to fight poverty, support climate transition and protect biodiversity, the French presidency said. The event is expected to gather over 50 heads of states and governments as well as many NGOs and prominent climate activists. During his stay in Paris, Prince Mohammed is also expected to push for Riyadh to host the 2030 World Fair's Expo. His visit to France comes as the prince has sought to rehabilitate his image abroad following the 2018 killing and dismemberment of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul. While Saudi Arabia denies the prince's involvement, U.S. intelligence agencies have assessed he likely ordered Khashoggi's killing as part of a wider crackdown on any challenge to his rule. In the time since, Prince Mohammed has sought to portray Saudi Arabia as a possible mediator amid Russia's war on Ukraine and has used its position as the dominant member of the OPEC+ oil cartel to try and boost global energy prices. The prince also seeks to build megaprojects across the kingdom to create new jobs for Saudi Arabia's youthful population. However, challenges and international suspicions remain. Saudi Arabia remains mired in its yearslong war with Yemen. Executions in Saudi Arabia, one of the world's top executioners, have spiked after the coronavirus pandemic. A top French official, speaking anonymously in accordance with the presidency's customary practices, said France wants to convince Saudi Arabia to engage with Russia on a plan to end the war while preserving Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity. Macron also planned to discuss human rights as France firmly opposes the death penalty, the official said.

Donor nations commit $10.3 billion for millions of Syrians at home and as refugees abroad
Associated Press/Fri, June 16, 2023
International donors have said they would commit $10.3 billion in aid for millions of Syrians battered by war, poverty, and hunger, both at home and as refugees abroad. The pledges by 57 nations and 30 international organizations at an annual European Union-hosted conference in Brussels for Syria fell about $800 million short of a United Nations humanitarian appeal. "This is a tangible demonstration that the international community stands by the Syrian people," said EU Humanitarian Aid Commissioner Janez Lenarčič, who closed out the day-long meeting at the headquarters of the 27-nation bloc.
He said the total of grants and loans was about $875 million higher than last year's pledge. However, exact comparisons are difficult: commitments can be spread over years and different institutions. They can be affected by inflation and devaluations, and can partly recur later. Yet the total seemed higher than what many had expected. U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres had asked donors for $11.1 billion, what he called "our largest appeal worldwide." "My appeal is simple: Help us help the Syrian people," Guterres said. "We have no time to spare."The money raised will provide aid to Syrians inside the war-torn country and to some 5.7 million Syrian refugees, mostly in Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan.
Syria's uprising-turned conflict, now in its 13th year, has killed nearly half a million people and displaced half of its prewar population of 23 million. Amid pressing needs across the globe from Ukraine to Sudan, the annual donor conference raised fears of a serious shortfall of expectations. Lenarčič's figures countered that. The gathering also had more political overtones as Syrian President Bashar Assad is slowly carving his way back from being an international pariah to the regional mainstream. Finding hard cash, though, remained key. But for nations hit by economic difficulties, a surge in inflation that has hurt the poor in even the wealthiest nations and the seemingly hopeless situation that drags on in Syria's conflict, money is increasingly hard to come by. Because of the funding crisis, Guterres said food aid to the 5.5 million people in Syria who had been receiving assistance would have to be drastically cut.
"Our cash assistance will run out for two and a half million Syrians next month alone," Guterres said, calling it "priority number one."The crisis is also hitting the neighboring nations which host some 5.7 million refugees and are facing economic crises of their own. Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi of Jordan, which hosts about 1.3 million Syrians, said, "Handling the burden of refugees is a partnership between donor states and host states." If donor states didn't play their role, he added, host states couldn't be expected to do as much. The pledging conference comes at a politically precarious time. Assad recently received a major political lifeline with the return of Syria to the Arab League. Several of Syria's neighbors, led by Saudi Arabia have been holding talks with it to resolve its ongoing security and economic crisis, hoping that it would lead to mass refugee returns.However, Josep Borrell, foreign policy chief of the 27-nation EU, insisted that the bloc would not change its policies toward Assad, including maintaining sanctions against his regime. "We are not on the same line as the Arab League. That's clear," Borrell said. He added, however, that he would be interested in what the league could achieve with its new position. The conference comes after a deadly 7.8 magnitude earthquake rocked large swaths of Syria in February, further compounding its misery. The World Bank estimated over $5 billion in damages as the quake destroyed homes and hospitals and further crippled Syria's poor power and water infrastructure.

Iraq, Qatar agree to boost economic, energy cooperation during emir's visit to Baghdad
Associated Press/Fri, June 16, 2023
Qatar and Iraq inked a series of economic and energy deals during a visit to Baghdad by the Qatari emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani. The two countries signed a broad agreement to expand "cooperation in politics, economics, energy, and investment," Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani said in a statement. They also inked specific deals on transportation, development projects and energy, including "the establishment of a joint oil company, and the construction of an oil refinery" and an agreement on hotel construction, he said. Qatar's state-owned Qatar News Agency reported that the emir had announced his country's intent to "invest $5 billion in a number of sectors in Iraq in the coming years." Iraq has sought to strengthen its previously strained relationship with its wealthy Gulf Arab neighbors in recent years and court foreign investment — efforts that have begun to bear fruit. Last month, Baghdad hosted a one-day conference that convened transport ministers and representatives from Iraq, the Gulf Arab countries, Turkey, Iran, Syria, and Jordan, culminating in the announcement of plans for a $17 billion regional transportation project intended to facilitate the flow of goods from Asia to Europe. In April, QatarEnergy, the Gulf country's state-run petroleum company, announced it had agreed to buy a 25% stake in a massive gas project in Iraq. Iraq urgently needs to develop local gas resources to meet electricity demands, especially during the peak summer months. The country is heavily reliant on Iranian gas and electricity imports. Al-Sudani also said Thursday that Iraq, which has suffered decades of upheaval and violence, now "enjoys security and political stability, which makes it a promising environment" for projects. "Iraq has regained its normal position and role in the region, and it is ready to work with brothers and friends to achieve peace, prosperity and development," he said.

Turkey drone strikes kill 16 in Syria
Agence France Presse/Fri, June 16, 2023
Turkey has escalated drone attacks on Kurdish-held regions of north and northeast Syria this week, killing 16 people including one civilian in a single day, a war monitor said. The strikes mostly targeted Kurdish-held Tal Rifaat and Manbij in the country's north near the Turkish border, areas Ankara has repeatedly threatened to attack. "Turkey has significantly escalated its drone strikes since the start of the week," with 16 killed on Wednesday alone, said Rami Abdel Rahman, who heads the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor. The Turkish defense ministry meanwhile said its forces had "destroyed terrorist targets" and "neutralized 16 terrorists," referring to Kurdish-led fighters. Four fighters from the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) were killed when "a Turkish drone targeted a military vehicle" in Hasakeh province, which is run by a semi-autonomous Kurdish administration, the Britain-based Observatory said. The U.S.-backed SDF is the Kurdish administration's de facto army, and its fighters spearheaded the battle against the Islamic State group in Syria, driving it from its last stronghold in the country in 2019. Turkish drone strikes in northern Syria's Aleppo province killed six fighters from the Manbij Military Council, which is affiliated with the SDF, according to a statement from the council. Four were killed as they were trying to transport children who were wounded in a ground attack to hospital, the Observatory said. One civilian working for the Kurdish administration was also killed in a strike in the Manbij area, added the Observatory, which relies on a wide network of sources on the ground in Syria. In the mostly Kurdish-held Tal Rifaat enclave, five Syrian soldiers died following "a Turkish drone strike on a regime military position", according to the war monitor. The enclave has Turkish-controlled areas to its north and regime-held territory to its south. Syrian state media did not immediately report the incident. Ankara has launched successive military offensives in Syria, most of them targeting Kurdish militants that Ankara links to a group waging a decades-long insurgency against the Turkish state. Turkey stepped up deadly drone strikes in Kurdish-controlled parts of Syria after a July 2022 summit with Iran and Russia failed to provide Ankara with a green-light for a fresh offensive, mainly on Tal Rifaat and Manbij, Kurdish officials and the Observatory said at the time. Since Syria's war erupted in 2011 with the brutal repression of peaceful protests, the conflict -- which has drawn in foreign powers and global jihadists -- has killed more than 500,000 people and displaced millions.

NATO meeting fails to approve first defence plans since Cold War
BRUSSELS (Reuters)/Fri, June 16, 2023
NATO defence ministers failed on Friday to reach agreement over new plans on how the alliance would respond to a Russian attack, and one diplomat blamed Turkey for blocking them. NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said the ministers reviewed the plans - the first since the end of the Cold War and given impetus by Russia's invasion of Ukraine - at a two-day meeting in Brussels and were moving closer to agreeing on them. But one diplomat said Turkey had blocked approval over the wording of geographical locations, including with regard to Cyprus. There was still an opportunity to find a solution before the NATO summit in mid-July in Vilnius, the diplomat added. Turkey's diplomatic mission to NATO said it would be wrong to comment on a secret NATO document, adding only that "the usual process of consultations and evaluation among allies is continuing". The so-called regional plans comprise thousands of pages of secret military plans that will detail how the alliance would respond to a Russian attack. The drawing up of the documents signifies a fundamental shift. NATO had seen no need for large-scale defence plans for decades as it fought smaller wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and felt certain post-Soviet Russia no longer posed an existential threat. But with Europe's bloodiest war since 1945 raging just beyond its borders in Ukraine, the alliance is now warning that it must have all planning in place well before a conflict with a peer adversary such as Moscow might erupt.
NATO will also give nations guidance on how to upgrade their forces and logistics. "While regional plans were not formally endorsed today, we anticipate these plans will be part of a series of deliverables for the Vilnius Summit in July," a senior U.S. official told Reuters.

The incompetence of Putin’s generals is a war crime in itself
The Telegraph/Hamish de Bretton-Gordon/Fri, June 16, 2023
We learned this week that more than 100 soldiers from Russia’s 20th Combined Arms Army may have been killed in a HIMARS strike after waiting for an “inspirational” eve of battle speech from the notoriously inept Major General Zurab Akhmedov.
It speaks to the incredible incompetence and pure arrogance of Vladimir Putin’s commanders; and not for the first time. The same man was accused of ineptitude after 300 Russian Marines were killed last year in an ill-conceived operation, where afterwards survivors wrote to the Russian MoD claiming the general used them as “cannon fodder”.It is also yet another example of the complete disregard for the fighting soldiers by the Russian high command. As a former soldier, my view is that an army which has hit squads shooting deserters is without the vital morale component of fighting power – something Napoleon described as “ten as to one the physical component”.It has also been reported in recent days that the Kremlin has identified four million men for conscription. These are, in short, men who would not be “missed” – the majority from the East and comparatively disadvantaged. They are certainly not the children of the elite in Moscow, who now call for air defence from the frontline to be moved back to protect them in the Russian “Beverly Hills” recently struck by drones. The fact that in Russia nobody has announced or acknowledged this huge loss of life gives credence to the awful truth: nobody in a position of authority cares for the men on the frontline. An army whose most effective force are criminals has surely lost a vital component for success. I’m not sure you can commit a war crime against your own soldiers, but if there is such a category this is one of the most blatant examples I have come across – and there have been several committed by Russia in this war. In a war zone you are taught to move continuously if you are not under armour or cover. With Western intelligence technology and thousands of Ukraine drones actively looking for targets, a grouping like this would be identified in minutes. It would take a few more minutes to type the coordinates into the HIMARS precision strike computer and a couple more to execute the strike. The absolute maximum those soldiers should have been there is around 10 minutes. If the general cannot motivate his men in 5 minutes he probably should not be there – and he wasn’t. This is what happens when you have a power structure where everyone has to ‘look up’; where commanders are competing for favours and where competence is lower on a list of priorities than being seen to be doing something. With all tyrants it is the rank and file who suffer most, following orders from people sat in the rear and holding the coats. I was taught at Sandhurst that officers lead from the front and never ask your soldiers to do anything you are not prepared to do yourself. Ukraine understands this, trained by Western armies. Speaking to senior Ukrainians, their commanders lead from the front and care deeply for their soldiers, which is why I am very confident they will prevail against the “cannon fodder” led by donkeys. Any army broken in spirit will break at the front. It’s just a matter of pressure and time.

US providing $205 million in additional humanitarian aid for Ukraine -Blinken
WASHINGTON (Reuters)/Fri, June 16, 2023
The United States will provide an additional $205 million in humanitarian assistance to Ukraine, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Friday. The aid "provides the people of Ukraine with critical support, including food, safe drinking water, protection services, education, livelihoods, legal assistance, accessible shelter, health care, and more," Blinken said in a statement. The money also helps family members maintain contact if they been separated or displaced, he said. More than 6 million people have left Ukraine and more than 5 million have been internally displaced since Russia invaded in February 2022, Blinken said. Washington has given more than $2.1 billion in humanitarian aid to help Ukrainians, Blinken said, urging other donors to help in the effort.

NATO may remove some hurdles on Ukraine's path to membership - Germany
BRUSSELS (Reuters)/Fri, June 16, 2023
NATO allies may be ready to remove some hurdles from Ukraine's path to the military alliance, German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius said on Friday, a few weeks before a NATO summit that aims to bridge differences over Kyiv's accession. "There are increasing signs that everyone will be able to agree on this," Pistorius told reporters in Brussels when asked about reports that the U.S. is open to permitting Kyiv to forgo a formal candidacy process required of some other nations in the past. "I would be open for this," said Pistorius, speaking on the sidelines of a meeting with his NATO counterparts at the alliance's headquarters. The Washington Post reported on Thursday that the United States is giving tentative backing to a plan that would remove barriers to Ukraine's entry into NATO without setting a timeline for its admission. It quoted a senior U.S. official as saying Washington is "comfortable" with a proposal from NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg that would allow Kyiv to circumvent the alliance's so-called Membership Action Plan (MAP). Since 1999, most countries aiming to join NATO have participated in this programme, which is designed to help candidates meet certain political, economic and military criteria. By shortening the process, the U.S. hopes to bridge divisions among member nations over Kyiv's path to joining the transatlantic military alliance, the Washington Post reported. "This is a potential landing zone in this debate," it quoted one official as saying. However, the proposal would still require Ukraine to carry out reforms and, contrary to the wishes of Eastern European allies, it would not attach a time frame for Ukraine's accession, according to the paper. At its Bucharest summit in 2008, NATO agreed that Ukraine - which like Russia was part of the Soviet Union until its 1991 demise - would eventually join the alliance. But NATO leaders have so far stopped short of taking concrete steps that would lay out a timetable for bringing Kyiv into the alliance, something Eastern allies and Ukraine itself are pushing for.

Russian officials say Black Sea grain deal can't be extended
MOSCOW, June 16 (Reuters)/Fri, June 16, 2023
Senior Russian officials said on Friday the Black Sea grain deal could not be extended under current circumstances but that Moscow was working to ensure that poorer countries would not suffer food shortages when it ends. The deal, brokered by the United Nations and Turkey in July 2022, allowed Ukraine to resume sea-borne grain exports to help tackle a global food crisis the U.N. said had been exacerbated by Europe's deadliest conflict since World War Two. Last month Moscow reluctantly agreed to extend the deal, known by diplomats as the Black Sea Grain Initiative, until July 17 on condition that it also received help with its own food and fertiliser exports. Russia says this help has not materialised. "It is impossible to update this deal, and under these conditions, I believe, it is also impossible to extend it because the limit of our patience and desire to implement it has been exhausted," Interfax news agency cited the speaker of the upper house of parliament, Valentina Matviyenko, as saying. Matviyenko, speaking on the sidelines of an economic forum in St Petersburg, said Russia would seek "other formats" to ensure that poorer countries did not suffer from the collapse of the grain deal. "We are open to all reasonable proposals and to any dialogue but not to the detriment of our country's interests," she said. Separately, top Kremlin foreign policy aide Yury Ushakov said on Friday that Russia was unlikely to quit the grain deal before it comes up for renewal on July 17, state media reported
BARRIERS
While food and fertiliser exports do not fall under the West's tough sanctions imposed on Russia over the Ukraine war, Moscow says restrictions on payments, logistics and insurance create barriers. President Vladimir Putin will discuss the fate of the grain deal and other issues with a delegation of African leaders in Moscow on Saturday. The leaders were in Kyiv on Friday to discuss possible ways of ending the 16-month war. Putin said on Tuesday that Moscow was considering withdrawing from the deal because it had been "cheated" by the West over promises to remove the barriers to Russia's own grain and fertiliser exports. Asked on Friday about the possibility of extending the grain deal, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said: "How can you extend something that doesn't work?" TASS news agency quoted Lavrov as also saying that an explosion that damaged an ammonia pipeline between Russia and Ukraine was evidence that someone wanted to wreck the grain deal.

Vladimir Putin tells West to ‘go to hell’ on nuclear arms reduction
James Kilner/The Telegraph/Fri, June 16, 2023
Vladimir Putin told the West to “go to hell” on nuclear arms reduction as he confirmed that atomic weapons have already been deployed to Belarus. The Russian president, speaking at the annual St Petersburg Economic Forum, said “we have more nuclear missiles than Nato countries, and they want to reduce our numbers”. “Go to hell,” he said, to applause from visiting delegates. The unusually foul-mouthed remarks came during a three-hour speech at the event once dubbed “Russia’s Davos”, which this year featured strongmen tearing apart tennis balls among a host of bizarre vignettes. Putin said the “first part” of a nuclear weapon had been delivered to Belarus, with the process set to be complete by summer. It will mark the first time Moscow has deployed nuclear weapons outside its borders since the fall of the Soviet Union. Russia is “theoretically” ready to fire an atomic weapon if its territorial integrity is threatened, Putin said. In another warning to the West, the 70-year-old Russian leader suggested Moscow may strike F-16 jets meant for Ukraine, even on Nato soil. “F-16 aircraft will burn like these tanks,” he said, referring to Russian strikes on German Leopard II tanks. “If they are based in air bases in other countries but are used in Ukraine then we will have to think carefully where to hit them.” Ukraine’s western allies, including Britain, are training pilots on the fifth-generation fighter jets, with delivery to the battlefield possible within six months. Guests at the forum, which once included Western business elites, were mainly drawn from Russia’s few remaining allies, including Cuba and Syria. The guest of honour was Algeria’s president and the host was Dimitri Simes, an ethnic Russian US citizen who has become a cheerleader for the Kremlin after previously advising Richard Nixon on foreign affairs. In the initial portion of Putin’s 75-minute speech, several visitors were seen with their eyes closed, apparently nodding off. Everyone had been asked to turn their phones off to reduce the risk of drone strikes.
Tore a tennis ball with bare hands
Among several efforts to entertain or impress delegates was a show from burly paratroopers dressed in striped t-shirts and berets. One man, after a protracted struggle, tore a tennis ball in half with his bare hands before bending an iron bar over his head. Not all the stunts were as successful. Herman Gref, head of Russia’s largest bank Sberbank, failed to start a new Lada that he was supposed to test drive in front of rows of cameras. During the question-and-answer session, Putin said Ukraine had “no chance of success” in its counter-offensive. “Their losses are very high, even more than one-to-10 compared to the Russian army losses,” he said. He said that Ukraine would soon run out of weapons it manufactures within its borders, and would have to rely entirely on Western donations. “Everything with which they fight and everything that they use is brought in from the outside,” he said. “You can’t fight for long like that.”
Cash bonuses for destruction
Meanwhile, it has emerged that the Kremlin will give cash bonuses of up to £2,800 to soldiers for destroying Ukraine’s Western weapon systems. Russia’s ministry of defence said that the super-sized bonuses come on top of smaller cash bonuses that it has already handed out to 10,000 soldiers since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. “Payments are currently being made to Russian servicemen who on military operations destroyed Leopard tanks, as well as armoured fighting vehicles made in the US and other Nato countries,” the Russian ministry of defence said. It said that a Russian soldier would be given £470 for destroying an armoured vehicle, £935 for destroying a tank and £2,808 for destroying a Himars rocket system. Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month, then enjoy 1 year for just $9 with our US-exclusive offer.

Zelensky rules out talks with Russia as he meets African leaders
AFP/Fri, June 16, 2023
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Friday ruled out talks with Russia as he met with a delegation of African leaders. "I clearly said several times at our meeting that to allow any negotiations with Russia now that the occupier is on our land is to freeze the war, to freeze pain and suffering," Zelensky told reporters after meeting several leaders including South Africa's Cyril Ramaphosa. The delegation is to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Saturday. They arrived in Kyiv on a mission to broker peace, first visiting the nearby town of Bucha, where Russian troops have been accused of massacring civilians. Air raid sirens sounded across Ukraine after they arrived on Friday morning and the air force said it had downed 12 Russian missiles. Zelensky said that Russia's missile strike on Kyiv as the African delegation visited meant that Putin did not control Russia's army or that he was "irrational", adding he wanted to "fully destroy the state of Ukraine." Zelensky accused Russia of managing to freeze the Ukraine conflict after annexing the peninsula of Crimea in 2014, adding that Kyiv would not allow Moscow to do this again.

Pentagon chief urges Turkish counterpart on Sweden's NATO entry
BRUSSELS (Reuters)/Fri, June 16, 2023
U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said he urged Turkey to allow Sweden's entry into NATO during an introductory meeting on Friday with his new Turkish counterpart Yasar Guler during a gathering of NATO defense ministers in Brussels. "My purpose in meeting him today was an introductory meeting, just to congratulate him on being installed as minister of defence. Of course, (I) seize every opportunity to encourage him to move forward and approve the accession of Sweden," Austin told a press conference at NATO headquarters. "But it's a very short meeting, and I don't have anything to report out from that." Both Sweden and Finland applied to join NATO after Russia invaded Ukraine in February last year, choosing to abandon decades of military non-alignment in favour of the transatlantic alliance's collective security guarantee. Finland became a NATO member in April this year but Ankara has yet to approve Sweden's accession, accusing Stockholm of harbouring Kurdish militants that it considers to be terrorists and complaining about anti-Turkey protests in Sweden. Hungary is the only other NATO member yet to ratify Sweden's NATO bid, citing Swedish criticism of its record on rule of law. But NATO diplomats say they expect Hungary would move quickly to ratify if Ankara signals it is ready to do so.Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan was quoted as saying on Wednesday that Sweden should not expect a green light from Ankara at a NATO summit next month unless it prevents anti-Turkey protests in Stockholm. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said on Friday that Sweden had addressed Turkish concerns and reiterated his view that Stockholm is ready to join the alliance. "My message has been now for many, many months that actually Sweden has delivered and that's the message from (NATO) allies," he told reporters after the defence ministers' meeting. He said there had been "some progress" this week in talks aimed at addressing Turkey's objections to Swedish membership.

Canada to bolster Latvian NATO deployment with 15 Leopard 2 tanks
OTTAWA (Reuters)/Fri, June 16, 2023
Canada will bolster its force in Latvia with the deployment of 15 Leopard 2A4M tanks as part of NATO efforts to build a combat-capable brigade in a country that borders with Russia, the defence minister said on Friday. The Army tank squadron will be fully deployed by the fall, Defence Minister Anita Anand said, speaking to reporters from Brussels. "This will significantly boost the capabilities of the Canada-led NATO battle group in Latvia, ensuring its continued ability to protect the eastern flank of our alliance," Anand said. Canada is in the process of increasing its presence in Latvia, where it has 800 members of its armed forces in its largest foreign military deployment. The battle group in Latvia is made up from contributions from 11 nations. In 2016, NATO decided to increase its military presence in the eastern part of the alliance as a "deterrence and defence posture", citing an "aggressive" Russia. A year ago, Canada, Latvia and their NATO partners agreed to bolster the force to a brigade. Canada is also working alongside Latvia to train Ukrainian junior officers on intelligence reconnaissance and battle planning.
Canada, which has one of the world's largest Ukrainian diasporas, has been a vocal supporter of Ukraine in its war with Russia, and has supplied military and financial assistance to Kyiv since the invasion in February 2022.
It is also a founding member of NATO. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has visited war-time Kyiv twice, including last week, when he pledged an additional C$500 million ($378.5 million) in new military aid. "Let me be clear. Canada and all NATO allies will always defend every inch of NATO territory, and we are deploying the necessary capabilities and personnel to make good on that promise," Anand said. Anand spoke virtually with reporters in Ottawa amid meetings of the alliance's defence ministers in Brussels on Thursday and Friday. Asked who Canada supported as the new NATO chief, Anand declined to give a name, but she did express confidence in its current leader, Jens Stoltenberg. Stoltenberg's term has already been prolonged three times, and he is due to step down in September after nine years as secretary-general of the military alliance, which has assumed even greater importance since Russia's invasion of Ukraine. "I have full confidence in Secretary General Stoltenberg's leadership," Anand said. "He has been a very steady hand during a time of intensity in Europe and in the global strategic environment."
($1 = 1.3209 Canadian dollars)

Sheikh Mohamed Bin Zayed meets Russian President Vladimir Putin in St. Petersburg
NNA/Fri, June 16, 2023
UAE President His Highness Sheikh Mohamed Bin Zayed Al Nahyan has reinforced the importance of communication and dialogue to support regional and international stability and peace. He reiterated the UAE’s principled position aimed at de-escalation and the necessity for a negotiated political solution to the crisis in Ukraine. His Highness also stressed the importance of accelerating efforts to mitigate the humanitarian repercussions of the crisis and supporting prisoner-exchange initiatives on both sides.

South Africa's stranded presidential security team: Poland denies racism
BBC/Fri, June 16, 2023
African leaders visit a site of a mass grave in the town of Bucha in Ukraine
African leaders travelled to Ukraine hoping to work towards peace
Poland says racism was not a factor in its decision to refuse entry to South African presidential guards and media for almost 24 hours.
About 120 people were stuck on the aircraft at Warsaw's Chopin airport.
They were on their way to a peace summit in Ukraine, but Poland's actions have left President Cyril Ramaphosa without some of his security detail. This prompted a furious reaction from Mr Ramaphosa's head of security, Maj Gen Wally Rhoode. "They are delaying us, they are putting the life of our president in jeopardy," he told journalists. "We could have been in Kyiv by now and this is all they are doing. I want you guys to see how racist they are."But Poland has dismissed this outright. "Accusations against Poland of racism are being circulated in this case. This is nonsense," says the director of the National Security Department and spokesman for Poland's Minister-Special Services Coordinator, Stanisław Żaryn. He and Poland's Border Guard say the South African security officers did not have the correct paperwork for their weapons.
"Members of the delegation had weapons for which they did not have permission to bring in, but they could leave the plane themselves," the agency wrote on Twitter.
Africa Live: Updates on this and other stories from the continent
Can African leaders bring peace to Ukraine?
Why Russia's invasion of Ukraine still divides Africa
What started as an impasse on Thursday afternoon has escalated into a diplomatic row.
A spokesman for South Africa's president says the row is "regrettable". Efforts are now being made to ensure those on the aircraft can proceed "to cover at least the Russian leg" of the trip, spokesman Vincent Magwenya adds. Despite the events in Warsaw, Mr Magwenya says President Ramaphosa arrived safely in Ukraine's capital Kyiv safely by train from Poland, along with other African heads of state who are visiting the country to promote dialogue with Russia. "I would like to assure all South Africans that there has been no compromise whatsoever to the president's safety as a result of the impasse that involved the charter flight with the presidential protection services team and the media," he says in the video posted on Twitter. During the African delegation's visit to Ukraine on Friday, the military said it had come under missile attack and returned fire - shooting down more than a dozen projectiles.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said the message was clear: "Russian missiles are a message to Africa: Russia wants more war, not peace." Both Russia and Ukraine have sought to deepen their influence in African nations in recent months. South Africa says it does not want to take sides in the conflict but the US has accused it of supplying weapons to Russia, which it has denied. The delegation from South Africa, Egypt, Senegal, Congo-Brazzaville, Comoros, Zambia, and Uganda is meeting President Volodymyr Zelensky on Friday and President Vladimir Putin on Saturday. One of those on the plane in the Polish capital is News24 journalist Pieter Du Toit, who praised South Africa Airlines staff for being "quite brilliant in supporting everyone on the plane".He said that supplies were however running thin, and joked that the passengers were deciding how to chop up the last remaining chip from a Burger King order delivered the night before by the South African embassy.

Pentagon chief expresses optimism over eventual talks with Chinese counterpart
BRUSSELS (Reuters)/Fri, June 16, 2023
U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin expressed optimism on Friday that he would eventually hold talks with his Chinese counterpart after being snubbed by Beijing during an event in Singapore earlier this month. "I'm confident that, over time, that's going to happen. We're going to meet at some point in time. But we're not there yet," Austin told a press conference at NATO headquarters in Brussels. Austin's comments came ahead of a high-profile trip by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken to China on June 18 and 19, the first by a high-ranking U.S. official since Biden took office in January 2021.
One of Blinken's objectives will be to manage escalation to ensure that the world's two biggest military powers do not "veer in to conflict," White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said in Tokyo. Relations between the United States and China are increasingly acrimonious, with friction over issues from Taiwan and China's military activity in the South China Sea to U.S. efforts to hold back China's semiconductor industry. The U.S. military has responded by pushing for open lines of communication with their Chinese counterparts - both at senior and working levels - to mitigate the risk of potential flare-ups, something it has long advocated. China's leaders, by contrast, have been slow to establish military contacts and quick to shut them down during periods of diplomatic tension. Chinese officials have blamed the United States for a breakdown in dialogue by ramping up sanctions on Chinese officials and they bristle at the U.S. military presence in region, especially naval transits through the sensitive Taiwan Strait. Austin said he has not reached out since China declined to hold formal talks with him at the Shangri-La Dialogue, Asia's top security summit, in Singapore.
"I've not reached out since (Singapore). But again, the door is open and my phone line is open. And so they can pick up the phone and call at any time. And we will continue to work to make sure that we have open lines of communication," Austin said.

Thousands of Sudanese fleeing fighting with no documents trapped on Egypt border
Associated Press/Fri, June 16, 2023
When fighting in Sudan erupted in mid-April, Abdel-Rahman Sayyed and his family tried to hold out hiding in their home in the capital, Khartoum, as the sounds of explosions, gunfights and the roar of warplanes echoed across the city of 6 million people. They lived right by one of the fiercest front lines, near the military's headquarters in central Khartoum, where the army and a rival paramilitary, the Rapid Support Forces, battled for control. Three days into the conflict, a shell hit their two-story home, reducing much of it to rubble. Luckily, Sayyed, his wife and three children survived, and they immediately fled the war-torn city. The problem was, their passports were buried under the wreckage of their home. Now they are among tens of thousands of people without travel documents trapped at the border with Egypt, unable to cross into Sudan's northern neighbor. "We narrowly escaped with our lives," the 38-year-old Sayyed said in a recent phone interview from Wadi Halfa, the closest Sudanese city to the border. He said he was stunned that Egyptian authorities wouldn't let his family in. "I thought we would be allowed in as refugees," he said.
Two months in, clashes continue to rage between the two rival forces in Khartoum and around Sudan, with hundreds dead and no sign of stopping after talks on a resolution collapsed. People continue to flee their homes in droves: This week the total number of people displaced since fighting began April 15 rose to around 2.2 million, up from 1.9 million just a week earlier, according to U.N. figures. Of the total displaced, more than 500,000 have crossed into neighboring countries, while the rest took refuge in quieter parts of Sudan, according to the U.N. More than 120,000 Sudanese without travel documents are trapped in Wadi Halfa and surrounding areas, according to a Sudanese migration official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to brief media. Among them are those who never had a passport or whose passport expired or was lost during the rush to escape. Wadi Halfa, which normally has a population of few tens of thousands, is also flooded by huge crowds of Sudanese men, women and children who do have their passports but must apply for visas at the Egyptian Consulate in the town to cross the border. Getting a visa can take days or even longer, leaving families scrambling for accommodation and food, with many sleeping in the streets. Calls are growing for Egypt to waive entry requirements. The Sudanese American Physician Association, a U.S.-based NGO, called on the Egyptian government to allow those fleeing the war to apply for asylum at the borders.
Instead, the Egyptian government last week stiffened entry requirements. Previously, only Sudanese men aged 16-45 needed visas to enter Egypt. But on June 10, new rules require all Sudanese to get electronic visas. Ahmed Abu Zaid, a spokesman for the Egyptian Foreign Ministry, said the measures are aimed at fighting visa forgery by groups on the Sudanese side of the borders. Sayyed described the June 10 decision as a "stab on the back" to all those trapped at the border. He was one of 14 Sudanese who fled Khartoum without passports and spoke to The Associated Press. All said they had thought that Egypt would ease the entry requirement for the fleeing Sudanese.
"We're forced to leave our homes," Sayyed said. "It's a war."
The passports of others were trapped in foreign embassies because they were applying for visas before fighting erupted. Embassies in Khartoum have almost all been evacuated, in which case procedures often require those passports be destroyed so they don't fall into wrong hands. The U.S. State Department said in a statement that it had destroyed passports left there "rather than leave them behind unsecured." "We recognize that the lack of travel documentation is a burden for those seeking to depart Sudan," it said. "We have and will continue to pursue diplomatic efforts with partner countries to identify a solution."Sayyed and his family arrived in Wadi Halfa after a two-day journey from Khartoum. He took refuge in a school along with over 50 other families, all depending on humanitarian assistance from charities and the local community to survive, he said.
Every day for the past five weeks, Sayyed visited the Sudanese immigration authority offices and Egyptian Consulate in Wadi Halfa, a ritual many others followed as well in hopes of getting travel documents or visas. But Sayyed has little chance, unless Egypt opens the border. New Sudanese passports are usually issued from the main immigration office in Khartoum, which stopped functioning since the onset of the war. The branch in Wadi Halfa doesn't have access to computer records, so it can only renew expired passports manually, not issue new ones or replace lost ones, the migration official said.
Al-Samaul Hussein Mansour, a Sudanese-British national, left his travel documents at his home amid his chaotic escape from the fighting in Khartoum, according to his younger brother, Ibn Sina Mansour. Al-Samaul, a 63-year-old pediatrician-turned-politician, didn't get to the British Embassy in Khartoum to be evacuated with other British citizens. He thought that the clashes would stop "within a couple of days," Ibn Sina said. He first went to the western Darfur region, where he stayed with a relative for about a week. But as fighting continued, he headed toward the Egyptian border. Unable to find a place to stay in Wadi Halfa, he went to the nearby town of Shandi. It was too dangerous to return to Khartoum and retrieve his documents, with continued street fighting and stray bombs and bullets hitting houses, said Ibn Sina, who is also a British citizen. "Returning to Khartoum means death for Samaul," he said in a recent interview in Aswan, the closest Egyptian city to the border with Sudan. Ibn Sina, a retired aviation engineer, came to Aswan from London to be closer to his older brother. Also among those trapped were three brothers from Khartoum's neighboring city of Omdurman, who either lost their passports or never had one. The three -- ages 26, 21 and 18 years old – were separated from their parents and five sisters, who were all able to enter Egypt in early May. "This war displaced and separated many families like us," their father, Salah al-Din al-Nour, said. "We have nothing to do with their struggle for power. They destroyed Sudan and the Sudanese people."

UN rights chief urges action against hate speech
LBCI/Fri, June 16, 2023
The United Nations rights chief called Friday for concerted global efforts to rein in hate speech, including more effectively countering "mega spreaders" of hateful and dangerous messages. Ahead of the International Day for Countering Hate Speech on Sunday, Volker Turk insisted "multifaceted and well-resourced efforts" could help rid the world of the scourge. "We know that the spread of hate is used by those who want to sow divisions, to scapegoat and to distract from real issues," Turk said. Social media in particular had become "remarkably fertile ground for hate speech, providing it with both unprecedented reach and speed", his statement said. "Hate breeds bigotry, discrimination and incitement to violence," he said. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights acknowledged, "There is no silver bullet, no switch to flip that will rid our world of hate." But he insisted that investing in a range of targeted measures would make it possible to limit the spread of hate speech and to hold accountable those who spread it. Among other things, companies should be held responsible for what they are, and what they are not doing, in respect to hate speech. "More also needs to be done to address mega-spreaders -- those officials and influencers whose voices have profound impact and whose examples inspire thousands of others," he said. "We must build networks and amplify voices that can cut through the hate," he said, pointing for instance to an initiative engaging religious leaders to try to respond to hatred and incitement to violence.
He also called for greater investments in effort to combat hate speech in languages other than English, in digital and media literacy programs and independent fact-checking. Turk meanwhile cautioned that the battle against hate speech can be misused."Globally, the spread of hate speech-related laws being misused against journalists and human rights defenders is almost as viral as the spread of hate speech itself," he said, pointing to how broad laws provide license to states to censor speech they find uncomfortable and to threaten or detain those who dare question policies or criticize officials. "Rather than criminalizing protected speech, we need states and companies to take urgent steps to address incitement to hatred and violence," he said.

The Latest LCCC English analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on June 16-17/2023
China Overtakes Russia as Dominant Power in Central Asia
Lawrence A. Franklin/Gatestone Institute/June 16, 2023
Communist China's People's Liberation Army has established a military presence in Murghab, Tajikistan, close to the Chinese border with Afghanistan. There is also no doubt that Russia's embarrassing military imbroglio in Ukraine has helped China supersede Moscow as guarantor of Central Asian state sovereignty.
[Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart] Tokayev has.... denounced Russia's invasion of Ukraine. As the Kazakh leader is doubtless aware, some notable Russian nationalists such as former Russian Prime Minister and President Dmitry Medvedev have mused that, after Ukraine is dealt with, Kazakhstan will follow.
China offers Central Asia four basic dimensions of assistance that Russia can no longer provide: financial investment, complementary commerce, development of transport infrastructure, and construction of industrial plants such as oil refineries.
China is building a Chinese-Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan railway, which will ultimately span the expanse of Central Asia to the Middle East. Beijing appears determined to link China and Europe by fashioning thoroughfares that avoid crossing Russian territory that pass through a mid-level corridor of the Caucasus countries.
In exchange, China will be granted wide access to Central Asia's considerable energy resources. Chinese companies, for example, appear eager to tap into Turkmenistan's vast natural gas reserves. Chinese oil corporations would also likely dominate Kazakhstan's petroleum export market to service China's insatiable desire for more fuel. It increasingly looks as if that there is some truth in French President Emmanuel Macron's comment that Russia appears to have become China's vassal state. It certainly seems as if the Chinese Communist Party has made considerable progress toward achieving its broad objectives of fostering China's Global Development and Security Initiatives. Neither plan appears to have a principal role for Moscow.
China recently hosted a summit of the leaders of Central Asia's former Soviet Republics in Xi'an, China, the site of the start of the ancient Silk Road. The symbolism attached to Xi'an as the site for the 18-20 May gathering underscores China's intent to remind Central Asian leaders that Chinese civilization's relationship with the region predates ties to Russia by centuries. It also might demonstrate China's resolve to replace Russia as Eurasia's hegemon. China, in fact, did not even invite Russia to the conference.
After the implosion of the multinational Soviet Union, China and Russia seemed to have agreed upon a division of labor in their links to their Central Asian neighbors, with Russia assuming the role of the military guarantor of regional stability. For more than a decade, Russia seemed content with China's leading role in Central Asian commerce, investment, and most economic affairs.
This is no longer true: China is moving to dominate in all dimensions in Central Asia. This is an historic evolution. Beijing's eclipsing of Moscow means the end of Russia's regional imperium in Central Asia. Russian Tsars and commissars have reigned supreme on the Central Asian steppes since the mid 19th century.
The Kremlin has had a military presence in Tajikistan since 1992, when it deployed a division to prevent armed Islamists from seizing the capital Dushanbe. Now much of that unit has been stripped to support Russia's war against Ukraine.
Now, Communist China's People's Liberation Army has established a military presence in Murghab, Tajikistan, close to the Chinese border with Afghanistan. There is also no doubt that Russia's embarrassing military imbroglio in Ukraine has helped China supersede Moscow as guarantor of Central Asian state sovereignty.
The Kremlin's history of oppressive rule in Central Asia also does little to inspire trust in Russia's motive to act as protector. In 2021, for instance, when fighting broke out in between factions of the Kazakh elite, Russia dispatched troops to Kazakhstan to stabilize the government of President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev. Those Russian forces have now withdrawn. While the Russian troops helped to restore order, Tokayev possibly remembers Russian President Vladimir Putin's statement, that "Kazakhstan never had a state."
Tokayev has, moreover, denounced Russia's invasion of Ukraine. As the Kazakh leader is doubtless aware, some notable Russian nationalists such as former Russian Prime Minister and President Dmitry Medvedev have mused that, after Ukraine is dealt with, Kazakhstan will follow.
The Chinese military presence in Tajikistan, close to China's border with Afghanistan, is possibly designed to guard against jihadist Taliban infiltration from Afghanistan into China. Accordingly, Chinese President Xi Jinping called upon Central Asia's leaders at the Xi'an Summit to denounce the "Three Nos" of "Separatism, Terrorism, and Extremism". He also warned that regional leaders must guard against Western-inspired democratic "color revolutions."
China offers Central Asia four basic dimensions of assistance that Russia can no longer provide: financial investment, complementary commerce, development of transport infrastructure, and construction of industrial plants such as oil refineries. These projects would also help sop up Central Asia's large number of unemployed laborers. Presently, China is investing more than $15 billion in five states of Central Asia. China's trade with these same five countries in 2022 amounted to more than $70 billion.
After some delay, China is building a Chinese-Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan railway, which will ultimately span the expanse of Central Asia to the Middle East. Beijing appears determined to link China and Europe by fashioning thoroughfares that avoid crossing Russian territory that pass through a mid-level corridor of the Caucasus countries.
In exchange, China will be granted wide access to Central Asia's considerable energy resources. Chinese companies, for example, appear eager to tap into Turkmenistan's vast natural gas reserves. Chinese oil corporations would also likely dominate Kazakhstan's petroleum export market to service China's insatiable desire for more fuel.
Xi, rather than Putin, appears in the driver's seat. It increasingly looks as if that there is some truth in French President Emmanuel Macron's comment that Russia appears to have become China's vassal state. It certainly seems as if the Chinese Communist Party has made considerable progress toward achieving its broad objectives of fostering China's Global Development and Security Initiatives. Neither plan appears to have a principal role for Moscow.
*Dr. Lawrence A. Franklin was the Iran Desk Officer for Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld. He also served on active duty with the U.S. Army and as a Colonel in the Air Force Reserve.
© 2023 Gatestone Institute. All rights reserved. The articles printed here do not necessarily reflect the views of the Editors or of Gatestone Institute. No part of the Gatestone website or any of its contents may be reproduced, copied or modified, without the prior written consent of Gatestone Institute.

دراسة معمقة وعلمية للصحافي جواناثان سباير تفيد بأن وضعية الأقليات في جمهورية إيران وهي بلد مكون من أقليات تتجه نحوى ثورة وانتفاضة على النظام القائم
Revolution in Iran: The state of minorities, uprising against Tehran
Joanathan Spyer/Jerusalem Post/June 16/2023
https://eliasbejjaninews.com/archives/119201/119201/
The ‘Magazine’ meets Siamand Moeini, leader of PJAK, an Iranian Kurdish party and militia, to discuss the uprising in Iran.
The offices of the Kurdistan National Congress (Kongreya Neteweyî ya Kurdistanê, KNK) are located on a quiet backstreet in Brussels, Belgium. When I visited these premises in early June, the mood was gloomy.
Many who operate here are Kurds from Turkey. Hopes had ridden high that the Turkish presidential elections might see the departure of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, regarded as an archenemy by nationalist and secular Kurds. These hopes, of course, have been dashed, and with them the plans of many to return safely to the places of their birth.
The house in which the offices are located must once have been the home of a family from the Belgian upper middle class. The Kurds have not subjected it to a major renovation. As a result, it is all creaking north European wooden floors, dark corners and plush crimson carpets, an incongruous setting for Mideast revolutionary political activity.
But then, much about the KNK is incongruous. The movements gathered under its umbrella are committed to the socialist and feminist ideas of Abdullah Ocalan, jailed founder of the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK). During the Cold War, the latter engaged in insurgency against NATO ally Turkey and gained designation by the US and EU as a terrorist organization. Yet fighters associated with this trend in Syria have emerged as the most capable and trusted partners of US Central Command in Syria. The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), in which they predominate, indeed represents a rare and notable success for the West in the field of proxy warfare in the Middle East. This was the partnership that destroyed Islamic State in Syria by 2019. It remains in ownership of about 30% of the territory of that ruined land, constituting today a de facto though incomplete barrier against an Iranian advance west.
As we approached the heavy wooden door to enter the building, I remembered the first time that I had been on these premises. It was 12 years ago. At that time, I had come to interview the leader of the Iranian Kurdish PJAK (Party for a Free Life in Kurdistan) organization, Abdul Rahman Haji-Ahmadi. And now, 12 years on, I am going to interview his successor, Siamand Moeini. Not much progress in 12 years, you might say, and you might be right. But two very significant things have changed substantially over the last decade.
Firstly, the de facto alliance with the US in Syria has brought the cluster of movements around the KNK to an unprecedented level of relevance in Middle Eastern geopolitics. Secondly, the uprising in Iran that followed the killing of the Iranian Kurdish woman Jina Mahsa Amini in September 2022 has returned the question of Iran’s internal stability in general, and of its management of its national minorities in particular, to center stage at a crucial moment for the region.
The current state of affairs: Uprising in Iran and the fractured opposition
So I have come to ask Moeini about the current state of affairs for the uprising inside Iran, and about prospects for unity among Iran’s fractured opposition. I also want to get his movement’s take on the latest tortured diplomatic moves on the Iran file, on the state of the game with Iran’s proxy warfare across the Middle East, and on the efforts to counter it.
AS WE enter, I note that security arrangements around the offices in Brussels have also improved in recent years, in accordance with its members’ enhanced status – and with reference to a number of recent murders of KNK-associated political activists by the Turkish government on European soil. When first visiting 12 years ago, I was struck and slightly alarmed by the casual apparent indifference to such concerns. No more.
On the day I meet him, Moeini has just wrapped up a conference bringing Iranian opposition groups together, at the European Parliament. It was a success, he tells me. There were representatives of the Ahvazi Arabs there, of Iran’s Baluch minority, labor activists, and leaders of the various Iranian Kurdish factions – Komala, PDKI and PJAK. It is only a start, though, in the long and tortuous effort to achieve some structure of unity for the fractured foes of the Islamic regime in Tehran.
Moeini, 62, stocky and balding, is from the city of Mahabad in Iran’s West Azerbaijan province. He hails from a family long steeped in Kurdish activism. His grandfather was the interior minister of the short-lived Mahabad Republic, an early attempt to carve out a Kurdish sovereign state in 1946, rapidly crushed by the Iranians. His father was one of the founders of the Kurdish Democratic Party of Iran and was killed by the shah’s authorities in 1968. Moeini himself was a Peshmerga fighter of the Kurdish Komala Party, a far-Left nationalist outfit, in the period 1979-1983.
This was the time in which the new Islamic Republic engaged in a bloody settling of accounts with the Kurdish resistance factions. Splitting with the Komala movement because of what he terms its “drift toward communism,” Moeini made his way to Europe in the mid-1980s and continued his activism against the Islamic Republic of Iran from there.
He was one of the founders of PJAK in 2004, and replaced Haji-Ahmadi as its leader in 2016.
The protests that began with the killing of Jina Amini have faded somewhat in their intensity in recent months. Nevertheless, they continue, and they represent the most serious internal challenge to the Islamist regime in Tehran since its establishment in 1979. I begin by asking Moeni about his own movement’s role in the events.
“I don’t want to give a direct answer,” he tells me, “because it can put pressure on people who have contact with us. But in the past 10 years, we taught many people, and sent them back into Iranian Kurdistan, and some of them are now engaged in politics inside Iran.
“After the murder of Jina Amini, the uprising began in Saqqez cemetery, and the Kurdish people there chanted ‘Women, Life, Freedom’ [a slogan emerging, it is worth noting, from the circles of the Ocalan movement]. Then it spread to Sanandaj, then the students in Tehran University took up this slogan, and then it spread to Tabriz [an Azeri city]. This is not an accident. It was organized. After that, we saw that the majority of Iranian citizens favor the uprising.”
The uprising, though, appears for now to be losing momentum, I suggest, and seems to lack a coherent program for further progress. What is the mechanism by which Moeini believes it can topple the regime?
“It’s not reasonable to expect that after four or five or six months of the uprising, that we can topple a totalitarian regime with protests alone. These protests can weaken the regime, however.
“But the collapse of the totalitarian regime in Iran,” he continues, “is possible in two ways: One is if we manage to create and sustain nationwide, ongoing organized protests across the entirety of Iran. The other way is military engagement inside Iran by armed opposition or by external intervention by external powers.”
And what, I ask, about the possibility of splits in the Iranian security forces? I have heard many Iranian opposition voices speak of the need for identifying and developing fault lines in the regime’s tools of oppression. Many, indeed, believe that without some kind of crack in the regime’s instruments of force, no way through to the destruction of the Islamic regime will be found.
Moeini dismisses any such possibility: “I disagree,” he says. “It’s not possible that either the IRGC [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps] or the Artesh [the conventional Iranian armed forces] will split. This claim is made by the ultranationalist tendency and by the centralist mindset. This is the claim of those [among the opposition] who want to preserve centralist government in Iran.”
This response raises one of the central dilemmas facing the opposition to the Iranian regime. It includes both ethnic separatist forces that want a radical change in Iran’s constitutional structures regarding rights for regions and national minorities, and patriotic and nationalist Iranian forces that want only to replace the mullahs and the IRGC with an equally centralized but anti-Islamist government.
SO WHAT is PJAK seeking in that landscape? Kurdish statehood and separation? Greater autonomy within the framework of Iran?
“Our political agenda is clear,” Moeini tells me. “We want self-management for Iranian Kurdistan and democratic confederalism for Iran. We aren’t just seeking democracy in Iranian Kurdistan but rather democratic confederalism for all nations in Iran. Because we believe that if there’s no democracy in Baluchistan, or Ahvaz, then democracy in Kurdistan also won’t prevail. We want to be free in our own Kurdish territory, to live as free women and men in our own territory… without formal change or alteration of Iran’s borders.”
Moeini’s words regarding external military intervention stood out, and I return to this issue. Is he, then, advocating that external powers take military action against Iran?
He chooses his words carefully. “One of the ways that the regime can collapse is by external military intervention. I don’t mean that I advocate this. But it’s one of the possible ways. And if this external military action against Iran?
He chooses his words carefully. “One of the ways that the regime can collapse is by external military intervention. I don’t mean that I advocate this. But it’s one of the possible ways. And if this external military engagement happens in the future – it’s not in our hands, and it’s not related to us. But for sure, Iran is a threat to all the nations inside Iran, and to the nations outside Iran as well.
“Imagine if this regime had nuclear weapons. Who could then stop it? They already have advanced ballistic missiles, and we know that they are working in underground facilities, also in our region. That’s why this regime is a colossal threat to all the countries in the region.”
And what of the nuclear diplomacy now underway? The media are full of reports of a new, “partial” nuclear agreement – less for less.
“It can have a very negative effect on the uprising in Iran and on the people in Iran. It will create pessimism among people.
The interpretation of people in Iran will be that people will think that the regime cracked down on the uprising, killed people, and the US administration gives out prizes and awards for this so that the regime can kill more young people in Iran.
“If we look at the region now, Iran has created the PMU [Shia militias] in Iraq, military groups in Syria, military groups in Yemen, and Lebanese Hezbollah, which is a threat itself in Lebanon. The regime has engagements across the region. So if this regime will have nuclear weapons, it would represent a threat to the whole region.”
SOMEONE, A young Kurdish man, pokes his head in the door, looks around for a moment, and withdraws, shutting it again. I use the momentary distraction to put in another question. So what should be done? What should the West be doing?
“Western countries could establish a coalition of countries, which would support authentic opposition groups against the regime,” Moeni replies. “The regime is now very weak; they lost their internal legitimacy because of the uprising, and their money is blocked in Western countries. But if this money is given back to the regime, that will let them breathe stronger – as happened during the Obama administration period after the JCPOA in 2015. That enabled the regime to become stronger.”
The problem, I suggest, remains the divisions and disunity among the population. If no unified opposition structures emerge, how can Western pressure have an effect?
“A unified opposition coalition is possible. But if Western countries put their efforts into supporting monarchists, it isn’t going to work. It isn’t possible that the monarchy will come back to power because Iranian people won’t accept the creation of a centralized government of this type again. A few years ago, some Western media tried to give a major voice to [Crown Prince] Reza Pahlavi, but it didn’t work.
“As for the alternative, we have to be able to separate from the mindset of centralism in Iran and give power to separate nations within Iran, and the coalition of opposition movements of different nations within Iran will be the alternative, and we are going to create that.”
I ASK about Israel, and Moeini responds immediately “We know that we have a common historical background between Kurds and Jews.”
Statements of this kind are not unusual in the circles of the Kurdish national movements. They remain notable, nevertheless, in that they represent a type of language that, prior to the Abraham Accords, at least, was near unique in Mideast political discourse, dominated as it largely remains by Islamic and routine anti-Israel and anti-Jewish sentiments.
“Our movement thinks that all the nations of the region have the right to live as free women and men. Jewish people, like Kurds and others, have this fundamental right. That’s why I think Jews and Kurds have much in common and can be strategic allies.”
As for where things are heading, Moeini notes the Turkish pressure on his movement in recent weeks. Ankara, for its part, does not differentiate between PJAK and the PKK, regarding them as part of a single organization. A couple of days before our meeting, a Turkish drone attack had killed a PJAK fighter close to a mountain village called Galala in Iraqi Kurdistan.
“The Turkish drones attack the region in order to collaborate with the Iranians. They are allies, absolutely, when it comes to the Kurdish question.”
By way of a conclusion, he underlines the central message that he has been addressing from various angles throughout our conversation. “The only way to have an Iran which isn’t threatening is to have a decentralized country in which power is given to the different nations within Iran. Only in that way can it become a normal country rather than an aggressive regime which threatens countries across the region.”
LEAVING THE KNK offices after my conversation with Siamand Moeini, it occurred to me that something profound had indeed shifted in the course of the last year.
The cause of the Iranian Kurds, about which I have been writing for nearly two decades, had long been characterized by a particularly pronounced imbalance. This was the very great chasm between the obvious and straightforward justice of the Iranian Kurdish cause, and the enormous, seemingly insurmountable odds laid against them. The regime had appeared rock-solid, implacable and impervious, the world largely indifferent.
The uprising that began last year in Iran has shifted that balance considerably. The Iranian Kurds are no longer unheard and unseen, the regime no longer apparently impregnable.
It remains to be seen how long the Islamist regime in Tehran will hold power. But the revolutionaries, Kurds and others, organizing against them, in European cities, on Iran’s borders and within Iran itself, have advanced a considerable way since the movement galvanized by the murder of a single Iranian Kurdish woman was launched in September last year. They intend to continue moving forward.
https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/iran-news/article-746432?fbclid=IwAR27oj-XO2xIoAno5TXQvrn-wP98O89AilyElZoW4AFY9r3PqGhN1vn2_As

The Two-Headed Russian Eagle at War
Amir Taheri/Asharq Al Awsat/June 16/2023
Has the long-promised Ukrainian “spring offensive” already started? With summer just knocking on the doors, the question is making the rounds in political circles in Europe and the United States. By last Monday French military analysts were still trying to equivocate on the subject. “The offensive may have begun in parts of southeast Ukraine,” one retired general told a TV audience.
In the US, however, another retired general, David Petraeus sounded more certain, telling The Washington Post that the offensive has already started and that he expects the Ukrainians to make significant gains.
Whistling a different tune, the maverick mandarin of realpolitik John Mearsheimer also mused about “large chunks of territory changing hands”, predicting that Russia will seize a big chunk of Ukraine and end the war.
These comments reminded me of an episode during the so-called “Great Game” when the Tsarist and British empires were at daggers drawn over Central Asia. In that episode, a Russian task force was approaching Merv, a forlorn oasis close to the Persian border. As British imperialists panicked, the popular press in London spoke of “a moment of Mervesness” that could have “unforeseeable consequences”.
Politicians, pundits, and pranksters wondered whether rivalry over control of a speck of dust in a vast ocean of territory would lead to war between the two great empires.
They were making the same mistake that many commentators on the Ukrainian conflict are making today: believing that the struggle was over a piece of land. British and French leaders made the same mistake in 1938 when they believed that all that Hitler wanted was the so-called Sudetenland, a chunk of Czechoslovakia where ethnic Germans formed a majority of the population. Even when Hitler wanted another chunk of territory, the Danzig Corridor in Poland, there were many advocates of realpolitik who demanded that the Fuehrer be appeased.
It is no accident that the Russian state emblem is a two-headed eagle wearing crowns. One head looks east, towards a vast sphere in which Mongol and Tatar cultures remain as sediments of a glorious past. Even today when Russia looks east it sees political and social systems that resemble its own ideal of statehood: People’s Republic of China, Mongolia, and North Korea. Even Japan, a bit further is closer to the Russian idea of statehood than” decadent” democracies in Western Europe or North America.
Since the end of World War II Japan has been a de facto one-party state. The newly-independent Central Asian republics are also familiar to Russia with a virtual one-party system headed by a “strong man”
The two Russian eagles don’t look south. But if they did they would see reassuring images.
After the fall of the Soviet Empire, the eagle-looking west seemed in vogue. But the hordes of Western, especially American experts, investors, businessmen, fixers, and charlatans who rushed to Russia offered a dark image of a market economy and bourgeois democracy. Vladimir Putin is the product of those dark years. Having started as a passenger on the gravy train built in Boris Yeltsin's era, he quickly realized that only by reviving the autocratic system he could perpetuate his rule and keep the gravy train on the rail.
The invasion of Georgia in 2008 and the annexation of Crimea in 2014 were designed to test the will of Western democracies and put a stop to the relentless advance of “the democratic disease” toward Russian borders.
Putin fears that if Ukraine goes “Western”, soon Belarus would also be “lost” for Russia while the younger generation in Russia is also in danger of becoming Westernized. With more than two million Russians, mostly young people, leaving the country in the past two years that fear is not without foundation.
Thus the extended war that Putin started over a year ago isn’t about chunks of land or even the conquest of Ukraine as a whole. Knowing that he cannot make the rest of Europe like Russia he hopes to create a cordon sanitaire to prevent Russia from becoming like the rest of Europe.
The war in Ukraine should not make us forget its core cause: Russia’s crisis of identity. Russia is a great and potentially powerful nation. It cannot conquer the whole of Ukraine but it has the wherewithal to continue this war for years to come. Regardless of how this war ends, what caused it will remain. Even the end of Putin may not solve a problem with which Russia has grappled for more than two centuries.
Focusing attention on what goes on on the Ukrainian battlefields should not make us forget that this war, like all wars, has deep political and cultural causes that cannot be addressed through the barrel of a gun. Finding a proper place for Russia in Europe is a huge task that cannot be undertaken by politicians struck by the short-termism of electoral cycles. The answer must come from within Russia itself with Western democracies in supporting roles. The eagle looking west ought to see brighter horizons. Right now, however, it sees an endless war while the eagle looking east sees Russia’s increasing dependence on China.

The Conflict Begins to Emerge, from Iran and Afghanistan
Huda al-Husseini/Asharq Al Awsat/June 16/2023
On May 27, the AP reported that fierce clashes between the Taliban and Iran erupted on the Iranian-Afghan border on Saturday, killing and wounding troops on both sides.
Tensions over rights to shared waters have been rising sharply for months, and after culminating in the recent border clashes, the armies of both countries have been put on high alert. At its core, this is a conflict over shared water resources. The Helmand River, which is essential to the livelihoods of the people living in this arid region and lies on a geopolitical fault line, is the main point of contention.
The Helmand River at the heart of this dispute is 1,000 kilometers long. It begins in Afghanistan and stretches into the drought-prone eastern provinces of Iran. Historically, this river has been a vital source of water for both countries. It is crucial to agriculture and electricity generation, and therefore to people’s livelihoods in this arid region.
Nonetheless, water scarcity, as well as climate change and the recurrent droughts it has caused, have aggravated matters.
Iran has been hit particularly hard. It has been suffering from severe water shortages for over three decades, leaving an estimated 97 percent of the country suffering from water scarcity, according to the Iran Meteorological Organization. Meanwhile, Afghanistan, a country that also has a scarcity of water, has had to deal with drought for the third consecutive year.
The 1973 bilateral treaty that outlined each country’s rights to the Helmand River complicates matters further. Despite the treaty, Kabul’s desire to build a dam on the river to generate electricity and irrigate the water has infuriated Iran. The dam has sparked a new series of disputes over the interpretation and implementation of the treaty.
Their row recently descended into violence. Iranian state media accused the Taliban of firing the first shot, a claim refuted by the Afghan authorities. Each country has presented a divergent narrative regarding what happened; Iran reported taking significant damage and casualties, while Afghanistan used a softer tone and downplayed the ferocity of the conflict.
Tensions remain high. The Melak border crossing, a route crucial to trade between the two countries, has been temporarily closed. Moreover, these skirmishes could well make things even worse for the 3.5 million Afghan refugees in Iran, exacerbating their already precarious situation.
The confluence of climate change, geopolitical interests, and historical grievances paint a complicated picture that could undermine bilateral relations between Kabul and Tehran.
The repercussions of the border clashes could stretch far beyond the Helmand River. Since both countries are seemingly on a collision course, regional powers will probably be pulled in. China, a pivotal actor in the region, has maintained ties with the Taliban government. It thus has a major stake in Afghanistan's political and economic trajectory.
Beijing hopes to see a safe Afghanistan where it can access the mineral wealth scattered across the country, as well as build land infrastructure projects linking the three countries (China - Iran - Afghanistan). Beijing’s plans would be put on shaky ground if a clash were to break out between the two countries, as would its status as the most influential mediator between Afghanistan and Iran.
Given that both Iran and Afghanistan have no real alternatives to China, the prospect of more Chinese investment, particularly in sectors such as energy and infrastructure, could impel them to agree to a solution.
On the other hand, given the root cause of the conflict and the millions of Afghan refugees in Iran, UN mediation is also expected to play a vital role in pushing for them to take a political approach. According to reports, short-term measures will include agreeing to a cease-fire and enhancing diplomatic channels to defuse tensions. In the long term, a sustainable water-sharing framework will be developed. It will account for climate change and other factors putting a strain on water supplies that had not been considered in the treaty that Tehran and Kabul signed in 1973.
Given the implications of climate change, resource scarcity, and geopolitical interests, the Helmand River dispute is likely to go on until a mutually acceptable solution for the 1973 bilateral treaty is found and ratified by both sides. Reports add that given its growing diplomatic influence and its recent track record in the region, China is likely to mediate, pressuring both sides to agree to a solution so that it can see the benefits of current and future projects.
In any event, the ongoing water dispute between Afghanistan and Iran presents a stark picture of the aggravating global struggles for resources that are being depleted by climate change and population growth. In fact, the manner in which these countries (under the watchful eye of regional powers and international bodies) address this dispute could well set a precedent for other water disputes we are bound to see breaking out elsewhere very soon.