6 November - 12 November 2017 - 16-min

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4 6 - 12 November, 2017 C I World www.NewDelhiTimes.com NEW DELHI TIMES Ex-rebel commander Timochenko to run for Colombia presidency olombia’s demobilized guerilla movement nominated Rodrigo Londono to run for president in the South American nation’s election next year, keeping the former top commander at the helm of the rebels’ nascent political party. Londono, better known by his alias Timochenko, became the leader of the nowdisbanded Revolutionary Armed Forces of Photo Credit : AP Photo Colombia in 2011 and has been a key figure in the peace process to end Latin America’s longest-running conflict. Londono and President Juan Manuel Santos signed a peace accord last year in which rebels agreed to lay down their arms and confess their war crimes in exchange for state pledges to improve conditions in Colombia’s poor rural communities and facilitate the rebel movement’s conversion into a political party. “The common people and those who dream of a new country Iran says supreme leader limiting ballistic missile range ran’s supreme leader has restricted the range of ballistic missiles manufactured in the country to 2,000 kilometers (1,240 miles), the head of the paramilitary Revolutionary Guard said, which limits their reach to only regional Mideast targets. The comments on Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s orders appear to be an effort by Iranian authorities to contrast their missile program, which they often describe as being for defensive purposes, against those of countries like North Korea, which poses a threat to the United States. “It is a political decision,” said Michael Elleman, the senior fellow for missile defense at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in Washington. “I think with the supreme leader saying it, it takes on a little more significance.” The range of 2,000 kilometers encompasses much of the Middle East, including Israel and American military bases in the region. That’s a concern for the U.S. and its allies, but Iran’s ballistic missile program was not included in the 2015 nuclear deal that it struck with world powers. Speaking on the sidelines of a conference in Tehran, Gen. Mohammad Ali Jafari told journalists that the capability of Iran’s ballistic missiles is “enough for now.” The Guard runs Iran’s missile program, answering only to Khamenei. “Today, the range of our missiles, as the policies of Iran’s supreme leader dictate, are limited to 2,000 kilometers, even though we are capable of increasing this range,” he said. “Americans, their forces and their interests are situated will have their representation,” said Ivan Marquez, a former rebel leader who served as chief negotiator during talks with the government. The selection of Londono falls in line with previous steps the ex-combatants have taken in recent months to ensure the group’s historical leaders remain at the forefront of their political agenda. The former rebels have changed their official name but preserved the Spanish acronym by which they are known, the FARC. The party is led by a political council that consists almost entirely of leaders who have spent decades with the organization. Polls within Colombia indicate the FARC remains deeply unpopular, though one recent Gallup survey said the ex-combatants have a higher approval rating than the nation’s traditional political parties. Recent corruption scandals and division over the peace process have tarnished many Colombians’ opinion of their nation’s political leaders. Still, Londono and the other former rebels vying for political office are certain to face an uphill battle. FARC leaders are hoping to mobilize longmarginalized Colombians living in one of the world’s most unequal nations. The peace accord guarantees the ex-combatants 10 seats in Congress, and candidates for those posts were also announced. They have settled on a political platform that is scarce within a 2,000-kilometer radius around us and we are able to respond to any possible desperate attack by them.” However, Jafari said he didn’t believe there would be war between Iran and the U.S. “They know that if they begin a war between Iran and the United States, they will definitely be the main losers and their victory will by no means be guaranteed,” he said. “Therefore, they won’t start a war.” While keeping with the anti-American tone common in his speeches, Jafari’s comments seemed to be timed to calm tensions over Iran’s missile program. By limiting their range, Iran can contrast itself with North Korea, as Pyongyang has tested developmental intercontinental ballistic missiles that could potentially reach the U.S. mainland and conducted its most powerful nuclear test to date. Pyongyang also flew two powerful new midrange missiles over Japan, between threats to fire the same weapons toward Guam, a U.S. Pacific territory and military hub. The Trump administration already sanctioned Iran for test-firing a ballistic missile in February, with then-National Security Adviser Michael Flynn warning Tehran that Iran was “on notice.” President Donald Trump’s recent refusal to re-certify the nuclear accord has sent the matter to the U.S. Congress. The U.S. House of Representatives voted to put new sanctions on Iran for its pursuit of longrange ballistic missiles, without derailing on details, but will prioritize eliminating corruption, promoting social and economic equality and eradicating poverty. Imelda Daza Cotes, who the FARC is nominating for vice president, said the party’s idea is not to change the nation’s economic model but to improve it. “We want a model that is more inclusive,” she said. “A model that is more humane.” The FARC was formed in the early 1960s by guerrillas affiliated with Colombia’s Communist Party. At least 250,000 people were killed, another 60,000 left missing, and millions displaced in more than five decades of conflict between rebels, government forces and right-wing paramilitaries. The first year of the peace accord’s implementation has been marked both by key milestones, like the rebels’ disarmament, and considerable setbacks. Dozens of social leaders have been killed, and new illegal groups have moved into remote parts of Colombia formerly controlled by the FARC. The rebels have also complained about dire conditions in demobilization camps that have made transition to civilian life difficult. The launch of the FARC’s political party has been met with resistance from leaders like former President Alvaro Uribe who warn it would turn the nation into another Venezuela, the neighboring Andean nation whose socialist government has brought the country to economic calamity. the deal. Iran long has insisted its ballistic missiles are for defensive purposes. It suffered a barrage of Scud missiles fired by Iraq after dictator Saddam Hussein launched an eight-year war with his neighbor in the 1980s that killed 1 million people. To build its own program, Tehran purchased North Korean missiles and technology, providing much-needed cash to heavily sanctioned Pyongyang. Iran today likely has the capability to go beyond 2,000 kilometers with its Photo Credit : AP Photo Khorramshahr ballistic missile, though it chose to limit its range by putting a heavier warhead on it in testing, Elleman said. “It will be interesting to see how Iran reconciles this Khorramshahr missile with the supreme leader’s dictate,” he said. “Iran may say, ‘Well, we’re fitting it with this big warhead so we’re not exceeding this limitation,’ but the modification is very simple.” The Gulf Arab nations surrounding Iran, while hosting American military bases, also fly sophisticated U.S. fighter jets that Iranian forces can’t match. The ballistic missiles provide leverage against them, as Uribe blasted the FARC candidates as “delinquents” guilty of crimes against humanity. “We will confront them,” he pledged. Many Colombians want rebels banned from politics until they go before a special peace tribunal. Former rebels are being permitted to run for office before they are tried, but if the court orders them detained, that sentence could prevent them from continuing to participate in politics. “Political participation is guaranteed in the accords,” Rodrigo Rivera, Colombia’s peace commissioner said. “But it’s not unconditional.” Most rebels will be spared of any jail time under the agreement’s terms. Londono was hospitalized in July following a stroke and has largely kept a low profile since the peace accord’s signing. Adam Isacson of the Washington Office of Latin America think tank said the former rebel commander is likely the FARC’s best candidate for president. He is considered less polarizing than other FARC leaders and many associate him positively with the group’s decision to pursue peace. “I guess the old guard feels this is there time,” he said. “It’s now or never if they’re going to do this.” Credit : Associated Press (AP) well as the U.S.-made anti-missile batteries their neighbors have bought, according to Tytti Erasto, a researcher at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. “Iran’s pattern of missile testing — which has sought to address the long-standing problem of poor accuracy — is consistent with the program’s stated purpose as a regional deterrent,” Erasto wrote. “It also reinforces the argument that Iran’s missiles are designed to be conventional, not nuclear.” Still, Iran could use the missiles as “a tool of coercion and intimidation,” said Behnam Ben Taleblu, the senior Iran analyst at the Washington-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies, which takes a hard line on Tehran and is skeptical of the nuclear deal. “A secure Islamic Republic that does not fear kinetic reprisal is more likely to engage in low-level proxy wars and foreign adventurism, much like we see today,” he said. Meanwhile on 31st October, Iran broke ground at its Bushehr nuclear power plant for two more atomic reactors to generate electricity. State television quoted Ali Akbar Salehi, the head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, as saying the first new reactor would go online in seven years, while a third would be active in nine years. Russia will provide assistance in building the new reactors as Moscow helped bring Bushehr online in 2011. It marks the first expansion of Iran’s nuclear power industry since the atomic accord. Credit : Associated Press (AP)
6 - 12 November, 2017 5 T World Islamic State’s Global Reach Shrinking : Analysts he Islamic State terror group is trying to sell a transnational image, but its future doesn’t lie West of the Middle East, according to analysts. The group’s claims do not match its actual operational capacity, according to researchers, but the focus by Western media and politicians of IS-inspired or directed attacks on civilians in America and Europe is obscuring the limits of the terror group’s reach. According to the Terrorism Research and Analysis Consortium, the future of the jihadist terror group lies mostly east of the Levant and not in Western cities as the center of the gravity of its operations shifts to the Philippines and Asia. In an exhaustive study of attacks claimed outside Iraq and Syria from May to September for the past three years, TRAC found a disparity between IS’s worldwide propaganda campaign and actual attacks. “IS’s highlighting of terror attacks against civilians in Western Europe, and the mainstream media’s obsession with those attacks, serves to obscure important aspects of Islamic State strategy,” said Veryan Khan, TRAC’s editorial director. The consortium’s assessment “reveals as much about Islamic State’s limitations as its aspirations,” she said. More than half of all IS claimed attacks outside the Levant are focused on just three countries: the Philippines, Afghanistan and Egypt. “TRAC contends that these places, which receive scant Western attention, represent the narrative of IS future territory,” the research consortium says in its report “Islamic State - Outside the Caliphate by the Numbers.” At first glance, IS’s global reach for attacks would appear to be expanding. IS propagandists claimed 21 attacks in seven Japan’s Parliament re-elects Shinzo Abe as Prime Minister J apan’s lower house of parliament has re-elected Shinzo Abe as prime minister after his party won a resounding victory in a snap election last month. Abe easily won the race with 312 votes in the 465-seat lower house. The 63-year-old Abe dissolved the lower house in late September to force an election. Political analysts saw the move as an attempt to win a fresh public mandate and re-establish his hold on power after a plunge in his approval ratings last summer. The Oct. 22 election victory boosted Abe’s chances of being re-elected as leader of his Liberal Democratic Party next September to a fresh three-year term. He has been prime minister since December 2012. countries from May 20 to September 22, 2015. The following year for the corresponding four-month period they claimed 80 attacks in 21 countries. The number of attack claims nearly tripled in 2017 with 222 in 21 countries, but 175 of them, account for 80 percent, occurred in just three countries, the Philippines (99 claims), Afghanistan (43 claims), and Egypt (33 claims). In the case of those three countries, just three areas in them accounted for 115 of the 222 claimed attacks, Marawi city in Philippines’ Autonomous Region of Muslim Photo Credit : Shutterstock Majority, Nangahar province in Afghanistan and Egypt’s upper Sinai. IS also appears to be unable to maintain attacks in several countries. During 2017 the group could not claim repeat attacks, either directed or inspired in 10 countries that had seen attack claims in 2015, Bangladesh went from six claims in 2016 to none in 2017; Saudi Arabia had three in 2015 but none since. “The inability to repeat attacks in the same location summer after summer highlights the Islamic State’s lack of sustainability,” the TRAC argues. The number-crunching by TRAC provides an alternative picture about IS’s likely future. Western media coverage focuses on claimed attacks in Europe and America, understandably as those attacks are occurring in their own backyard, but it boosts the IS threat and often fails to provide context. In 2017, Britain topped the newcomer’s list with three high-profile claimed attacks, which received more attention in the Western media than the siege of Marawi in the Philippines, and the nearly 70 claimed attacks in the country Western intelligence agencies say there will be more IS-linked attacks in the West for the foreseeable future, despite the shrinking of the territory the jihadist group controls in the Levant, where it has lost all its urban strongholds and is now confined to the sparsely-inhabited border territories between Iraq and Syria. Analysts say the so-called Caliphate was useful in the marketing of IS and attracting foreign recruits, as well as allowing the group to differentiate itself from rival al- Qaida, which opposed the setting up of an Islamic state and ridiculed the group’s leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s self-appointment as caliph. Now one of the only ways for the terror group to remain relevant and to try to continue to outshine its jihadist competitor al-Qaida, say French and Belgian intelligence officials, is to strike the West as frequently as it can. But officials are taking some consolation in the fact that most attacks claimed by the group in the West have been inspired, rather than directed or organized by IS. “We may look back at the coordinated November 2015 Paris attacks and identify them as the high point in the IS threat in the West,” a senior British intelligence official told VOA. He added, “What we have seen since are mainly low-tech, opportunistic incidents by lone wolves. That may not be any comfort to the public, but in an odd way it should be. My longer-term concern is what we can expect from al-Qaida, which is re-grouping and has the patience and depth of operatives to pull off spectacular strategic attacks.” Credit : Voice of America (VOA) NEW DELHI TIMES Germany marks 500th anniversary of Martin Luther’s G challenge erman leaders on 31st October marked the 500th anniversary since the day Martin Luther is said to have nailed his theses challenging the Catholic Church to a church door, a starting point of the Reformation. German Chancellor Angela Merkel and President Frank-Walter Steinmeier took part in a service in the famous Castle Church in Wittenberg, where Luther supposedly posted his 95 Theses on Oct. 31, 1517. In remembrance of the 500th anniversary, Reformation day was a public holiday in Germany this year. Thousands of people were participating in different church services throughout the day in the eastern German town of Wittenberg. The city also celebrated the anniversary with a medieval-style street festival including arts and cultural events. As Protestantism spread following Luther’s revolt against the Catholic Church, religious wars erupted, dividing western Christianity in a schism that resulted in hundreds of years of violence, persecution and discrimination. Merkel, in a speech in Wittenberg, stressed the importance of tolerance toward the wide variety of beliefs. “Those who embrace plurality must exercise tolerance — that is the historical experience of our continent,” she said. “Tolerance is the basis for peaceful togetherness in Europe.” Both Lutheran and Catholic clergy, who participated in different church services and celebrations throughout the day, vowed to do more for the unity of Christianity and to overcome differences. Credit : Associated Press (AP) Credit : Associated Press (AP) www.NewDelhiTimes.com
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6 November - 12 November 2017 - 16-min

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