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آگوست 1, 2022

Explained: How Iraq’s competing Shia groups are pushing it towards a new conflict

Shiite Muslim political and paramilitary groups are escalating a tense political standoff which many Iraqis worry could lead to new conflict in the country.
Iraq’s longest post-election political deadlock has given way to demonstrations on both sides of a Shia divide, led by the mercurial cleric Moqtada al-Sadr on one side and a collection of mostly Iran-aligned groups on the other, known together as the Coordination Framework.

The Sadrist movement
Moqtada Al-Sadr led an armed insurgency against the US occupation of Iraq after American and international troops toppled Sunni Muslim dictator Saddam Hussein. He inherited a mass following of mostly impoverished Shi’ites from his cleric father who opposed Saddam and was killed for it.
Sadr opposes all foreign interference, especially from Iran, and accuses his Shi’ite rivals of corruption.
In addition to his millions of followers, he has a thousands-strong militia and wields enormous power within the Iraqi state, where his loyalists control money and power.
Sadr’s huge number of supporters enable him to act as a spoiler in Iraq’s politics. Supporters of Sadr erected tents and prepared for an open-ended sit-in at Iraq’s parliament on Sunday, fueling instability.
The Coordination Framework
Nouri Al-Maliki
A former prime minister and leader of the Dawa party which dominated successive Iraqi governments after 2003, Nouri Al-Maliki has close ties with Iran, which supported Dawa’s opposition to Saddam during the 1980s Iran-Iraq war. He has links with armed militias, deep state power and is Sadr’s fiercest opponent.
Hadi Al-Amiri
Leader of the Badr Organisation, which started as a Shiite paramilitary group supported by Iran in the 1980s. Badr makes up a big part of the Popular Mobilisation Forces, the heavily armed Iraqi state paramilitary organisation that contains dozens of Iran-backed factions. Amiri is a key leader in the Coordination Framework.
Qais Al-Khazali
The former insurgent who fought as part of Sadr’s Mehdi Army against US troops split off to form his own militia, Asaib Ahl al-Haq, which became a military-political group and holds a number of seats in parliament. Khazali’s group is heavily armed and actively involved in social media groups which distribute the messaging of Iran-backed paramilitary factions.
Haider Al-Abadi and Ammar Al-Hakim
These two moderate Shiite politicians are part of the Coordination Framework, but do not openly support any particular armed factions. Hakim is a cleric whose uncle Ahmed Baqir al-Hakim led the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, a party founded in Iran that ran Iraq’s interior ministry after the US invasion.
Abadi, a former prime minister, is a senior leader in the Dawa party who led Iraq to its defeat of the Sunni extremist Islamic State group in 2017.
Kataib Hezbollah
This paramilitary group is one of the elite factions closest to Iran. It fielded a political party for the first time in elections last year, and won several seats in parliament. It is widely accused of being behind many attacks on US military and diplomatic targets in Iraq, but does not openly confirm or deny involvement.
It has no publicly announced leadership structure, but its senior member Abdul Aziz al-Mohammedawi is military chief of the PMF.
Other heavily armed militia include Amiri’s Badr Organisation, Khazali’s Asaib Ahl al-Haq, Sadr’s Peace Brigades, and a number of other groups mostly aligned with Iran.
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ژوئن 25, 2022

Explained Books | Prescription for post-Covid world: resilience

“The Covid-19 pandemic has worked like an X-ray machine, revealing the hidden challenges under the surface of many societies,” Markus K Brunnermeier says in the introduction to his book. Indeed, the pandemic has hit every country — the adverse health impact was just the starting point; the virus ended up disrupting every aspect of society, and the global economic order.
Complex supply chains built and refined over decades had to be abruptly shut down or broken to prevent or slow the infection’s spread. Jobs and livelihoods were lost, inequalities of all kinds widened, governments were pushed to pile on millions of dollars of debt to extend relief, and central banks had to resort to every possible way to stimulate the economy even as health systems collapsed and countries and societies turned more insular and protectionist.

The Covid-19 shock pushed back most countries by several years, possibly decades. And just as it appeared that the world was starting to break free from the seemingly unending cycles of lockdowns, Russia invaded Ukraine, unleashing consequences that reverberated around the world — from costlier fuel prices to scarcity of food items to dramatically heightened geopolitical tensions.
Within just a couple of years, the world economy has swung from trying to avoid a prolonged deflation to desperately fighting inflation. The post-Cold War consensus around globalisation, already under strain from the time of the global financial crisis of 2008-09, has now developed into a militant desire to reduce dependence on other countries.
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Was the world prepared to survive these shocks in 2020? Is it prepared in 2022? More importantly, will it be prepared in the future? If so, how?
In The Resilient Society, Princeton University economist Brunnermeier details the global economic fallout of the Covid disruption. Many of the book’s key insights are distilled from a Princeton webinar series called Markus Academy, which featured influential economists, including more than a dozen Nobel laureates.

In the end, for the author, the touchstone for any society, economy, or indeed the world is “resilience”, or the ability to rebound. It is resilience that sets the reed apart from the robust oak, which has the ability to resist. “I bend but do not break” — that is the essence of resilience.
After explaining the concept and how societies could be redesigned to become resilient in part 1 of the book, Brunnermeier uses Covid to explain the core elements of resilience management in part 2. In parts 3 and 4, he looks at macroeconomic and global challenges that countries face.
The book was released last year, but the Ukraine crisis shows, even though the world has moved to the next shock, Brunnermeier was spot on in underscoring the need to be resilient. The main lesson for societies
is to give up the “just in time” production approach that accords primacy to efficiency, and instead move towards a “just in case” approach that allows for safety buffers.

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ژوئن 17, 2022

Explained: How Saudi big money has shaken up golf’s status quo

This week, Brookline, Massachusetts is hosting the ‘toughest test in golf’, as the US Open is often described as. But the last few weeks can also be referred to as the ‘toughest test of golf’ as developments on the course and off it threaten to tear the professional game apart.
The US-based PGA Tour has been the toughest, most prestigious and most lucrative golf circuit in the world, with most upcoming players aspiring to it as if it were the Holy Grail. Together with the DP World Tour (formerly called the European Tour), it has dominated the golfing scene for decades.

Now, a Saudi-funded venture with immensely deep pockets has threatened the status quo, tempting the best players in the world with lucrative contracts and guaranteed prize money to play in their LIV Golf events. Some of the top golfers have jumped ship and the PGA Tour has wasted little time in suspending their membership.Best of Express PremiumPremiumPremiumPremiumPremium
But the big names who have opted to switch sides are free to tee up at the US Open and, in all likelihood, next month’s 150th Open Championship on The Old Course at St. Andrews, considered the home of golf.
However, it seems likely that they will not be allowed to be involved in any capacity in future Ryder Cups or Presidents Cups.
What is the row all about?
The Public Investment Fund (PIF), the sovereign wealth fund of Saudi Arabia, has spent a lot of money on elite sports, which critics allege is a means to spruce up the image of the Saudi ruling regime, called ‘sportswashing’. The kingdom is accused of several human rights violations and also came under a cloud after the murder of The Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi. The launch of a rival venture against an established US-based tour touches a raw nerve in the USA as 15 of the 19 hijackers in the 9/11 attacks hailed from Saudi Arabia.

The PGA Tour refused to grant waivers to its players for playing in the LIV Golf events. Some of the players even resigned their membership to avoid future sanctions or litigation.
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What is the format?
LIV stands for 54 in Roman numerals and the tournaments are 54-hole affairs, in contrast to 72 on traditional tours, and played over three days, not four as is generally the case.
Each event features 48 players and has a team and individual competition. The teams have four members each. The players tee off at the same time on different holes in what is termed a ‘shotgun start’. This is to reduce the time taken for a round, in a bid to make it more TV-friendly.
How much money is on offer?
The biggest names in golf have been offered astronomical sums – often in hundreds of millions of dollars – to join the new venture. This is just the signing amount.
Fronted by former world Number 1 Greg Norman, LIV Golf has lined up eight events in 2022. Each of them will have a prize fund of $25 million, making them comfortably more lucrative than any tournament on the PGA Tour. The winner will take home $4m, another high. The final event will see the winning team getting $16m, with each member getting 25 percent.
There is no cut and the player finishing last will still be richer by $120,000. In contrast, on other tours, players missing the cut don’t get any prize money.
Who all have joined and why?
Dustin Johnson, Bryson DeChambeau, Patrick Reed, Charl Schwartzel, Louis Oosthuizen, Ian Poulter, Graeme McDowell and Phil Mickelson are some of the prominent names on the LIV Golf roster.
Some of them like Poulter and McDowell have justified their decision, arguing that they are global professionals, while sidestepping the moral questions thrown at them.
“No one’s going to argue that fact but we’re golfers. We’re not politicians. If Saudi Arabia want to use the game of golf as a way for them to get to where they want to be, we’re proud to help them on that journey,” McDowell said.
Poulter said: “I regard myself as a global golfer and I have been for 24 years. I’ve played on numerous tours and events around the world and that is what I’m continuing to do.”
Others didn’t hide the fact that it was about the money.
Johnson had earlier pledged his allegiance to the PGA Tour before having a change of heart and resigning his membership.
“I don’t want to play for the rest of my life, this gives me an opportunity to do what I want to do,” Johnson said.
DeChambeau calls his move “a business decision, first and foremost.”
“There was a lot of financials to it and a lot of time. I get to have a life outside of the game of golf as well. It’s given me a lot more opportunities outside of the game of golf and given me more time with my family and my future family,” DeChambeau said.

Some others are in their late 40s and early 50s and know their best golfing days are behind them. They may want to cash in while they can.
Why are so many LIV Golf players still in the US Open field?
The golf establishment hasn’t hidden its disappointment at the big names deserting the official tours. But the US Open is organised by the United States Golf Association (USGA), and not the PGA Tour. The criteria for earning a berth in the Major was decided much before LIV Golf emerged on the scene, so it was argued that denying them the opportunity to play would be unfair on those who have made it on merit. Many of them are past champions and have gained exemptions.
Are there any parallels in other sports?
If one can earn much more by playing much less, there’s a great temptation. It is the logic of T20 cricket professionals who go around the world playing in various leagues while not always turning up for their national teams. It is less taxing on the body and leaves one with ample time for themselves.

مارس 11, 2022

With UP win, BJP breaks trend of state losses after 2014

THE RETURN of Yogi Adityanath as Chief Minister in Uttar Pradesh after a full five-year term not only marks a watershed in the state’s political history but, along with the BJP’s victory in three other states, upends the party’s national trend of losses in states after Narendra Modi took charge at the Centre in 2014.
In effect, it secures for the party the pole position in national politics based on electoral affirmation for its governance record.
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Since 2014, the BJP has lost its incumbent governments in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra and Jharkhand while scraping through in Haryana. It did cobble up numbers in Madhya Pradesh, overturning the Kamal Nath-led Congress government in 2020.

“We have broken that jinx now,” said a senior leader, “that we cannot retain power in the states under the new political scenario.”
“Uttar Pradesh has given a mandate to the BJP in 2014, 2017, and 2019. It is historic since 1985 and the thread we can weave into this is the victory of the new narrative of development, welfare, youth opportunity without discrimination, safety and security and law and order. It proves the trust the party has built-in which forced the pro-incumbency wave,” said Rajeev Chandrasekhar, who was part of the BJP’s campaign strategy scheme.

Karnataka Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai saw the outcome as setting a new course in national politics, which would make the “India concept” of Prime Minister Modi a reality. “The pro-incumbency factor comes when the people understand the leader and they feel the honesty of the government. What we saw today is a pan-India mandate – from Goa in the deep south to central Uttar Pradesh to Manipur in the east to Uttarakhand in the hills. It also gives hints on what is coming in 2024,” Bommai told The Indian Express. “It has a positive bearing on us in the Karnataka unit and we will work hard to reach the people’s programmes to them at the ground.”

Said a senior Cabinet minister: “We have recognised a new votebank – women and labharthis (beneficiaries) to support us. They have taken this election beyond caste and religious lines. The BJP president, even in a meeting Wednesday evening, had reiterated that if the party wins, it would be the dawn of a new politics in Indian electoral history.”

According to Bhupender Yadav, Union minister and a senior BJP leader, the pro-incumbency factor came into play because the people wanted to continue the pro-poor policies of the Modi government. “People wanted double-engine governments so that they can benefit the maximum out of them. It is an approval of the policies of the Modi government that it had in the past seven years,” he said.
Ahead of the elections, the BJP mobilised and conducted several rounds of meetings with beneficiaries from the booth level to the district level – a potential 25-crore support base at the national level, according to the party.

Under the PM Gareeb Kalyan Anna Yojna, started during the Covid-19 pandemic, there are about 150 million beneficiaries who receive free ration every month, party leaders said. The party also reached out with its digital campaign to 5.5 crore of the estimated total Internet penetration of 8.3 crore people in UP, sources said.
The victory in Uttar Pradesh could reshape the power equations inside the party. “It is the first time a Chief Minister is emerging so powerful in the BJP in its new form. Yogi is returning to power in the biggest state and the vote share has gone up by two percentage points (from 39.67 % to 41.6 % ) which will make him a very powerful leader, elevating him to a national level. He will be the most sought-after campaigner now,” admitted a senior party leader.

Although resentment and anger over joblessness among the youth was palpable on the ground in Uttar Pradesh, the Akhilesh Yadav-led SP did not appear to enjoy the trust of the voters as an alternative to Yogi Adityanath. Nor did the SP have the party machinery or organisation network to cash in on and transform it into votes.
While the BJP cadre was mobilised and motivated by senior party leader and Home Minister Amit Shah who has a considerable hold over the organisation, Modi and Yogi cashed in on their public connect and popularity.
According to a party leader, the Opposition’s failure in mobilising people on the ground also made BJP’s victories easier. “While the Opposition made politics an electoral affair, the BJP is on the ground 24X7X365,” said the leader who has been in charge of BJP in a number of states.