Moldova, fearing Russia, wants to join EU 'as soon as possible'

Marc PREEL and Marc BURLEIGH
Thu, May 18, 2023 

For Moldovan President Maia Sandu, EU membership is the only guarantee against becoming Russia's next target

Moldova wants EU membership "as soon as possible" as protection against a threat from Russia and hopes for a decision to start negotiations "in the next months," President Maia Sandu told AFP in an interview.

The small nation of 2.6 million people, nestled between EU neighbour Romania and war-ravaged Ukraine, will on June 1 hold its first major summit of wider Europe.

That gathering of the European Political Community -- a forum created last year that brings together leaders of all 27 EU countries with 20 neighbours of the bloc -- will be an occasion for Moldova to burnish its candidate credentials.

For Sandu, EU membership is the only guarantee against becoming Russia's next target.

Her country, a former Soviet republic, already has a breakaway region, Transnistria, where Russia has stationed a small number of troops.

"Of course, nothing compares to what is happening in Ukraine, but we see the risks and we do believe that we can save our democracy only as part of the EU," she said.

"We do believe that Russia will continue to be a big source of instability for the years to come and we need to protect ourselves," added Sandu, on the sidelines of a Council of Europe of summit in Iceland that wrapped up on Tuesday.

The 50-year-old leader, in office since 2020, in February accused Russia of fomenting a coup to try to seize power in Moldova.

She has called for Moldovans -- who polls show are overwhelmingly behind joining the European Union -- to hold a pro-EU rally on Sunday.

"The Ukraine war made things black and white. So it's very clear what the free world means, and what the authoritarian world means, for all of us," she said.

- 'Realistic project' -

Russia's war next door suddenly firmed up the prospect of EU membership for Ukraine and Moldova.

Both countries applied last year to join the bloc and in June 2022 became candidate countries, along with Georgia.

"We do believe that this is a realistic project for us and we are looking forward to see this happening as soon as possible," Sandu said.

Membership, however, could take a decade or more to attain, given the long list of requirements candidate countries must meet to be able to sit alongside the other nations in the European single market.

Unlike Ukraine, Moldova is small enough to be able to be integrated into the European Union relatively easily.

But it faces several challenges to bring its democratic standards up to EU levels, notably in terms of fighting corruption.

Its fragile economy, energy security and the issue of Transnistria, with its 30,000 pro-Russian population, all need to be addressed as well.

Transnistria, in the east of Moldova, is not recognised by the international community. The zone sprang up in 1990 after a brief civil war that erupted when the Soviet Union collapsed, and ended up from 1992 as a frozen conflict.

"We are struggling to have peaceful resolution of the conflict, and we've been calling on Russia to withdraw its illegally stationed troops," Sandu said.

"We need a geopolitical opportunity to be able to solve the conflict."

The president, who has started the process of taking her country out of the Russia-dominated Commonwealth of Independent States, added: "What kind of relations can you have with a regime which kills innocent people in the neighbouring country?"

Moldova was ready to cooperate only with "democratic countries, with countries which respect the territorial integrity of other countries, which respect the international rules based system," she said.

Russia brandished Ukraine's desire to one day join NATO as one of its justifications for invading its neighbour.

For Moldova, that is not a door on which it is about to knock.

Moldova was not rethinking its stance of being a neutral country for now, Sandu said.

"But there are discussions in our society about whether neutrality protects us and if at some point people will change their view, of course we will reconsider this decision. In the meantime, we are trying to consolidate the defence sector of Moldova and we are counting on our friends."

For "friends" Moldova is leaning heavily on the other participating countries of the European Political Community.

The June 1 summit in Chisnau, Sandu said, "is important because we see that we are not alone, that we have many friends".

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Women's secret war: the inside story of how the US military sent female soldiers on covert combat missions to Afghanistan


Jennifer Greenburg, Lecturer in International Relations, University of Sheffield
Mon, May 22, 2023 

THE CONVERSATION

US marines with a female engagement team in southern Helmand province, Afghanistan, in May 2012. Cpl. Meghan Gonzales/DVIDS

LONG READ

A US Army handbook from 2011 opens one of its chapters with a line from Rudyard Kipling’s poem The Young British Soldier. Written in 1890 upon Kipling’s return to England from India, an experienced imperial soldier gives advice to the incoming cohort:


When you’re wounded and left on Afghanistan’s plains, And the women come out to cut up what remains …

The handbook, distributed in 2011 at the height of the US’s counterinsurgency in Afghanistan, invoked Kipling and other imperial voices to warn its soldiers that:

Neither the Soviets in the early 1980s nor the west in the past decade have progressed much beyond Kipling’s early 20th-century warning when it comes to understanding Afghan women. In that oversight, we have ignored women as a key demographic in counterinsurgency.

Around this time, a growing number of US military units were – against official military policy – training and posting all-women counterinsurgency teams alongside their male soldiers.

Women were still banned from direct assignment to ground combat units. However, these female soldiers were deployed to access Afghan women and their households in the so-called “battle for hearts and minds” during the Afghanistan war, which began on October 7 2001 when the US and British militaries carried out an air assault, followed by a ground invasion, in response to the September 11 attacks.

And these women also played critical roles in gathering intelligence. Their sexuality – ironically, the basis of the excuse the US military had long given for avoiding integrating women into combat units – was now seen as an intelligence asset, as the army handbook made clear:

Like all adolescent males, young Afghan males have a natural desire to impress females. Using this desire to interact with and impress females can be advantageous to US military forces when done respectfully to both the female soldier and the adolescent Afghan males. Female soldiers can often obtain different and even more in-depth information from Afghan males than can male soldiers.

Whether collecting intelligence or calming victims of a US special forces raid, female soldiers – often despite a lack of proper training – played a central yet largely invisible role in the Afghanistan war. Their recollections of what they experienced on these tours call into question official narratives both of women breaking through the “brass ceiling” of the US military, and the war having been fought in the name of Afghan women’s rights and freedom.

Since the US’s final withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021, the Taliban’s rollback of women’s rights has concluded a brutal chapter in a story of competing feminisms over the past two decades of war.

US female marines crouching with their weapons

Female counterinsurgency teams in Afghanistan

Between 2010 and 2017, while conducting research at six US military bases and several US war colleges, I met a number of women who spoke of having served on special forces teams and in combat in Afghanistan and Iraq. This was surprising as women were then still technically banned from many combat roles – US military regulations only changed in 2013 such that, by 2016, all military jobs were open to women.

Fascinated by their experiences, I later interviewed 22 women who had served on these all-female counterinsurgency teams. The interviews, alongside other observations of development contractors on US military bases and the ongoing legacies of US imperial wars, inform my new book At War with Women: Military Humanitarianism and Imperial Feminism in an Era of Permanent War.

By 2017, enough time had lapsed that the women could speak openly about their deployments. Many had left the military – in some cases disenchanted by the sexism they confronted, or with the idea of returning to an official job in logistics having served on more prestigious special forces teams.

This article is part of Conversation Insights
The Insights team generates long-form journalism derived from interdisciplinary research. The team is working with academics from different backgrounds who have been engaged in projects aimed at tackling societal and scientific challenges.

In 2013, Ronda* supported a mission deployed to Kandahar, Afghanistan’s second-largest city. She was one of only two women living on a remote base with the Operational Detachment Alpha – the primary fighting force for the Green Berets (part of the US Army’s special forces).

For Ronda, one of the most rewarding aspects of this deployment was the image she carried of herself as a feminist example for Afghan women. She recalled:

Just letting the girls see there’s more out there [in the wider world] than what you have here, that was very empowering. I think they really appreciated it. In full kit I look like a dude, [but] that first instance when you take off your helmet and they see your hair and see you are female … A lot of times they have never seen a female before who didn’t just take care of the garden and take care of the kids. That was very empowering.

Female soldiers talking to a local woman in front of a helicopter

Amanda, who had been on a similar mission to Uruzgan province in southern Afghanistan a year earlier, also described inspiring local women – in her case, via stories she shared through her interpreter of life in New York City, and what it was like to be a female soldier. Amanda lived alongside the male soldiers in an adobe hut with a thatched roof, and was unable to shower for the full 47 days of the mission. But she recalled going out into the village with pride:

You see the light, especially in the females’ eyes, when they see other females from a different country – [it] kind of gives them perspective that there is more to the world than Afghanistan.

Publicly, the US military presented its female counterinsurgency teams as feminist emblems, while keeping their combat roles and close attachment to special forces hidden. A 2012 army news article quoted a member of one female engagement team (FET) describing the “positive responses from the Afghan population” she believed they had received:

I think seeing our FET out there gives Afghan women hope that change is coming … They definitely want the freedom American women enjoy.

However, the US military’s mistreatment of its female workforce undermines this notion of freedom – as do the warped understandings of Afghan culture, history and language that both male and female soldiers brought with them on their deployments. Such complexity calls into question US military claims of providing feminist opportunities for US women, and of acting in Afghan women’s best interests.

As a logistics officer, Beth had been trained to manage the movement of supplies and people. She said she was ill-prepared for the reality she confronted when visiting Afghan villages with one of the cultural support teams (CSTs), as they were also known, in 2009.

Beth’s pre-deployment training had included “lessons learned” from the likes of Kipling and Lawrence of Arabia. It did not prepare her to understand why she encountered such poverty when visiting Afghan villages. She recalled:

Imagine huts – and tons of women, men and children in these huts … We had to tell these women: ‘The reason your children are getting sick is because you’re not boiling your water.’ I mean, that’s insane. Look at when the bible was written. Even then, people knew how to boil their water – they talked about clean and unclean, kosher, and that they know what’s going to rot. How did Jesus get the memo and you didn’t?

A female Afghan role-player wraps a headscarf around a female soldier while a third female soldier looks on.

‘Ambassadors of western feminism’

By observing lessons in military classrooms, I learned how young US soldiers (men and women) went through pre-deployment training that still leaned on the perspectives of British colonial officers such as T.E. Lawrence and C.E. Callwell. There was a tendency to portray Afghan people as unsophisticated children who needed parental oversight to usher them into modernity.

US military representations of Afghan women as homogeneous and helpless, contrasting with western women as models of liberation, also ignored Afghan and Islamic feminist frameworks that have long advocated for women’s rights. The notion of US female soldiers modelling women’s rights was often linked with representations of Afghan people as backward and needing models from elsewhere.

To skirt the military policy that in the mid-2000s still banned women from direct assignment to ground combat units, female soldiers were “temporarily attached” to all-male units and encouraged not to speak openly about the work they were doing, which typically entailed searching local women at checkpoints and in home raids.

Rochelle wrote in her journal about her experiences of visiting Afghan villages: “Out the gate I went, [with] headscarf and pistol …” Like Beth’s use of a biblical reference to explain the Afghan villages she confronted, Rochelle placed Afghanistan far backward in time. In one diary entry about a village meeting, she reflected:

For years, I have always wondered what it would be like to live in the Stone Age – and now I know. I see it every day all around me. People walking around in clothes that haven’t been washed, ones they have worn for years. Children with hair white from days of dust build-up. Six-year-old girls carrying around their baby brothers. Eyes that tell a story of years of hardship. Houses made of mud and wooden poles, squares cut out for windows. Dirty misshapen feet.

A cultural considerations matrix.

When Rochelle was not accompanying the male patrols, she was visiting girls’ schools and holding meetings with Afghan women about how her unit could help support income-generating opportunities for women, such as embroidery or selling food. Her logic, that this would reduce Taliban support and recruitment, echoed USAID programmes that still today claim targeted economic opportunity can “counter violent extremism”.

Amelia, a female soldier attached to a special forces mission, spoke of how she was an asset because:

We were not threatening, we were just there. For Afghan men, we were fascinating because we were these independent women in a different role than they see for most women there. And we were non-threatening to them, so they could talk to us openly.

Strikingly, Amelia admitted that she and other female soldiers played a similar role for their American counterparts too:

For the [male] marines, just having us there helped kind of calm things down. We would do things to try to give back to them – like we baked for them frequently. That was not our role and I don’t want anyone to think that we were a “baking team”, but we would do things like that and it really helped. Like a motherly touch or whatever. We would bake cookies and cinnamon buns. It really helped bring the team together and have more of a family feeling.

Amelia’s clear apprehension at her unit being seen as the “baking team” speaks to how they were incorporated into combat through reinforcement of certain gender stereotypes. These women used “emotional labour” – the work of managing, producing and suppressing feelings as part of one’s paid labour – both to counsel the male soldiers with whom they were stationed, and to calm Afghan civilians after their doors had been broken down in the middle of the night.

But the women I met also revealed a culture of sexist abuse that had been exacerbated by the unofficial nature of their combat roles in Afghanistan and Iraq. Soldiers who did not want women in their midst would joke, for example, that CST actually stood for “casual sex team”. Such treatment undermines the US military’s representations of military women as models of feminist liberation for Afghan women.

A soldier stands in front of a mock Afghan village, holding his rifle.

‘It was the best and the worst deployment’

Beth’s first deployment to Afghanistan in 2009 was to accompany a small group of Green Berets into an Afghan village and interact with the women and children who lived there. One of her strongest memories was figuring out how to shower once a week by crouching under a wood palate and balancing water bottles between its slats.

Beth’s role was to gather information about which villages were more likely to join the US military-supported internal defence forces – a cold war counterinsurgency strategy with a history of brutalising countries’ own citizens. To elicit feelings of security and comfort in those she encountered when entering an Afghan home or searching a vehicle, she described adjusting her voice tone, removing her body armour, and sometimes placing her hands on the bodies of Afghan women and children.

But this “kinder and gentler” aspect of her work was inseparable from the home raids she also participated in, during which marines would kick down the doors of family homes in the middle of the night, ripping people from their sleep for questioning, or worse.

Women like Beth were exposed to – and in a few cases, killed by – the same threats as the special forces units to which they were unofficially attached. But the teams’ hidden nature meant these women often had no official documentation of what they did.

If they returned home injured from their deployment, their records did not reflect their attachment to combat units. This meant they were unable to prove the crucial link between injury and service that determined access to healthcare. And the women’s lack of official recognition has since posed a major barrier to being promoted in their careers, as well as accessing military and veteran healthcare.

Female soldier saluting

While Beth said she was “lucky” to have come home with her mental health and limbs intact, many of her peers described being unable to sleep and suffering from anxiety, depression and other symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) as a result of their continued exposure to stressful combat situations such as night raids.

Six months into her deployment, Beth’s female partner was riding in a large armoured vehicle when it ran over an explosive device. “Luckily”, as Beth put it, the bomb exploded downwards, blowing off four of the vehicle’s wheels and sending a blast through the layer of rubber foam on which her partner’s feet rested. She was medevacked out of the combat zone with fractured heels, along with six other men.

Technically, Beth was always supposed to have a female partner when working for a cultural support team, but no replacement came. Her mission changed and she became the only woman assigned to support a group of marines stationed on a remote base. There were only a handful of other women on the base, and Beth lived alone in a repurposed shipping container sandwiched between housing for 80 men.

Beth said the marines spread false rumours about her. Other women I spoke with indicated that there was a widespread culture of degrading women like Beth in the US military at this time – just as its leaders were publicly disavowing the military’s epidemic of sexual assault and rape.

As Beth described her treatment on the second part of her deployment in Afghanistan, her eyes widened. She struggled to find the words that eventually came out:

It was the best and the worst deployment. On some level, I did things that I will never do again – I met some great people, had amazing experiences. But also, professionally, as a captain in the Marine Corps, I have never been treated so poorly in my life – by other officers! I had no voice. Nobody had my back. [The marines] didn’t want us there. These guys did not want to be bringing women along.

Beth described how one of the male soldiers lied to her battalion commander, accusing her of saying something she didn’t say – leading to her being removed from action and being placed under a form of custody:

I got pulled back and sat in the hot-seat for months. It was bad. That was a very low point for me.

‘Women as a third gender’

A narrow, western version of feminism – focused on women’s legal and economic rights while uncritical of the US’s history of military interventions and imperialistic financial and legal actions – helped build popular support for the Afghanistan invasion in 2001. On an individual level, women like Beth made meaning of their deployments by understanding themselves as modern, liberated inspirations for the Afghan women they encountered.

A female soldier cleans the wound of a child

But in reality, the US military did not deploy women like Beth with the intention of improving Afghan women’s lives. Rather, special forces recognised Afghan women as a key piece of the puzzle to convince Afghan men to join the internal defence forces. While male soldiers could not easily enter an Afghan home without being seen as disrespecting women who lived there, the handbook for female engagement teams advised that:

Afghan men often see western women as a “third gender” and will approach coalition forces’ women with different issues than are discussed with men.

And a 2011 Marine Corps Gazette article underlined that:

Female service members are perceived as a “third gender” and as being “there to help versus there to fight”. This perception allows us access to the entire population, which is crucial in population-centric operations.

The use of “third gender” here is surprising because the term more often refers to gender identity outside of conventional male-female binaries. In contrast, military uses of such language reinforced traditional gender expectations of women as caregivers versus men as combatants, emphasising how women entered what were technically jobs for men by maintaining these gender roles.

The female counterinsurgency teams were intended to search Afghan women and gather intelligence that was inaccessible to their male counterparts. Beth had volunteered for these secretive missions, saying she was excited to go “outside the wire” of the military base, to interact with Afghan women and children, and to work with US special operations.

Initially, she was enthusiastic about the tour, describing her gender as an “invaluable tool” that allowed her to collect information which her male counterparts could not. She went on home raids with the marines and would search women and question villagers.

Technically, the US military has strict rules about who is allowed to collect formal intelligence, limiting this role to those trained in intelligence. As a result, Beth explained:

Just like any other team going out to collect information, we always steer clear of saying “collect” [intelligence]. But essentially that’s exactly what we were doing … I won’t call them a source because that is a no-no. But I had individuals who would frequent me when we were in particular areas … [providing] information we were able to elicit in a casual setting instead of running a source and being overt.

‘A completely different energy’

Recruitment poster for a female engagement team.

Cindy deployed with a US Army Ranger regiment to Afghanistan in 2012. Having recently graduated from one of the military academies, an advertisement caught her eye: “Become a part of history. Join the US Army Special Operations Command Female Engagement Team Program.”

She was drawn in by the high physical bar and intellectual challenge of jobs in special operations from which the military technically excluded her. Describing the process of being selected for the female unit as a “week from hell”, Cindy said she was proud of “being where it’s hardest” and “the sense of duty, obligation”.

While she was completing her training, Cindy’s friend from airborne school was killed by an explosion in October 2011, while accompanying an Army Ranger team on a night raid of a Taliban weapons maker’s compound in Kandahar. This was Ashley White-Stumpf, subject of the bestselling book Ashley’s War, which is now being adapted into a film starring Reese Witherspoon. She was the first cultural support team member to be killed in action, and her funeral brought this secret programme into a very public light.

Her death cast a shadow on the excitement Cindy had initially felt. To confuse matters, the dangers that White-Stumpf (and now Cindy) faced were publicly invisible, given that women were banned from being officially attached to special forces combat units. When female soldiers did appear in public relations photographs, it was often handing out soccer balls or visiting orphanages.

US soldiers unveil a monument to their dead colleague

Yet once deployed, Cindy was attached to a “direct action” unit – the special forces portrayed in action movies kicking down doors, seizing documents and capturing people. This meant that while special forces carried out their mission, her job was:

To interact with women and children. To get information, or [find out] if there were nefarious items that were hidden under burkas and things of that nature.

She explained how “you have different tools as a woman that you can use that I don’t think a man would be successful in” – offering the example of a little boy in a village who her team thought knew something. A ranger was questioning the little boy, who was terrified of how, in her words, this male soldier “looked like a stormtrooper, wearing his helmet and carrying a rifle”. In contrast, Cindy explained:

For me to kneel next to the little kid and take off my helmet and maybe put my hand on his shoulder and say: “There, there” – I can do that with my voice, [whereas] this guy probably could not or would not. And that kid was crying, and we couldn’t get anything out of him. But you can turn the tables with a completely different energy.

Cindy told me proudly how it took her just 15 minutes to identify the correct location of the Taliban activity, when her unit had been in the wrong location. She, like many of the women I spoke to, painted a picture of using emotional labour to evoke empathy and sensitivity amid violent – and often traumatic – special operations work.
‘I’ve had so much BS in my career’

The women I interviewed were operating in the same permissive climate of sexual harassment and abuse that later saw the high-profile murders of the servicewoman Vanessa Guillén at Fort Hood military base in Texas in 2020, and the combat engineer Ana Fernanda Basaldua Ruiz in March 2023.

Before their deaths, both Latinx women had been repeatedly sexually harassed by other male soldiers and had reported incidents to their supervisors, who failed to report them further up the chain of command. Such cases overshadowed any excitement about the recent ten-year anniversary of women formally serving in ground combat roles in the US military.

Protesters carry a poster in memory of murdered US soldier Vanessa Guillén

Mollie deployed to Afghanistan as part of a female engagement team in 2009. Her career up to then had been chequered with discriminatory experiences. In some cases, there were subtle, judgmental looks. But she also described overt instances, such as the officer who, when told of her impending arrival on his unit, had responded bluntly: “I don’t want a female to work for me.”

Mollie said she saw the FET as a way to showcase women’s skill and value within a masculinist military institution. She felt tremendous pride for the “20 other strong women” she worked with, whose adaptability she was particularly impressed with:

During the FET, I saw such great women. It frustrates me that they have to put up with this [sexism] … I’ve had so much BS like that throughout my career. Seeing how amazing these women were in high-stress situations – I want to stay in and continue to fight for that, so junior marines don’t have to put up with the same sorts of sexist misogynist comments that I did.

Mollie said the experience on the FET changed her, describing herself emerging as an “unapologetic feminist” responsible for more junior servicewomen. This encouraged her to re-enlist year after year. But for other women, deploying in capacities from which they were normally excluded, only to then return to gender-restricted roles, was a good reason to quit after their contract was up. As was, for many, the continued background of resistance and abuse from male colleagues.

A 2014 study of the US military found that “ambient sexual harassment against service women and men is strongly associated with risk of sexual assault”, with women’s sexual assault risk increasing by more than a factor of 1.5 and men’s by 1.8 when their workplace had an above-average rate of ambient sexual harassment. In 2022, the US military admitted that the epidemic of sexual assault within military ranks had worsened in recent years, and that existing strategies were not working.
‘Magnitude of regrets’

Amid the chaotic withdrawal of US and international forces from Afghanistan in August 2021, marines threw together another female engagement team to search Afghan women and children. Two of its members, maintenance technician Nicole Gee and supply chief Johanny Rosario Pichardo, died in a suicide bomb attack during the evacuation that killed 13 soldiers and at least 170 Afghans.

Media coverage remembered Gee cradling an Afghan infant as she evacuated refugees in the days leading up to the attack, underscoring how female soldiers like her did high-risk jobs that came into being through gender expectations of women as caregivers.

Writing to me in 2023, ten years after her deployment to Afghanistan, Rochelle reflected that the departure of US soldiers could be “a whirlwind of emotions if you let it”. She added: “My anger lies with the exit of our own [US forces]. The magnitude of regrets, I hope, lay heavy on someone’s conscience.”

The experiences of Rochelle and other female soldiers in Afghanistan complicate any simplistic representations of them as trailblazers for equal rights in the US military. Their untreated injuries, unrecognised duties, and abusive working conditions make for a much more ambivalent blend of subjugation and pathbreaking.

And even as their position helped formalise the role of US women in combat, this happened through the reinforcement of gender stereotypes and racist representations of Afghan people. In fact, Afghan women had long been mobilising on their own terms – largely unintelligible to the US military – and continue to do so, with extraordinary bravery, now that the Taliban is back in control of their country.

It is devastating, but not surprising, that the military occupation of Afghanistan did not ultimately improve women’s rights. The current situation summons feminist perspectives that challenge war as a solution to foreign policy problems and work against the forms of racism that make people into enemies.

Following the withdrawal from Afghanistan, US Army female engagement teams have been reassembled and deployed to train foreign militaries from Jordan to Romania. As we enter the third decade of the post-9/11 wars, we should revisit how these wars were justified in the name of women’s rights, and how little these justifications have actually accomplished for women – whether in the marine corps barracks of Quantico, Virginia, or on the streets of Kabul, Afghanistan.

*All names and some details have been changed to protect the identities of the interviewees.

For you: more from our Insights series:

What my 20 years in Afghanistan taught me about the Taliban – and how the west consistently underestimates them

Can wars no longer be won?


The inside story of the CIA v Russia – from cold war conspiracy to ‘black’ propaganda in Ukraine

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

UK Junior doctors to stage fresh strike in dispute over pay

Alan Jones, PA Industrial Correspondent
Mon, May 22, 2023

Junior doctors in England will stage a 72-hour strike next month in their long-running dispute over pay.

Members of the BMA will walk out from 7am on June 14 after the Government failed to make a “credible offer” on pay, it was announced.

Dr Vivek Trivedi and Dr Robert Laurenson, co-chairs of the BMA Junior Doctors Committee, said: “Since April’s strikes we have had three weeks of negotiations with the Government, seeking a deal that fully restores pay for junior doctors after the more than 26% drop they have suffered over the last 15 years.

“We entered these talks in good faith, hoping that after months of refusal by ministers to meet with us, we would finally see a real offer on the table that would avoid the need for more industrial action and stop the haemorrhaging of junior doctors from the NHS.

“In that time we have received an offer which is in no way credible or even reasonable for where we are in the negotiating process.

“We made clear from the very start that talks required a recognition of the scale of our pay erosion.

“No such recognition has been forthcoming.

“We made proposals showing our willingness to be creative and work with the Government on how the reversal of our pay erosion could be achieved.

“In the end, however, the Government would simply not accept the fundamental reality of the pay cuts junior doctors have faced.

“This was made clear when they finally made their pay offer of 5%.

Although it has announced a 72-hour strike, the BMA stills expects to announcement, it expected to hold talks with Health Secretary Steve Barclay (Jordan Pettitt/PA Wire)

“Not only is that nowhere near addressing pay erosion over the last 15 years, it would not even have matched inflation this year.”

The BMA said, despite its strike announcement, it expected to meet Health Secretary Steve Barclay on Wednesday for talks.

A Government spokesperson said: “It is both surprising and deeply disappointing that the BMA Junior Doctors Committee has declared further strike action while constructive talks were ongoing. These will be hugely disruptive for patients and put pressure on other NHS staff.

“We made a fair and reasonable opening offer, and were in active discussions about both pay and non-pay issues.

“Unfortunately, it seems the BMA is unwilling to move meaningfully away from their unaffordable headline demands on pay.

“The Government has been clear that strikes must be paused while talks take place, so while the BMA has chosen to end our current discussions, we remain ready to continue them at any point if strikes are called off.”

Deputy chief executive of NHS Providers, Saffron Cordery said: “It’s hugely disappointing that talks between the Government and the doctors’ unions have broken down again.

“We are now facing the deeply worrying prospect of another 72-hour walkout by junior doctors next month.

“As with previous strikes by junior doctors, this will lead to major disruption to patient care.

“We understand junior doctors feel they’ve been pushed to this point by factors including below-inflation pay uplifts and severe staffing shortages.

“Trust leaders will work flat out to ensure disruption is minimised on strike dates, but rapid resolution is needed at a national level to bring strike action to an end.

“With next month’s action by junior doctors now confirmed, their threats of more strikes over the summer and radiographers, nurses and consultants also balloting for industrial action, it’s vital serious talks take place between the Government and unions to resolve these ongoing disputes and avert further disruption to NHS services.”

Junior doctors in England plan more strikes in fight for better pay

Reuters
Mon, May 22, 2023

Junior doctors hold a strike amid a dispute with the government over pay, in London

LONDON (Reuters) -Junior doctors in England plan to stage more strikes in June, their union said, meaning more strain for the state-run health service, NHS, after pay negotiations with the government collapsed on Monday without a resolution.

The strikes will be from June 13 to 17, the British Medical Association (BMA), which represents about 45,000 junior doctors in England, said in a statement, threatening strikes "throughout the summer" if the government did not change its position.

Tens of thousands of junior doctors have already staged two rounds of walkouts this year to demand wage increases that match inflation, which as of last month was still running into double digits. The government has said such pay rises would only inflame inflation further, pushing up interest rates and mortgages.

The BMA describes junior doctors as those who are qualified in clinical training and have up to eight years' experience working as a hospital doctor or up to three years in general practice. They work under the supervision of a senior doctor.

Strikes by healthcare workers in the National Health Service (NHS), which have also included walkouts by nurses and ambulance workers, have led to the cancellation of numerous appointments, disrupting patient care at a time when millions are waiting for treatment.

"These will be hugely disruptive for patients and put pressure on other NHS staff," a government spokesperson said in a statement responding to the latest strike plan, adding they were ready to continue talks if strikes are called off.

The BMA said the government's latest pay offer of a 5% increase for 2023/24 was not a credible offer since it was "nowhere near addressing pay erosion over the last 15 years."

(Reporting by Muvija M; Editing by Mark Porter and Jonathan Oatis)

Nurses start voting on whether to renew mandate for industrial action


Alan Jones, PA Industrial Correspondent
Mon, May 22, 2023 

Nurses start voting on Tuesday on whether to continue taking strike action in their long-running dispute over pay and staffing.

Almost 300,000 members of the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) in England are being asked to renew their mandate for industrial action until the end of the year.

The RCN is urging members to vote “yes” to strike action, saying it would pressure ministers to improve the pay award for nursing staff and boost staffing levels to keep patients safe.

RCN members rejected the Government’s pay offer in April following several days of strike action since December.

The RCN’s new ballot will be aggregated, meaning the union is seeking a country-wide mandate to allow strikes in every NHS trust or other NHS employer in England where RCN members work.

Any future strikes would involve more than twice as many nursing staff at twice as many locations, said the RCN.

To achieve a country-wide mandate, 50% of all eligible members must vote and the majority must say “yes” to strike action.

The ballot will close on June 23, with the result expected to be announced the following week.

RCN general secretary Pat Cullen said: “Once again, we have been forced to ask our members if they want to take to the picket lines in their fight for fair pay. This is unfinished business and the Government can get it resolved without the need for more strike action.

(PA Graphics)

“Ministers have tried to silence them through the courts as well as in Parliament but we will continue to make sure their voice is heard through the corridors of power.

“The NHS is fraying at the edges. To improve care and address the shortage, Government must bring more people into nursing and keep them there by paying staff fairly.”

Most health unions in England have accepted a 5% pay rise for this year and a cash payment for last year.

Members of the RCN and Unite voted to reject the offer.

Downing Street insisted the Government had made its final offer on pay.

A No 10 spokesman said: “We have offered a fair and generous deal that the RCN themselves recommended to its members and subsequently accepted by the majority of other unions via the NHS staff council.

“We continue to think it’s important that all unions recognise that collective decision and it should be respected.”

The spokesman said Rishi Sunak recognised nurses do “incredible work”, but “what we don’t want to see is patient care impacted any more than it has been with these strikes”.

A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said: “We hugely value the work of nurses and it is disappointing the RCN is balloting their members for further industrial action.

“The majority of unions on the NHS Staff Council voted to accept the Government’s fair and reasonable pay offer – which includes a double-digit pay rise of 10.7% over two years for newly qualified nurses.

“We hope RCN members recognise this is a fair deal and decide it is time to bring industrial action to an end.”

'Unfinished business': Nurses among hundreds of thousands of workers to vote on further strike action

Sky News
Mon, May 22, 2023 


Almost 300,000 nurses will start voting today on whether to continue strikes in their long-running battle over pay and staffing.

Members of the Royal College of Nursing in England are being asked to renew their mandate for industrial action until the end of the year.

The RCN says members should vote to continue strikes as this will increase pressure on ministers to improve the pay offer that was rejected in April.

RCN general secretary Pat Cullen said: "Once again, we have been forced to ask our members if they want to take to the picket lines in their fight for fair pay.

"This is unfinished business and the government can get it resolved without the need for more strike action.

"Ministers have tried to silence them through the courts as well as in parliament but we will continue to make sure their voice is heard through the corridors of power.

"The NHS is fraying at the edges. To improve care and address the shortage, government must bring more people into nursing and keep them there by paying staff fairly."

In the new ballot, the union will seek a country-wide mandate, allowing strikes in every NHS trust or NHS employer in England with RCN members.

For this, at least 50% of eligible members must vote and the majority must want strike action.

Read more:
Nurses could be on strike 'up until Christmas', says Royal College of Nursing
Couple fear strike by nurses could be a 'matter of life and death'
Hospitals brace themselves for 'exceptionally low' staff numbers as nurses prepare to strike over bank holiday

The ballot closes on 23 June, with the result expected in the following week.

The government has said there will be no improvement to the pay offer made in April, with a No 10 spokesman saying: "We have offered a fair and generous deal that the RCN themselves recommended to its members and subsequently accepted by the majority of other unions via the NHS staff council.

"We continue to think it's important that all unions recognise that collective decision and it should be respected."

Also today, a six-week ballot opens for more than 300,000 council and school support staff in England and Wales on whether they should also strike over pay.

The union, Unison, has called for a pay increase of 2% above inflation, claiming that since 2010 the value of local government pay has fallen by 25%.

The ballot is open to workers such as refuse collectors, social workers, teaching assistants, and librarians, with another ballot opening for Northern Ireland in August.

Unison general secretary Christina McAnea said: "These workers are truly dedicated but they've had enough. Going on strike is a huge step that isn't taken lightly but many feel they have to make a stand.

"Employers can do far better, but ministers also need to step up to make sure local government is given the funding it needs, so staff get a decent wage and services are protected."

UK

Vandals poured salt over the community garden Carly Burd planted to feed hungry neighbors. TikTok kept her from crumbling after the 'soul-destroying' tragedy.

Mara Leighton
Mon, May 22, 2023 

Burd and local volunteers responded to the vandalism by spreading two pallets of new soil.TikTok;@carlyburd43

After vandals dowsed Carly Burd's community garden in salt, kind TikTok comments kept her afloat.


Strangers offered Burd encouragement and hope as local volunteers helped her reclaim the land.


Burd, who said she's been unable to afford necessities before, grows food for neighbors in need.

In April, Carly Burd, a UK woman who's been growing food for neighbors in need, was crushed to discover the garden allotment she manages covered in piles of salt — ruining hours of labor and enough produce for 300 families.

Burd, who lives in Harlow, Essex, had started the garden project in June of 2022 and initially believed all of her efforts had been lost. But within days of sharing her story on TikTok, she was overwhelmed by an influx of donations to her GoFundMe campaign and words of encouragement from viewers. The video has since been viewed 5 million times. For Burd, it was the hundreds of thousands of comments from viewers that kept her going.

"I think without the support of everyone, I would have completely crumbled," Burd told Insider. "Having people say: 'Well done, carry on, keep going' — that did keep me going."

Since going viral on TikTok, she's raised £250,358 (or $311,374) for her charity A Meal On Me With Love. Eventually, she said she plans to use the money to buy seed, soil, and cameras that run on solar (she doesn't have cameras trained on the allotment, Burd said, in part because there's no available electric source).

@carlyburd43 #costoflivingcrisis #harlow #heartfm #dailymail #itvnews #bbcmorninglive #community #hometown ♬ original sound - CarlyBurd

For now, she's using the publicity she received to collect donations from stores and shops and distribute them to neighbors in need.

Burd's interest in helping her neighbors comes from her own experience of going without. Burd told Insider she's lived through winters in which she couldn't afford heating. She says finding employment has been difficult because she has multiple sclerosis and lupus diagnoses, and she's familiar with her family needing more than they could afford.

"I've been there many times — being an only parent, and you're stuck in a position where you've got no one to ask. I don't have parents, and you're stuck with the question: who do you go to? There isn't anyone to go to."

When she heard about the looming cost-of-living crisis, Burd told Insider, she decided to rip up her backyard garden and plant as much food as possible. To date, Burd estimates she's helped over 1,800 people by putting together packages of fruit, vegetable, and packaged food donations for families in need.

For Burd, the mission is to keep people from feeling alone. "To help someone else means everything to me," she said. "Hopefully, it means that person doesn't haven't to go through what I went through, because someone is there for them."

Because the work feels so personal, the loss has felt personal, too; Burd told Insider she couldn't understand the vandalism: "It's beyond being nasty or being bitter, it's evil." In its aftermath, Burd has felt anxious and afraid that someone could target the land again.

Somewhat unexpectedly, Burd credits the internet with helping her feel less alone in a loss that she described as "soul-destroying." Burd said she originally joined TikTok to gain visibility for potential local volunteers, and he didn't realize her video had gone viral until her son notified her. The avalanche of kind comments (as well as some snark) was so plentiful that she felt completely overwhelmed. "I couldn't use my phone for two days," she said.

More than a month after vandals dumped piles of salt on her land, Burd and local volunteers have since spread new soil and replanted potatoes and onions. Burd, who's grateful for the support, said she's just waiting to get her confidence back. Then, she said, she'll figure out how to move forward.

@carlyburd43 #costoflivingcrisis #harlow #heartfm #itvnews #bbcmorninglive #hometown #community #thankyou ♬ original sound - CarlyBurd

According to Burd, the Essex police are still looking into the case. Burd said in a recent video that she believed the person who did this was a "grower" who understood that the salt would destroy the crops.

"It was over five kilograms worth of salt," she said in a video posted on April 12. "It wasn't a child going to his mum's kitchen cupboard and doing it just for fun. It was a lot of salt."

"I'm not gonna let them get to me," Burd said of the vandals. "Nothing will let them get to me. They could do it 50 times, and I'll still keep going. I will just keep fighting, like I always do, and keep trying to make the biggest change that I

ROFLMAO

PNG won't be used for 'offensive military operations' - prime minister

APEC summit in Bangkok


By Kirsty Needham

Mon, May 22, 2023 

SYDNEY (Reuters) - Papua New Guinea (PNG) will not be used as a base for "war to be launched", and a defence agreement with the United States prohibited "offensive military operations", its prime minister said on Tuesday.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Monday a defence cooperation deal signed with PNG earlier that day would expand the Pacific island nation's capabilities and make it easier for the U.S. military to train with its forces.

The deal sparked student protests amid concern it could embroil PNG in strategic competition between the U.S. and China.

Prime Minister James Marape said the agreement was not a treaty and did not need to be ratified by parliament, adding he would release it in full for public scrutiny on Thursday.

"It's not a military base to be set up here for war to be launched," he told radio station 100FM.

"There's a specific clause that says that this partnership is not a partnership for PNG to be used as a place for launching offensive military operations from Papua New Guinea," he said.

The United States and its allies are seeking to deter Pacific island nations from building security ties with China, a rising concern amid tension over Taiwan, and after Beijing signed a security pact with the Solomon Islands last year.

China has been a major infrastructure investor in PNG, which sits near important sea lanes and international submarine cables linking the United States and ally Australia, that were crucial in World War Two.

Marape said PNG's military is the weakest in the region at a time of high tensions. The boost provided by the United States would also improve domestic security and encourage more foreign investors to set up in the country of 9 million that is rich in natural resources but largely undeveloped.

"There will be substantial infrastructure investment" flowing from the deal, in airports, ports, roads, communications and electricity to benefit the public, he said, while not giving details.

Subsidiary agreements that will determine how the U.S. military and civilian contractors come into PNG are being worked out, he said.

Australia has welcomed the defence cooperation agreement between its closest neighbour and the United States.

(Reporting by Kirsty Needham; Editing by Robert Birsel)

Papua New Guinea to sign security pact with US, PM says

Issued on: 18/05/2023 

Port Moresby (AFP) – Papua New Guinea will sign a security pact with the United States that gives American troops access to the Pacific nation's ports and airports, its leader said Thursday, as Washington jostles for influence in the region with Beijing.

US President Joe Biden has placed more importance on the Pacific over concerns about an increasingly assertive China, which is trying to woo nations with an array of diplomatic and financial incentives in return for strategic support.

Prime Minister James Marape said two agreements focusing on defence cooperation and maritime surveillance had been agreed with Washington and would be formally signed at the earliest opportunity after parliamentary approval.

"We are elevating to a specific defence cooperation agreement, something that is falling short of a treaty," he told a press conference.

"We are moving ahead, we are signing with the best military on the face of planet Earth."

The agreements, which can be renewed every 15 years, will give the United States vital movement in Papua New Guinea's waters near sea routes to Australia and Japan, in return for access to US satellite surveillance, he said.

"It now gives us an opportune time to focus not just on maritime access but satellite access on... illegal activities on the high sea," Marape said.

A leaked draft version of the defence cooperation agreement showed American forces would have broad autonomy at some of the country's key entry points, but Marape said any access would have to be approved by his government.

"The ports, the infrastructure... will not in any way stand to be exclusively used by the military," he said.

"They would always be asking our defence to have access to our facilities."

Biden -- whose uncle died in Papua New Guinea in the Second World War -- cancelled a historic first visit to the most populous South Pacific nation next week because of domestic debt ceiling crisis talks.

Marape said Secretary of State Antony Blinken would instead attend the summit with Pacific leaders in Port Moresby on Monday.

Washington is courting Pacific nations more intensely after the Solomon Islands became the unlikely epicentre of a diplomatic tussle between the United States and China last year when it signed a security pact with Beijing.

Marape said Papua New Guinea's pact with Washington would not prevent it from negotiating such deals with other nations, including China.

© 2023 AFP

#KASHMIR IS #INDIA'S #GAZA

Hundreds rally in Pakistan-ruled Kashmir against India G20 meet

SILENCE IS COMPLICITY

Abu Arqam Naqash
Mon, May 22, 2023 

Protest against the G20 Tourism Working Group meeting, in Muzaffarabad


By Abu Arqam Naqash

MUZAFFARABAD, Pakistan (Reuters) - Hundreds of people rallied in Pakistan-administered Kashmir on Monday to protest arch rival India's decision to host a G20 tourism meeting in its part of the disputed Himalayan region, said a government official.

New Delhi is hosting the key conference in Kashmir's summer capital Srinagar from Monday to Wednesday, a move which Pakistan and longtime ally China have opposed.

Several protesters demonstrated in Muzaffarabad, capital of Pakistan-administered Kashmir, and other cities, chanting: "Go India go back and boycott, boycott G20 boycott!" , said the official Raja Azhar Iqbal.

Pakistan's Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari visited the region and addressed Kashmir's legislative assembly on Monday. He termed the G20 gathering as illegal, and an attempt by India to seek legitimacy over its control of the disputed region.

"India is misusing its position as G20 chair," he said, and urged the world to take note of New Delhi's "gross human rights violations" since India scrapped Kashmir's special status in August 2019 and converted it into a federal territory.

The G20 tourism working group meeting is the first international event in the region since the conversion.

Indian foreign ministry didn't respond to a request for a comment.

Nuclear-armed nations, Pakistan and India have fought three wars since independence from Britain in 1947, two of them over Kashmir, which they each claim in full but control parts of.

G20 consists of 19 rich nations and the European Union. India at present holds it presidency, and is set to host its annual summit in New Delhi in September.

India hopes the meeting will help revive international tourism in the scenic Kashmir Valley which has been roiled by a violent Islamist insurgency against Indian rule since 1989, although violence levels have fallen in recent years and domestic tourism boomed.

(This story has been corrected to fix description of Kashmir's status from 'independent' to 'special' and India's action from 'annexed' to 'converted it into a federal territory' in paragraph 5, and 'annexation' to 'conversion' in paragraph 6)

(Writing by Asif Shahzad; Editing by Bernadette Baum)

G20 delegates begin meeting in disputed Kashmir, with region's intense security largely out of view 


Mon, May 22, 2023 

SRINAGAR, India (AP) — Delegates from the Group of 20 leading rich and developing nations began a meeting on tourism in Indian-controlled Kashmir on Monday that was condemned by China and Pakistan, as authorities reduced the visibility of security in the disputed region’s main city.

The meeting is the first significant international event in Kashmir since New Delhi stripped the Muslim-majority region of its semi-autonomy in 2019. Indian authorities hope the meeting will show that the contentious changes have brought peace and prosperity to the region.

The delegates will discuss topics such as ecotourism, destination management and the role of films in promoting tourist destinations.

The main city of Srinagar appeared calm on Monday and roads were unusually clean. Most of the usual security checkpoints had been removed or camouflaged with G20 signs. Officials said hundreds of officers were specially trained in what they called “invisible policing” for the event.

Shops in the city center opened earlier than usual after officials asked shopkeepers to remain open. Many shops in the past have closed in protests against Indian policies in the region. But authorities shut many schools in the city.

Mondays’ measures contrasted sharply with the visible security imposed in the days before the event. A massive security cordon was placed around the venue on the shore of Dal Lake, with elite naval commandos patrolling the water in rubber boats. The city’s commercial center was spruced up, with freshly black-topped roads leading to the convention center and power poles lit in the colors of India’s national flag.

Indian-controlled Kashmir remains one of the world’s most heavily militarized territories, with hundreds of thousands of troops. In 1989, a violent separatist insurgency erupted in the region seeking independence or a merger with Pakistan, which also controls part of Kashmir. India replied with a brutal counterinsurgency campaign, and tens of thousands of civilians, soldiers and rebels have been killed in the conflict.

India’s crackdown intensified after 2019 when New Delhi took the region under its direct control. Since then, the territory’s people and its media have been largely silenced. Authorities have seized scores of homes and arrested hundreds of people under stringent anti-terror laws. The government says such actions are necessary to stop a “terror ecosystem,” or civilian support for the armed rebellion.

Authorities have also enacted new laws that critics and many Kashmiris fear could transform the region’s demographics.

Indian federal Minister Jitendra Singh told attendees on Monday that Kashmir is changing.

″If such an event was held earlier, a strike call would be given from Islamabad and shops on Residency Road (in) Srinagar would close. Now there is no hartal (strike)," he said. “Common people on the streets of Srinagar want to move on.”

Last week, the U.N. special rapporteur on minority issues, Fernand de Varennes, said the meeting would support a “facade of normalcy” while “massive human rights violations” continue in the region. India’s mission at the U.N. in Geneva rejected the statement as “baseless” and “unwarranted allegations.”

India’s tourism secretary, Arvind Singh, said on Saturday that the meeting was “not only to showcase (Kashmir’s) potential for tourism but to also signal globally the restoration of stability and normalcy in the region.”

Kashmir, known for rolling Himalayan foothills, has for decades been a major domestic tourist destination. Millions of visitors arrive in Kashmir every year and experience a strange peace kept by ubiquitous security checkpoints, armored vehicles and patrolling soldiers.

The mainstay of Kashmir’s economy, however, continues to be agriculture, and the tourism industry contributes only about 7% to the region’s GDP.

China, with which India is locked in a military standoff along their disputed border in the Ladakh region, has boycotted the event. Pakistan also slammed New Delhi for holding the meeting in Srinagar. Both have argued that such meetings can't be held in disputed territories.

In a speech to lawmakers in Pakistani-controlled Kashmir on Monday, Pakistani Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari said the Srinagar meeting was a “display of India’s arrogance on the world stage" and the region "has become an open prison” for its residents.

India dismissed Pakistan's criticism, saying it is not even a member of the G20.

The G20 has a rolling presidency with a different member setting priorities each year. India is steering the group in 2023.

___

Associated Press writer Munir Ahmed in Islamabad, Pakistan, contributed to this report.

Aijaz Hussain, The Associated Press

G20: India hosts tourism meet in Kashmir amid tight security

Cherylann Mollan & Sharanya Hrishikesh - BBC News
Mon, May 22, 2023 

India has stepped up security arrangements in Kashmir ahead of the meeting

India is holding a key G20 tourism meeting in Kashmir amid heightened security and opposition from China.

The working group meeting is being held in Srinagar, the summer capital of the federally administrated territory, from Monday to Wednesday.

This is the biggest international event organised in the region since India scrapped its special status in 2019.

Over 60 delegates from G20 member countries are expected to attend the event.

China, however, has said it will not attend, citing its firm opposition "to holding any kind of G20 meetings in disputed territory". The BBC has emailed India's foreign ministry for its response to China's statement.

Both India and Pakistan claim Kashmir in full, but control only parts of it. The nuclear-armed neighbours have already fought two wars and a limited conflict over the region.

In April, Pakistan, which is not a G20 member, had criticised India's decision to hold the meetings in Kashmir, calling it an "irresponsible" move.

India, however said, that it was "natural" to hold G20 events and meetings in "Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh, which are an integral and inalienable part" of the country.

In 2019, the Bharatiya Janata Party-led federal government had divided the Muslim-majority state of Jammu and Kashmir to create two federally administrated territories - Jammu and Kashmir, and Ladakh. Ladakh is a disputed frontier region along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) between India and China, and both countries claim parts of it.

The Indian government and several sections of the media have calling the G20 event in Kashmir "historic", billing it as an opportunity to showcase the region's culture.

In the days leading up to the event, India had conducted several security drills in Kashmir. The region has seen an armed insurgency against India since 1989 - India accuses Pakistan of fomenting the unrest by backing separatist militants, a charge denied by Islamabad.

Over the decades, opposition politicians, activists and locals have also accused successive Indian governments of human rights violations and stifling of freedoms in the restive region - which Delhi has denied.

Some opposition leaders have criticised the elaborate security arrangements ahead of the G20 meet

This year, the region has witnessed increased attacks by suspected militants and security officers have told the media that they are taking steps to prevent any threats designed to derail the G20 meet.

Elite security forces - including marine commandos, National Security Guards, Border Security Force and police forces - have been deployed in Kashmir to provide ground-to-air security cover, according to reports.

Security has also been boosted around the Dal Lake and the Sher-e-Kashmir International Convention Centre (SKICC) in Srinagar, which is the venue for the meeting.

Schools around the routes that G20 delegates will use have been closed. Military bunkers, a common sight in Kashmir, have been covered with G20 banners to hide them from view.

Local opposition leaders, including former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Mehbooba Mufti, have criticised the elaborate security arrangements and accused the federal government of making life even more difficult for ordinary people. In a press conference, Ms Mufti compared the restrictions in Kashmir ahead of G20 to that of the notorious US military prison, Guantanamo Bay. The Jammu and Kashmir administration has not responded to this yet.

A 53-year-old businessman, who did not want to be named, told the BBC that locals had to "face a lot of difficulties" over the past 10 days due to the security arrangements.

"There was a lot of frisking, checking and search operations in residential areas. Many schools and colleges are shut," he said.

He also questioned the federal government's claim that the meeting would boost the local economy, saying that only "permanent peace" could achieve that.

Others have also criticised the decision to hold the meeting in Kashmir.

Last week, Fernand de Varennes, the UN's special rapporteur on minority issues, had issued a statement saying that the G20 was "unwittingly providing a veneer of support to a facade of normalcy" when human rights violations, political persecution and illegal arrests were escalating in Kashmir. The statement was criticised by India's permanent mission at the UN on Twitter.

India has said it will showcase the cultural heritage of Kashmir and promote its tourism potential during the meeting. Delegates will be taken on sightseeing tours and there will be discussions on strategies to promote "film tourism", according to an official statement.

The G20, which includes the world's 19 wealthiest nations plus the European Union, accounts for 85% of global economic output and two-thirds of its population.

India currently holds the presidency - which rotates annually between members - and is set to host the G20 summit in Delhi in September.