Sudan museums' precious antiquities looted in war

Port Sudan (Sudan) (AFP) – Sudan's priceless archaeological heritage is being stripped from museums, with looters loading statuettes and fragments of ancient palaces onto lorries, smuggling them out of the war-torn country, and selling them online.

Issued on: 13/09/2024 - 

The Sudan National Museum in the capital Khartoum, seen in 2020, has suffered looting during the war between the army and paramilitaries © ASHRAF SHAZLY / AFP/File


More than a year of war between rival generals has killed tens of thousands of people, forced millions more to flee their homes, and left the country's prized antiquities at the mercy of pillagers.

On Thursday, UNESCO, the United Nations's cultural body, said the "threat to culture appears to have reached an unprecedented level, with reports of looting of museums, heritage and archaeological sites and private collections".

In the capital Khartoum, where fighting broke out in April 2023 between the army and paramilitary forces, the recently renovated Sudan National Museum has had prized artefacts stolen, archaeologists and officials say.

The museum houses prehistoric artefacts from the Palaeolithic era and items from the famed site of Kerma in northern Sudan, as well as Pharaonic and Nubian pieces.

Among the museum's collection are ancient Egyptian artefacts salvaged from the construction of the Aswan dam © ASHRAF SHAZLY / AFP/File

First opened in 1971, the museum was founded in part to house objects rescued from an area due to be flooded by the construction of Egypt's massive Aswan dam.

Now, its artefacts are under threat from war.

"The Sudan National Museum has been the subject of major looting," said Ikhlas Abdel Latif, head of museums at the national antiquities authority.

"Archaeological objects stored there have been taken in big lorries and transferred to the west and to border areas, particularly near South Sudan," she told AFP.
'Refrain' from trade

The extent of the looting is hard to determine because the museum is located in an area controlled by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).

Officials and experts have accused the RSF of looting the site. Contacted by AFP, a spokesman for the force did not comment.

In May, the RSF said it was being "vigilant" in "protecting and preserving the antiquities of the Sudanese people".

Throughout history, fighters have used plunder to fund their war efforts.

UNESCO said it was calling on "the public and the art market... in the region and worldwide to refrain" from trading in Sudanese items.

Some of Sudan's antiquities, looted from museums, have appeared for sale online © ASHRAF SHAZLY / AFP/File

The agency also said it was planning training in the Egyptian capital Cairo for law enforcement and the judiciary from Sudan's neighbours.

"Because of the war, the museum and the artefacts are not being monitored," said Hassan Hussein, a researcher and former director of the national antiquities authority.

The army, led by Sudan's de facto ruler Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, is locked in conflict with the RSF, which is led by his former deputy, Mohamed Hamdan Daglo.
For sale

The Island of Meroe, a UNESCO World Heritage site that is home to the capital of the ancient Kingdom of Kush and dozens of its pyramids, is also under threat.

Artefacts and exhibition accessories have been stolen from the museum in Nyala, the South Darfur state capital, said Abdel Latif.

In Omdurman, just across the River Nile from Khartoum, part of the Khalifa House museum was also destroyed, she said.

Last week, the Association of Friends of Sudanese Museums condemned "in the strongest terms" the looting that is taking place across the country.

Parts of Khalifa House museum in Omdurman, the twin city of Sudan's capital, were destroyed in the fighting © ASHRAF SHAZLY / AFP

Experts voiced alarm after finding looted artefacts offered for sale online.

On the auction site eBay, a user offered items presented as Egyptian antiquities that, according to Sudanese media, were looted from Sudan.

AFP saw the listings, with items offered for a few hundred dollars, but was not able to independently verify the authenticity or origin of the items.

A Sudanese archaeologist, speaking anonymously for security reasons, told AFP that pottery, gold objects and paintings listed for sale appeared to have come from the National Museum in Khartoum -- although at least one statuette was an imitation.

He said he feared for the larger statues, which "must be handled by specialists in a precise manner" and could be damaged if looters were to lay hands on them.

The issue is set to be discussed at an upcoming conference in Germany, which Hussein will attend.

"The current state of the collections is a concern for anyone who cares about humanity's heritage," he said.

© 2024 AFP

India's top court frees jailed PM Modi opponent on bail

New Delhi (AFP) – A top political opponent of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi was granted bail on Friday after months behind bars on accusations his party took kickbacks in exchange for liquor licences.


Issued on: 13/09/2024 - 

Arvind Kejriwal was first detained in March over the long-running corruption probe © Arun SANKAR / AFP

Arvind Kejriwal, chief minister of the capital Delhi and a key leader in an opposition alliance that battled Modi in national elections earlier this year, was first detained in March over the long-running corruption probe.

He is among several opposition leaders, with one of his colleagues describing his arrest at the time as a "political conspiracy" orchestrated by Modi's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

A two-judge bench of the Supreme Court ruled that Kejriwal's arrest was lawful but that he should be released from custody while contesting the charges against him.

"Prolonged incarceration amounts to unjust deprivation of liberty," Supreme Court justice Surya Kant said in a verdict granting bail to Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal.

Kejriwal had earlier been freed by the same court for several weeks to allow him to campaign in this year's general election, but returned to custody once voting concluded.

His government was accused of corruption when it implemented a policy to liberalise the sale of liquor in the capital three years ago, surrendering a lucrative government stake in the sector.

The policy was withdrawn the following year, but the resulting probe into the alleged corrupt allocation of licences has since led to the jailing of two top Kejriwal allies.

Rallies in support of Kejriwal, who has consistently denied wrongdoing and refused to relinquish his post after his arrest, were held in numerous other big cities around India after he was taken into custody.

Kejriwal, 55, has been chief minister for nearly a decade and first came to office as a staunch anti-corruption crusader.

He had resisted multiple summons from the Enforcement Directorate, India's financial crimes agency, to be interrogated as part of the probe.
'Target political opponents'

Modi's political opponents and international rights groups have long sounded the alarm on India's shrinking democratic space.

US think tank Freedom House said this year that the BJP had "increasingly used government institutions to target political opponents".

Rahul Gandhi, the most prominent member of the opposition Congress party and scion of a dynasty that dominated Indian politics for decades, was convicted of criminal libel last year after a complaint by a member of Modi's party.

His two-year prison sentence saw him disqualified from parliament until the verdict was suspended by a higher court, and raised concerns over democratic norms in the world's most populous country.

Kejriwal and Gandhi are both members of an opposition alliance formed to compete against Modi and the BJP.

© 2024 AFP

Climate ambitions face headwinds as EU changes guard

Brussels (Belgium) (AFP) – What does the future hold for EU climate policies? Next week's unveiling of the new European Commission will be watched closely for clues -- at a time when defending the environment has skidded down the list of priorities in Brussels.


Issued on: 13/09/2024

Setting a roadmap for her second term, EU Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen pledged to 'stay the course' on the bloc's environmental goals © Nicolas TUCAT / AFP/File

It is a far cry from five years ago.

Back in 2019, EU-wide elections held in the wake of massive youth climate marches saw a surge of support for the Greens, who captured more than 70 seats in the European Parliament.

This June, by contrast, the Greens shed 20 seats in a vote marked by gains for the right and far right -- which have led the charge against what it calls "punitive" EU environmental policies.

For Luke Haywood of the European Environmental Bureau NGO federation, the writing is on the wall: he expects the shift in parliament may relegate the EU's climate ambitions to the backburner.

"There is a risk that there will be an attempt to ignore the long-term benefits that we all have of acting on climate now, focusing on short-term gains for certain industries," he told AFP.

Climate loomed large under the outgoing commission, which drove through an ambitious legislative "Green Deal" including flagship measures such as a ban on new combustion engine cars from 2035.

Setting a roadmap for her second term, Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen pledged to "stay the course" on the environment -- while promising to "reconcile climate protection with a prosperous economy."

But a key question is who in the next EU executive team inherits the task of making lofty goals a reality, with many of the Green Deal's laws still at various stages of implementation.

Advocacy groups are rooting for Spain's candidate Teresa Ribera -- a socialist climate campaigner tipped for a big commission role -- but her anti-nuclear stance has raised hackles among some member states.

How the various aspects of environmental policy -- from carbon-reduction to industrial policy or clean tech -- are divided up between commissioners will be a subject of particular scrutiny.

"Climate must be very present in the portfolios," said Haywood.

- 'Stitch by stitch' -

The EU has set a goal of becoming carbon neutral by 2050, and one of the new commission's first tasks will be to negotiate with member states and parliament on its interim target for 2040 -- when it wants to see emissions cut by 90 percent compared to 1990 levels.

At the centre-right, the European People's Party -- the parliament's biggest group, to which von der Leyen belongs -- considers the target "extremely ambitious."

"We must discuss at length with all involved parties whether it is achievable and what we need to achieve it," EPP lawmaker Peter Liese warned when it was unveiled earlier this year.

Broadly speaking, right-wing parties oppose piling on more "bans" even as the public mood has soured on environmental action -- calling for an approach that factors in "the real situation on the ground," as Liese put it.

Within the centrist Renew group, the message is clear: "There can be no dismantling of the Green Deal," warned the group's leader in the EU parliament, Valerie Hayer.

"We'll be vigilant about any attempt to reverse it, and about the need to free up necessary investments," she told AFP.

But even the staunchest environmentalists realise the challenges that lie ahead -- as officials push to implement reams of complex legislation, under inevitable pressure from lobby groups.

"When they (the European Commission) say implementation, what they really mean is hitting pause, or backtracking," warned the hard-left leader Manon Aubry.

"They're going to be unpicking it stitch by stitch," she said -- pointing to the rollback of a string of environmental measures in the past year in concession to protesting farmers.

Aside from setting an emissions target for 2040, the incoming commission's environmental in-tray is thick with challenges.

A number of Green Deal laws -- such as the combustion-engine ban -- have revision clauses that could be seized on in a bid to water them down.

The bloc's sweeping farm subsidy system known as the Common Agricultural Policy is up for renegotiation for the period running from 2028 to 2034.

And the commission will need to implement a new law forcing companies to uphold environmental and human rights supply chain standards -- already diluted out of fear it would unfairly harm smaller businesses.

© 2024 AFP

Lakes drying up leave Greeks in despair

Thessaloniki (Greece) (AFP) – Lake Koronia, one of largest in Greece, is shrinking after a prolonged drought and a summer of record-breaking temperatures, leaving behind cracked earth, dead fish and a persistent stench.

Issued on: 13/09/2024 

Lunar landscape: The dried-up bed of Lake Koronia in northern Greece 

© Sakis MITROLIDIS / AFP


Where once fishermen pulled trout and tench into their boats, youths on motorbikes now joyride in the dust.

Locals say they can see the 42-square-kilometre (16-square-mile) expanse of water near Thessaloniki retreating day by day -- a fate shared by three other important natural lakes in Greece's Central Macedonian breadbasket.

"The stench from the lake is getting very bad. If we don't get enough snow and rain, the problem will get worse next year," said local community leader Kostas Hadzivoulgaridis.

"We need (officials) to take immediate action to protect the lake," the 50-year-old told AFP.

Totally dried up: Lake Pikrolimni, or 'Bitter Lake' in northern Greece has totally disappeared © Sakis MITROLIDIS / AFP

Water levels at three other natural lakes in the region -- Doirani, Volvi and Pikrolimni -- are also at their lowest in a decade, according to data last month from the Greek Biotope Wetland Centre.

Over the last two years, rainfall in the region has been "very low" and the temperatures recorded this year were the highest in the last decade, according to Irini Varsami, a local hydrologist.

As well as losing water directly through evaporation, the lake is being drained by the "increasing irrigation needs of (farmers in) the surrounding area", one of the important food-producing plains in the country.

- 'We hope for rain' -

Flamingos feed in the disappearing waters of Lake Koronia in northern Greece © Sakis MITROLIDIS / AFP

While the shores look like a lunar landscape bereft of life, flocks of migratory pink flamingos graze in the low water further in.

Anthi Vafiadou, a regional supervisor for the Greek state environmental protection agency, said it was "too early" to draw conclusions on the impact of the drought on the lake's biodiversity.

"We must see how the winter season evolves. We hope there will be more rain," she told AFP.

But what is certain, according to the Biotope Wetland Centre, is that climate change is putting huge pressure on the lakes.

According to the national observatory, Greece had the warmest winter and summer on record since reliable data collection began in 1960.

Greece's environment ministry this week unveiled a multi-billion-euro plan to boost the water supply and limit rampant water loss through poor management.

- 'Completely disappeared' -

A hotel, now abandoned, on the shore of dried-up Lake Pikrolimni in northern Greece © Sakis MITROLIDIS / AFP

Less than an hour's drive to the north is a bleak vision of what the future might hold.

Pikrolimni, or "Bitter Lake", is the only salt lake in mainland Greece.

But Pikrolimni is a lake in name only now. All that remains are the patterns formed by the water that evaporated during the prolonged drought.

Hotels and a mud spa around its edge lie abandoned.

"This is the first summer that the lake has been in such a state. There has been no rain, the water has completely disappeared and the lake has literally dried up," said Argyris Vergis, an 80-year-old local.

"This area used to be busy with tourists, but now you can see motorcyclists racing on the lake on the internet. It's tragic," the retired bank worker said.

© 2024 AFP

PATRIARCHAL RELIGION IS ABUSE

Malaysia widens probe into 'horror' care home child abuse

Kuala Lumpur (AFP) – Malaysian police expanded their probe Friday into a major Islamic business organisation with links to a banned sect, after hundreds of children were rescued from alleged abuse at care homes believed to be run by the group.


Issued on: 13/09/2024 -

Police rescued 400 children and teens from alleged abuse at care homes in Malaysia, in one of the worst such cases to hit the country 

© Mohd RASFAN / AFP

Investigators stormed 20 charity shelters across two Malaysian states on Wednesday, arresting 171 suspects including Islamic teachers and caregivers, and bringing to safety 400 children and teens.

In what is believed to be the worst such case to hit Malaysia in decades, police suspect the victims -- aged from one to 17 -- had been subjected to sexual and physical attacks.

They were also allegedly forced by the care home staff to abuse each other.

Investigators were "working towards" further raids and arrests as the probe on the organisation called Global Ikhwan Services and Business (GISB) continues, said police inspector-general Razarudin Husain at a press conference.

Investigations and health checks so far show that at least 13 minors had been sexually abused, said Razarudin.

The children, who are temporarily being housed in a police training centre in Kuala Lumpur among other locations, are still undergoing medical examinations, added the police chief.

Razarudin had said on Wednesday that children as young as five were burnt with hot spoons, while others who were ill were not allowed to seek treatment until their condition became critical.

"The caretakers also touched the children's bodies as if to carry out medical checks," he said.

GISB has denied the allegations and said they do not run the care homes.

"It is not our policy to do things that go against Islam, and the laws," the group said in a statement this week.

DNA samples

Global Ikhwan Services and Business (GISB) has long faced controversy over its links to the banned Al-Arqam sect 

© Mohd RASFAN / AFP

GISB has long been controversial for its links to the now-defunct Al-Arqam sect and has faced scrutiny by the religious authorities in the Muslim-majority country.

Al-Arqam was banned by the authorities in 1994 for deviant teachings, while members of the GISB had in 2011 set up an "Obedient Wives Club" that called on women to be "whores in bed" to stop their husbands from straying.

According to its website, GISB runs businesses from supermarkets to restaurants, and operates in several countries including Indonesia, France and the United Kingdom.

Police believe the minors in the care homes were all children of GISB members.

"We believe that all 402 children are fathered by GISB members. That's our suspicion at the moment," police inspector-general Razarudin Husain told AFP on Thursday.

"We feel that there's a need for DNA samples to be taken."

Islamic religious authorities in the Malaysian state of Selangor said this week they were closely monitoring GISB's activities.

"(We) remain vigilant about any facts leading to deviations from true Islamic teachings," they said.

The multi-ethnic country has a dual-track legal system with Muslims subject to sharia laws in certain areas.

The UN children's agency had underlined the "unimaginable horror" faced by the victims.

"These children have experienced unimaginable horrors and will need long-term professional medical and psychosocial support," said Robert Gass, the Malaysia representative for UNICEF.

The case has also rattled locals.

"This incident is very shocking and sudden," said 37-year-old resident Uzair Abdul Aziz.

© 2024 AFP

LOWER THAN OECD COUNTRIES

China to raise retirement age as demographic crisis looms

Beijing (AFP) – China said Friday it would gradually raise its statutory retirement age, as the country grapples with a looming demographic crisis and an older population.


Issued on: 13/09/2024 -

Hundreds of millions of people in China are set to enter old age in the coming decades while the birth rate dwindles dramatically © Adek BERRY / AFP/File

Hundreds of millions of people in China are set to enter old age in the coming decades while the birth rate dwindles dramatically.

The national population fell in 2023 for the second year in a row, with policymakers warning of potentially severe impacts on the economy, healthcare and social welfare systems if action is not taken.

"The statutory retirement age for male workers will be gradually extended from the original 60 years to 63 years," a decision by Beijing officials shared by Xinhua said.

For women workers the retirement age will be extended "from the original 50 or 55 years to 55 and 58 years, respectively", depending on the type of job.

The retirement age will begin to be gradually raised over 15 years from 2025, state media said.

"Starting 2030, the minimum year of basic pension contributions required to receive monthly benefits will be gradually raised from 15 years to 20 years at the pace of an increase of six months annually," Xinhua said.

The new rules will also allow Chinese people "to postpone retirement to an even later date if they reach an agreement with employers", it added.

China's retirement age had not been raised for decades.

'An inevitable choice'

Prior to Friday's announcement, state media had published articles touting the proposed retirement age.

"This reform will adapt to the objective situation of our country's widespread increase in life expectancy and years of education," an article in the People's Daily newspaper said this week.

It will also "raise the efficiency of the development and utilisation of human resources," the article in the Communist Party-run outlet said.

Mo Rong, director of the Chinese Academy of Labour and Social Security, told the People's Daily that raising the retirement age "is an inevitable choice for our country to adapt to the new normal of population development".

He added that the change "is conducive to stabilising the labour participation rate (and) maintaining the momentum and vitality of economic and social development".

© 2024 AFP

New election forecast model predicts Harris win

By Dr. Tim Sandle
DIGITAL JOURNAL
September 11, 2024

A new model updates US election forecasts. This is by drawing on daily data, driven by the odds market. The model comes from a Northwestern University data scientist. Using these data, the new forecasting model predicts how the Electoral College will vote

Similar models correctly predicted the 2020 presidential election and 2021 runoff elections for two Georgia senate seats.

The model updates the odds of a win by former President Donald Trump or Vice President Kamala Harris each day. With this level of precision, the new media and other interested parties can see how single events — such as a debate, campaign activities or legal rulings — might affect the potential outcome of the U.S. presidential election.

According to Northwestern’s Thomas Miller, who developed the platform, the presidential debates will be critical and “Trump’s legal events also are critical. There have been massive changes in forecasted Electoral College votes in recent months associated with current events and campaign activities.”

Miller is the faculty director of the master’s in data science program at Northwestern’s School of Professional Studies. Viewers can follow his daily predictions and accompanying analysis on his site, The Virtual Tout.

Miller’s system uses data from PredictIt, prediction markets in which users bet real money on political races. Miller then uses pricing data as input to his forecast for how the Electoral College will vote.

Using his daily forecasts, Miller can gauge responses to singular news or campaign events. When Trump received a sentencing delay for his New York “hush money” conviction, for example, Harris’s campaign experienced a predicted drop of 68 forecasted electoral votes, according to Miller’s model

Miller’s system currently predicts the Harris-Walz ticket will win the November election with 289 electoral votes. Candidates need 270 votes to win the presidency.

Miller’s models proved considerable accuracy during the 2020 presidential election — only predicting one state (Georgia) incorrectly. Miller has updated the algorithm from this error, uncovering innate biases that led to a Democratic Electoral College vote prediction that was 12 votes lower than the actual Electoral College vote.

Miller’s 2020 model was still more accurate than Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight. While FiveThirtyEight predicted 348 electoral votes for Biden-Harris, Miller predicted 294 electoral votes for the Democratic ticket. Ultimately, the Electoral College casted 306 votes for Biden-Harris.

Miller says popular election forecasting systems, including FiveThirtyEight and The Economist’s predictions project, are inherently flawed because they use data from opinion polls. According to Miller, these data are old, compared to fast-moving news cycles.

Miller also notes another key advantage of prediction markets over political polls: Large groups of investors who stay in the markets until Election Day. These groups grow larger as Election Day approaches. Miller relies on prediction markets that have tens of thousands of investors, with thousands of shares traded each day. Typical opinion polls involve between one and two thousand respondents, with new respondents recruited for each poll.

Harris sees largest 24-hour fundraising haul since entering race: report

Matthew Chapman
September 12, 2024

Vice President Kamala Harris speaks at a moderated conversation with former Trump administration national security official Olivia Troye and former Republican voter Amanda Stratton on July 17, 2024 in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Harris is the new Democratic presidential nominee, according to FEC filings. (Photo by Chris duMond/Getty Images)


Vice President Kamala Harris raised a staggering $47 million — just in the 24 hours after the debate in Philadelphia, reported The New York Times on Thursday.

The new haul, according to the report, included donations from 600,000 people. The Times noted the number amounts to Harris' largest 24-hour fund-raising period since she entered the race in July — and raised $81 million on her first day.

"Ms. Harris already had a significant financial edge over Mr. Trump entering September," the Times said. "Her operation said it had $404 million cash on hand, while Mr. Trump had $295 million."

This comes after Harris already broke records in fundraising on several previous occassions, raising $204 million just in August.

This particular 24-hour haul is the second largest such campaign fundraising 24-hour period this cycle; former President Donald Trump raised $53 million in the 24 hours after he was convicted of felony falsification of business records in New York, which does not include the $50 million given to a pro-Trump super PAC in that period by billionaire megadonor Timothy Mellon.

Tuesday's debate comes after Trump and President Joe Biden faced off in Atlanta in June. It was widely considered a disaster for Trump, who struggled to answer questions, grew visibly agitated as Harris attacked his record, and had to be repeatedly corrected by moderators as he promoted false claims, including a viral hoax that migrants are eating people's pets in Springfield, Ohio.

While Harris enjoys a fundraising advantage, her campaign is wary of the risk that widespread coverage of successful cash hauls could result in some small-dollar donors growing complacent and withholding money, and they are also aware that they need to play in more states than Trump does.

“Trump is all in on one to two ‘must win’ states. We don’t have that luxury,” campaign manager Jen O'Malley Dillon told The Times.

Voting tech firm's defamation suit against right-wing Newsmax can head to trial: report

Daniel Hampton
September 12, 2024 

Michigan is conducting an investigation into nine people who allegedly tried to gain access to voting machines after the 2020 election. - Dreamstime/Dreamstime/TNS

A Delaware judge ruled Thursday that a defamation case filed by voting tech firm Smartmatic against the right-wing network Newsmax can proceed to trial at the end of this month, according to a report.

The trial is scheduled to begin Sept. 30, CNN reported, though such cases often never reach that stage, as the parties negotiate a settlement out of court.

Newsmax’s tried to have the case dismissed, but Superior Court Judge Eric Davis rejected the argument and found that jurors ought to hear about the network's actions four years ago.

“Newsmax reported on allegations regarding the Election and Smartmatic, but there remains a dispute as to whether Newsmax recklessly disregarded the truth,” Davis wrote, according to CNN. “The jury must determine if Newsmax was doing what media organizations typically do — inform the public of newsworthy events—or did Newsmax purposely avoid the truth and defame Smartmatic."

The voting tech company has said Newsmax promoted a baseless — and debunked — theory that its machines helped tilt the 2020 election against former President Donald Trump. The network has said it was free to cover the news of attempts to contest the results under the First Amendment.

CNN noted that if a settlement is not reached, Newsmax executives and on-air hosts may be forced to testify about their discussions with Trump regarding the 2020 election against President Joe Biden, which Trump has falsely maintained he won.

The news comes after the right-wing news outlet One American News Network, or OANN, settled a defamation suit in April that was brought by Smartmatic over the same claims. The terms of that settlement were confidential.

 

Labour Hub Editors

A Most Costly Trade

Paul Rogers introduces some of the themes in a new book about the global arms trade, Monstrous Anger of the Guns, which he co-edited.

In the month after the start of the Russian attack on Ukraine, a little-noticed consequence  was a surge in share prices for some of the world’s leading arms corporations.   This was maintained in the 18 months that followed, with BAE Systems seeing a 70 percent increase, Sweden’s Saab doubling its price and Germany’s largest arms corporation Rheinmetall, trebling its price.  Europe’s military spending went up by 13 percent in a year and overall world spending increased by 3.7 percent to over $2 trillion, with every sign of further increases for the rest of the decade.

If we try to get a handle on how the international arms trade works, we have to start by turning the usual study of war upside down.  For the ‘winner’, in those cases where one state can be said to be a winner, then a good war is one that leads to a very quick victory with little loss of life and is replaced by a stable peace.  In contrast, for an arms corporation that is a ‘bad war’ with few weapons sales, little scope for replacing weapons and not much of an opportunity to show off the capabilities of new weapons to potential customers.

For the world’s arms industries, a really good war will exhibit several features.  First, the war will be long, preferably indefinite, and bogging down into a violent stalemate in which neither side can win and neither side can lose.  Why “violent” and not just “stalemate”?  “Violent” implies continual use of weapons and a consequent need to replace them for as long as the war lasts.

The war in Ukraine is now in just such a violent stalemate.  If Russia was able to make sudden gains that could point the way to defeat for Ukraine then NATO would see its very status as the world’s largest military alliance at risk and immediately increase aid to Ukraine.   If it was Ukraine that made the breakthrough then there would be a high risk that Putin would threaten escalation to chemical or nuclear weapons.

In the currently unlikely event of a negotiated settlement, such an outcome would be very good news in preventing further loss of life, wrecked towns and cities and damaged economies but thoroughly bad news for the many arms companies pumping weaponry into Ukraine.   This would apply just as much to Russia which has its own booming arms corporations, and it also applies to Iran selling Russia armed drones and ballistic missiles, North Korea supplying munitions, and other companies from around the world successfully feeding armaments into Russia while avoiding western sanctions.

Much the same applies to Israel’s wars on Gaza, where arms are pouring in from Western allies, especially the United States, even while they condemn Israel for the carnage, both there and in the occupied West Bank.  The Gaza war is another example of a violent stalemate that helps the armourers.   Netanyahu is deeply resistant to any kind of ceasefire and insists that Hamas must be destroyed whereas Hamas has only to survive to claim a kind of victory, with the Israeli assault on the occupied Palestinian West Bank even serving to increase support for the movement.  

Furthermore, it is also highly likely that the appalling loss of life and maiming in Gaza and the increasing military suppression on the West Bank will together ensure tens of thousands of new young Palestinian recruits for the cause in the coming decades.  It all means a desperate future for the whole Palestinian community but a profitable future for the arms corporations in the years and decades to come.

Gaza is also an example of an experimental war as new weapons are tried out by the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF).   In recent years the IDF has acquired an international reputation for its ability to maintain control of occupied Palestinian territories, as detailed in Antony Loewenstein’s bestseller, The Palestine Laboratory.

Quite apart from the direct human costs of the Hamas assault into southern Israel last year, it was also a technological disaster for Israel because of the failure of what were assumed to be high-tech border controls.   The IDF will be anxious to restore that reputation and there is already evidence of that, detailed by Loewenstein in his chapter in a new book on the arms trade just published, Monstrous Anger of the Guns.      One area of innovation is with military robots including ‘robotic dogs’, while other developments focus on improved night vision, more effective mass surveillance and identification and new counter-drone technologies.

Israel exports military technologies to over 140 countries across the world, but plenty of other countries are immersed in the same trade.   Similarly, they seek to promote sales in the wake of particular wars.   After the 1982 Falklands-Malvinas War, the manufacturers of the Sea Dart anti-aircraft missile did this simply by reproducing a standard advert for the missile in military magazines, but now with ‘combat-proven” stamped across it.  The advert failed to mention that in the closing days of that war, a Royal Navy air defence destroyer, HMS Cardiff,  had mistakenly fired a Sea Dart at a British Army Gazelle helicopter killing the two-person crew and two army communications specialists.

At the global level the international arms trade is notorious for high levels of corruption and is estimated to account for 40% of all corruption in world trade.  One of the many examples was post-apartheid South Africa’s decision, five years after the country’s first democratic election, to spend $10 billion on weapons that were not relevant to its defence needs.  Andrew Feinstein reported that “in order to get the deal through, at least $350 million of bribes were paid to senior politicians, officials, defence company executives and intermediaries.”

Any country with sizeable armed forces will have its own arms industries, and every country with even small armed forces is well-nigh certain to be involved in the international arms trade.  It is a  trade that needs wars and needs new threats.   It is also a trade that reeks with corruption and badly needs to be brought under control.   Given the profits to be made that is a formidable task.

Paul Rogers is Emeritus Professor of Peace Studies at Bradford University and a co-editor with Rhona Michie and Andrew Feinstein, of Monstrous Anger of the Guns: How the Global Arms Trade is Ruining the World and What We Can Do About It, preface by Jeremy Corbyn, published by Pluto Press. 

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for PERMANENT ARMS ECONOMY