EMERGING MARKETS
A green strategy to defuse the "debt bomb"

Ulrich Volz
29 April 2022

A debt crisis is looming in the Global South. According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), 60 percent of low-income countries are at high risk or already in debt distress. Moreover, a growing number of middle-income countries is also suffering from high debt service burdens. Debt-to-GDP ratios and external debt service as share of government revenue, which had been on the rise already prior to the Covid-19 crisis, have further increased considerably in many countries since the start of the pandemic. MISEREOR and erlassjahr.de estimate that 135 countries in the Global South are now critically indebted. Almost 50 developing countries experienced a downgrade in their sovereign debt credit rating, shutting several of them out of international capital markets. Almost a quarter of emerging market governments that have issued debt in foreign currency have their bonds trading in distressed territory, with spreads more than 1,000 basis points above US Treasuries. As highlighted by the IMF, the composition of financing is continuing to evolve towards new, more expensive sources. Monetary tightening in the US and other advanced economies is driving up the cost of debt and make international refinancing ever harder for those countries that still maintain access to international capital markets.


A perfect storm triggered by the war?

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has further escalated the situation, creating a perfect storm. The war has sent shockwaves through the global economy and caused the largest commodity shock since the 1970s. Whereas oil, gas, and grain exporters may get temporary relief in the short term, many developing and emerging market countries – including in Sub-Saharan Africa – are net fossil fuel and grain importers. With world food prices at a record high, UN Secretary-General António Guterres has warned of a “hurricane of hunger”. The effects of the war in Ukraine are likely to significantly worsen the social and economic situation in many developing and emerging market countries, further undermining debt sustainability.

High levels of public debt service and insufficient fiscal and monetary space have already constrained the crisis responses of most low and middle-income economies. While advanced countries were able to implement extremely expansionary fiscal and monetary policies in response to the pandemic crisis, few countries in the Global South had this option. In many low- and middle-income economies, external public debt service is greater than health care expenditure and education expenditure combined. The IMF has warned of a dangerous divergence in economic prospects across countries due to large disparities in vaccine access and in the policy space governments have to support the economy. Talk of “building back better” remains hollow if governments are struggling to stay afloat. Rather, as the Financial Times’ Martin Wolf put it, the spectre of a lost decade looms for vulnerable nations, threatening “economic long Covid”.


Fewer resources for the green transition

The precarious debt situation is not only threatening recoveries. It is also impeding much-needed investments in climate resilience. These investments are urgent: Governments must climate-proof their economies and public finances or potentially face an ever-worsening spiral of climate vulnerability and unsustainable debt burdens. There is a danger that vulnerable developing countries will enter a vicious circle in which greater climate vulnerability raises the cost of debt and diminishes the fiscal space for investment in climate resilience. As financial markets increasingly price climate risks, and global warming accelerates, the risk premia of these countries, which are already high, are likely to increase further. The impact of Covid-19 on public finances risks reinforcing this vicious circle. In many countries, including many Small Island Developing States, high public service is crowding out critical investment that is needed for climate-proofing economies and enabling a green, resilient, and equitable recovery.


Multilateral support is not sufficient

Since the start of the pandemic, financial support provided by the IMF and multilateral development banks has provided a lifeline to many governments in the Global South. However, those large portions of these public transfers have been used by debtor governments to pay debt service to external private creditors. The net debt transfer from many developing country governments to external creditors stands in stark contrast to the urgent need of these countries to ramp up investment in crucial areas of development at home.

The measures taken by the international community to date have not sufficiently addressed the worsening debt sustainability problem. The G20’s Debt Service Suspension Initiative (DSSI), which ended in December 2021, provided a mere USD 13 billion in temporary relief to 48 low-income countries through a suspension of debt-service payments owed to their official bilateral creditors. Private creditors, who hold the biggest share of developing country debt, did not participate at all. And both interest and amortisation payments have to be made after a repayment period of five years and a one-year grace period in a net present value neutral manner.

The Common Framework for Debt Treatment beyond the DSSI that the G20 established for the same 73 countries eligible for DSSI treatment to address insolvency and protracted liquidity problems has also fallen short. Like the DSSI, the Common Framework excludes middle income countries. Moreover, it lacks incentives and mechanisms to bring debtor governments and private creditors together. As pointed out by the World Bank “[t]he lack of measures to encourage private sector participation may limit the effectiveness of any negotiated agreement and raises the risk of a migration of private sector debt to official creditors.” The uptake to date has been poor: to date, only three countries – Chad, Ethiopia, and Zambia – have applied for a debt treatment under the Common Framework. Each of these cases has experienced significant delays.


A proposal to scale up efforts

Against the backdrop of the exogenous Covid-19 shock, the enormous investment needs to meet development and climate goals, and the hesitancy of debtor governments to seek relief when the current framework for debt restructuring is putting them in an unfavourable position, a new approach to tacking the debt crisis is urgently needed that will facilitate timely and orderly restructuring and provide a clear pathway for debtor governments to green and inclusive recoveries. A pragmatic scheme is required that will deliver meaningful and timely debt relief to those countries that require it. Given that private creditors hold a majority of public external debt of developing countries, private sector involvement is crucial.

To bring private creditors to the negotiation table, a carrots-and-sticks-approach is needed, that is, a combination of positive incentives (“carrots”) and pressure (“sticks”). With colleagues, I have put forward a proposal for debt relief for a green and inclusive recovery. In terms of incentives, we propose the creation of a new Facility for Green and Inclusive Recovery administered by the World Bank that is designed to entice the commercial sector to engage in debt restructurings. The Facility, which could be established relatively quickly, would back the payments of newly issued sovereign bonds that would be swapped with a significant haircut for old and unsustainable, privately held debt. Private creditors would benefit from a partial guarantee of the principal, as well as a guarantee on 18 months’ worth of interest payments, analogous to the Brady Plan that helped to overcome the stalemate of debt crisis of the 1980s.

In terms of pressure, the financial authorities of the jurisdictions in which the major private creditors (both banks and asset managers) reside and that govern the majority of sovereign debt contracts – most importantly the United States, the United Kingdom, and China – could use strong moral suasion and regulations on accounting, banking supervision, and taxation to improve creditors’ willingness to participate in debt restructuring.

Debt relief should not only provide temporary breathing space. It should empower governments to lay the foundations for sustainable development by investing in strategic areas of development, including health, education, digitisation, cheap and sustainable energy, and climate-resilient infrastructure. As part of our proposal, debtor countries would commit to reforms that align their policies and budgets with Agenda 2030 and the Paris Agreement. The country commitments would be designed by country governments under the involvement of the parliaments and in consultation with the relevant stakeholders.

Ahead of the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Glasgow, the V20 Finance Ministers – which represent 55 climate-vulnerable nations with a total population of 1.4 billion people – issued a Statement on Debt Restructuring for Climate-Vulnerable Nations, drawing on our proposal. It the statement, the V20 Finance Ministers called for “a major debt restructuring initiative for countries overburdened by debt – a sort of grand-scale climate-debt swap where the debts and debt servicing of developing countries are reduced on the basis of their own plans to achieve climate resilience and prosperity”.


The international community at a crossroads

The international community is at a juncture where it needs to decide if it wants all countries to be able to achieve the Agenda 2030 and invest in climate action. Countries that are overindebted will be able to do neither. Linking debt relief with action on the SDGs and climate is one way of keeping the Agenda 2030 alive. But while debt for climate and sustainability swaps have recently received a lot of attention, it should be highlighted that the experiences with conventional debt-for-development or -nature swaps and comparable debt mechanisms such as debt-for-education swaps have been rather mixed. Small piecemeal approaches clearly will not suffice to meet the challenge. For this reason, the major advanced economies and China need to overcome the current deadlock and agree on a bold, global initiative for debt relief to allow all countries the opportunity to invest in swift recoveries from the pandemic and the chance to achieve the shared goals of the Agenda 2030.

Transnistria, a Russian arrow in the heart of Europe


The separatist territory has no interest in joining Russia. However, the main political, economic and military decisions are made in Moscow. Transnistria has no facilities to support an attack on Odessa, Ukraine. The Moldovans are not meddling and are aiming for neutrality.


by Vladimir Rozanskij

Moscow (AsiaNews) - In Transnistria, a Moldovan separatist strip on the border with Ukraine, there are two types of Russian armed forces: the so-called "peacekeepers", about 500 people deployed alongside Moldovan soldiers and observers from various countries, and the "limited group of troops" that protects Russian military depots in the village of Kolbasna. This is what Moldova's former defense minister Anatol Šalar tells Currentime.tv, according to which there are more than 2,200 soldiers in the second group.

The site also interviewed the former deputy premier of Transnistria for Integration in Moldova, Aleksandr Flenka, who explained how the disputed territory differs from the separatist republics of Donetsk and Lugansk in the Donbass, and why Russia has no interest in reuniting this territory with itself. This is firstly because of the lack of a common border with Russia, and secondly because the Tiraspol leadership has long since achieved its goals, well before the war in Ukraine: "They already have free gas supplies from Russia, and a flourishing smuggling trade in all directions."

Russian gas is used to produce energy to be sold "in black" to Moldova, which has been earning good money in dollars for 30 years, and there is no interest in integration with Russia, nor in international recognition of the republic, which would imply obligations and controls of all kinds. No intention either of triggering an armed conflict with Ukraine.

When asked about the actual independence of the Transnistrian leadership from Moscow, Flenka explains that "in daily decisions and ordinary administration there is enough freedom; of course the dependence is felt at the political, economic and military level". Otherwise, Flenka adds, the so-called president Vadim Krasnoselskij and the so-called foreign minister Vitalij Ignatev, along with a large caste of officials, "live quietly, being in possession of both Russian and Ukrainian passports, and many also have Moldovan ones."

The only fact in common with the Donbass is the creation of the separatist republic, which took place with the support of Russia according to a classic pattern, also seen in Abkhazia and South Ossetia with respect to Georgia, but each of these territories has its own particular history.

Moscow's lever of control remains the gas supply, which in these days is closing for several countries, and could also affect Transnistria if the shipment to Moldova is suspended, from which the separatist territory illegally removes the quota of its interest. On the other hand, if they were left without gas, the inhabitants of Transnistria would be even less inclined to fight for the Russians.

Actually, the Russians also pay the pensions of Transnistrian citizens, which are provided by the Moscow municipality together with other social benefits. In any case, a Russian attack on Odessa from the West would be economically untenable for the facilities in Tiraspol, which has military technology dating back to the Soviet period, and Russia cannot transport anything without going through Ukraine or Moldova. "There are 20,000 tons of military stockpiles in the Russian depots anyway, and even if half of them worked, it would still be a significant threat," Flenka notes, "but it would not be easy to get this arsenal back on track."

In Transnistria there is also a military airport, maintained for 30 years at a minimum level of efficiency, where even landing at night is impossible, yet in recent days night explosions have been heard there.

Moldovan President Maia Sandu has indicated Tiraspol airport as a high-risk military target, but Chisinau does not have the strength to impose anything, and will continue to maintain its neutrality by working through diplomatic channels in all senses: with Romania, the European Union, Ukraine and Russia itself.

Transnistria, perhaps the darkest corner of the entire continent, remains an arrow pointed at the heart of Europe

Myanmar Junta Hits Opposition Forces with Communications Blackouts

April 29, 2022 
VOA News

Protesters hold a banner in support of the National Unity Government (NUG) as they take part in a demonstration against the military coup in Yangon, Myanmar, on July 7, 2021.


YANGON, MYANMAR —

In a move that is starving the resistance and hurting businesses, Myanmar’s junta has been cracking down on opposition forces by cutting off mobile internet service and telephone lines in the war-torn areas of the Sagaing and Magway regions and Kayah and Chin states, all strongholds of local armed groups, local defense forces and aid groups say.

That cutoff of communications capabilities also appears to presage major fighting.

A week after the opposition National Unity Government declared a “defensive war” Sept. 7 the junta blocked internet access in Gangaw, Myaing, Htee Lin, Taungtwingyi townships in Magway; Falam, Tedim, Tonzang, Matupi, Mindat, Kanpetlet Paletwa, Thantlang townships in Chin; and Ayartaw, Yinmabin, Kani, Pale, Ye-U, Tantse, and Budalin townships in Sagaing to restrict the flow of information and communication, local resistance groups said. Six of Kayah’s seven townships are being affected by a mobile internet service cut. According to residents and local armed groups, mobile internet service can only be accessed in the capital, Loikaw.

Other reports indicate the shutdowns are more widespread, that internet service had been cut off in Sagaing except for four cities. Some internet providers had, according to the reports, cut mobile phone data, some had reduced the speed to 2G.

An operator with a call center operated by MPT, one of Myanmar’s telecommunications companies, told VOA Burmese in March, "Kalay, Sagaing and Shwebo three cities have mobile internet access, and the rest of the cities in Sagaing region including Monywa, have 2G internet service from March 3. However, SMS service available for texting with 2G." A query by VOA Burmese on Wednesday morning went unanswered and its journalists continue to experience difficulties in contacting sources in Myanmar due to mobile services outages.

A resident of Salingyi township told VOA Burmese that mobile internet was cut off on the night of March 3 and remains so in 23 townships in Sagaing, where clashes between military and local People's Defense Forces were intensifying.

Locals in Sagaing’s Depayin township also reported in early March that mobile internet services from network operators were no longer available. Locals said that there has been no fighting but internet lines had been cut off in several Depayin villages, where thousands were fleeing the war after the military council cleared the area.

Military operations follow cutoffs

“After internet and telephone lines were cut off, the junta carried out heavy operations indiscriminately, dropping bombs on civilian villages, and firing guns and heavy artillery to ward off resistance forces active in the area,” said a People’s Defense Forces member in Sagaing’s Yinmabin township.

The military operations forced local armed groups to give up military bases. Although the armed groups would not say how many bases they had to give up, news reports published by the junta said that many bases were seized in Sagaing and Kayah. A Karenni PDF source – the Karenni are one of Myanmar’s ethnic groups -- said they had to give up many bases because they did not have enough weapons. Most of the local support for weapons is based on internet-dependent mobile banking.

Residents said March 29 that telephone lines had been cut off for a week in Mindat, where fighting between the military and local Chinland Defense Force groups had been going on for about a week. According to observers, the junta cut off communications to the CDF.

Mindat resident Ko Moun No told VOA Burmese, "Telephone lines have been cut off since the military troops reinforced from Mindat to Matupi on March 26, only very limited food supply allowed into the city as well. … Now, the whole Mindat township lost communication. I cannot communicate through internet either."

Villagers in areas where the internet has been blocked also say military forces commit human rights violations there, including torching houses and religious buildings, killing civilians and looting villagers’ goods and property. The junta always blames such incidents on ethnic armies and opposition people’s defense forces.

“The Myanmar military is as ruthless as ever. There have been many unreported incidents in our village,” said a 46-year-old villager in Magway’s Myaing township.

Junta spokesperson Major General Zaw Min Tun vowed to reporters in Naypyitaw, Myanmar’s capital, on March 24 that the military planned to intensify anti-resistance activities in Sagaing with the help of militias allied with the government.

Data for Myanmar, a research firm, said April 14 that from Feb. 1, 2021, to April 13, 2022, an estimated 9,187 homes were burned down by junta forces and groups working with them including 5,617 in Sagaing. The California-based Chin Human Rights Organization said the junta destroyed 34 churches and 15 other Christian religious buildings in Chin state between February 2021 and January 2022.

Local resistance chapters said they use walkie-talkies to communicate with allied forces to get around the lack of internet access and unreliable mobile phone signals.

“All are donated by individual donors living abroad," an official of the Myaing People’s Defense Force told VOA on April 12. Some devices can transmit a signal up to 16 kilometers, the maximum distance can be used, he added.

In addition to the internet blockage, telephone lines are also cut off ahead of heavy military operations and airstrikes. When this happens, armed groups and their medical teams prepare for battle. Once internet and phone services are cut, they are not restored.

“When mobile and internet are cut off, we need to be ready and stationed near the front line to provide immediate assistance,” said Radi Ohm, a member of an NUG mobile medical support team that works in Sagaing and Chin.

Members of the local armed groups say they have found ways to communicate without the internet -- mainly walkie-talkies, but also cell phones for calls and texts when there is a signal -- but the cutoffs have had a significant impact on the flow of funding. Monetary support domestically has dropped dramatically as mobile payment services such as KBZ Pay and Wave Money, two payment systems in Myanmar, no longer work. Foreign contributions are handled differently.

As the junta’s bombing campaigns, airstrikes and offensives have created widespread displacement of civilians in the region, volunteer aid groups in conflict areas say they cannot provide enough food and medical care because of inadequate funding.

“The junta often freezes the money in the KBZ Pay account. It also blocked mobile SIM cards used for KBZ Pay accounts. We are losing a lot of money because of this,” a volunteer with a group helping conflict-area refugees based on the Shan-Kayah border told VOA on April 12. “We received limited support from the NUG, but it is not enough,” she added.

Cutoff hitting civilians, too

It is not just the opposition fighters who are being hit by the communications cutoffs.

Ko Thaung, a Chin political analyst, told VOA Burmese that internet and telephone lines have been cut off, which is causing a lot of trouble for locals, many of whom are worried about losing their businesses if their communications are cut off.

"Communication (internet and telephone lines) were cut off in Mindat and Matupi townships in Chin state. Because military convoys have been hit hard by local PDF attacks, the military is trying to disrupt communication so their movements cannot be traced. This has affected not only for PDF fighters but also the business community, as many people work online and use phones to do business,” he said.

A local relief volunteer in Depayin said he relies on mobile internet for communication and weather information to help those displaced by the fighting.

“Without a functioning communication system, it is difficult to organize aid assistance for refugees spread out in the area. It is in real chaos," he said.

According to a report by the Myanmar Now news site March 4, the junta has ordered Myanmar’s four telecommunication companies, MPT, Telenor, Mytel and Ooredoo, to shut down mobile internet in the 23 townships located in northwestern Sagaing where local PDFs are fighting with the military.

A telecommunications company source told Myanmar Now that the military’s directive referred to Telecommunications Law language giving the Transport and Communication Ministry the absolute power to temporarily block and filter content “for the benefit of the people” to justify the closures.

The 2021 edition of Freedom House’s annual Freedom on the Net report, Myanmar’s internet freedom score has fallen by 14 points since the military coup, the highest level in four years.

The VOA Burmese Service contributed to this report.

On International Respect for Chickens Day, Try Thinking About Them Differently

BY KAREN DAVIS

 APRIL 29, 2022
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“I hear the universal cock-crowing with surprise and pleasure, as if I never heard it before. What a tough fellow! How native to the earth!” —Henry David Thoreau

Chickens are indeed native to the earth. Despite centuries of domestication—from the tropical forest to the farmyard to the factory farm—the call of the wild has always been in the chicken’s heart. Far from being “chicken,” roosters and hens are legendary for their bravery. In classical times, the bearing of the rooster—the old British term for “cock,” a word that was considered too sexually charged for American usage—symbolized military valor: the rooster’s crest stood for the soldier’s helmet and his spurs stood for the sword. A chicken will stand up to an adult human being. Our tiny Bantam rooster, Bantu, would flash out of the bushes and repeatedly attack our legs, lest we should disturb his beloved hens. (Although we do not allow our chickens to hatch chicks, in 2018 a hen and a rooster rescued from a cockfighting operation produced a surprise family, the hen having camouflaged herself in a wooded area of our sanctuary.)

An annoyed hen will confront a pesky young rooster with her hackles raised and run him off. Although chickens will fight fiercely, and sometimes successfully, with foxes and other predators to protect their families, with humans, however, this kind of bravery usually does not win. A woman employed on a chicken “breeder” farm in Maryland, berated the defenders of chickens for trying to make her lose her job, and threatening her ability to support herself and her daughter. For her, the “breeder” hens were “mean” birds who “peck your arm when you are trying to collect the eggs.” In her defense for her life and her daughter’s life, she failed to see the similarity between her motherly protection of her child and the exploited hen’s courageous effort to protect her own offspring.

In an outdoor chicken flock, similar to the 12,000 square feet, predator-proof sanctuary my organization United Poultry Concerns has in rural Virginia, ritual and playful sparring and chasing normally suffice to maintain peace and resolve disputes among chickens without bloodshed. Even hens will occasionally have a spat, growling and jumping at each other with their hackles raised; but in more than 30 years of keeping chickens, I have never seen a hen fight turn seriously violent or last for more than a few minutes. Chickens have a natural instinct for social equilibrium and learn quickly from each other. An exasperated bird will either move away from the offender or aim a peck, or a pecking gesture, which sends the message: “Back off.”

Bloody battles, which usually take place when a new rooster is introduced into an established flock, are rare, short-lived and usually affect the comb—the crest on top of a chicken’s head—which, being packed with blood vessels, can make an injury look worse than it usually is. It is when chickens are crowded, confined, frustrated or forced to compete at a feeder that distempered behavior can erupt. By contrast, chickens allowed to grow up in successive generations, unconfined in buildings, do not evince a rigid “pecking order.” Parents oversee their young, and the young contend playfully, and indulge in many other activities. A flock of well-acquainted chickens is an amiable social group.

Sometimes chickens run away, however, fleeing from a bully or hereditary predator on legs designed for the purpose does not constitute cowardice. At the same time, I’ve learned from painful experience how a rooster who rushes in to defend his hens from a fox or a raccoon usually does not survive the encounter.

Though chickens are polygamous, mating with more than one member of the opposite sex, individual birds are attracted to each other. They not only “breed”; but they also form bonds, clucking endearments to one another throughout the day. A rooster does a courtly dance for his special hens in which he “skitters sideways and opens his wing feathers downward like Japanese fans,” according to Rick and Gail Luttmann’s book, Chickens in Your Backyard. A man once told me, “When I was a young man I worked on a chicken farm, and one of the most amazing things about those chickens was that they would actually choose each other and refuse to mate with anyone else.”

Sadly, the eggs of these parent flocks are snatched away and sent to mechanical incubators, so the parents never see their chicks. “Breeder” roosters and hens are routinely culled for low fertility, and also because “if a particular male becomes unable to mate, his matching females will not accept another male until he is removed,” explains the book Commercial Chicken Meat and Egg Production.

Little more than a year later, the parents who have survived their miserable life are sent to slaughter just like the chicks they never got to see, raise or protect, as they would otherwise have chosen to do if they were free.

To afford this chance for chickens to live a cage-free life along with their chicks, we should show compassion to chickens in May in honor of International Respect for Chickens Day, which falls on May 4, 2022. Most of all, we need to respect the lives of chickens beyond this day by ensuring that chickens are treated humanely, and by making better food choices, which involves a shift away from a meat-based diet toward a plant-based diet.

This article was produced by Earth | Food | Life, a project of the Independent Media Institute.

Turkey steps up attacks on Syria’s Kurds amid Iraq operation

Ankara is using the cover of Ukraine’s war to weaken the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and associated groups in the region.

A picture taken on April 19, 2022 shows smoke billowing from behind the mountains of Matin (Jabal Matin) in the town of Chiladze following a Turkish offensive targeting rebels in the northern Iraqi Kurdish autonomous region. - AFP via Getty Images

Jared Szuba
@JM_Szuba
AL-MONITOR
April 22, 2022

Turkey’s military has launched a spate of strikes on Kurdish-run parts of northeast Syria over the past week as world attention is focused on Ukraine.

At least four artillery shells from the Turkish side of the border bombarded the symbolic Kurdish-majority Syrian city of Kobani on Friday. Two civilians were wounded, according to local reports.

On Wednesday, a Turkish drone strike killed the co-commander of the US-backed militia forces in Kobani and two other female fighters from the Kurdish-led Women’s Protection Units (YPJ). The group is one of the core Kurdish-led units in Syria that receives support from a US-led international military coalition in the fight against the Islamic State.

Turkey has launched four other drone strikes on the Syrian side of the border within the past ten days, two of which targeted facilities used by local security forces, spokesman for the Kurdish-led forces Farhad Shami told Al-Monitor.

Artillery from Turkish-controlled areas has also repeatedly targeted the Tal Tamr and Zarkan over the past week, killing one and wounding at least five, according to the locally-based Rojava Information Center.

The background: Ankara considers the US-backed Syrian fighters to be inextricable from the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, a leftist militant group headquartered in the mountains of neighboring northern Iraq.

The two share a common ideology, though the Syrian factions insist they pose no threat to Turkey and have distanced their cause from that of the PKK. The US negotiated a ceasefire to halt Turkey’s attacks against the Syrian Kurdish-led fighters in 2019, but so far there has been no condemnation or statement of concern from Washington about the latest strikes.

"These attacks carried out by the Turkish state do not take place in the areas of contact and confrontation on the fronts, but directly target society," including urban centers, Peoples' Protection Units (YPG) spokesperson Nuri Mahmoud told Al-Monitor.

"The attacks occur as we strive to abide by the ceasefire agreement reached in October 2019."

"If the Turkish government's attacks on us continue, we will have to take the appropriate response to those attacks," Mahmoud told Al-Monitor.

What they’re doing: Turkey announced a full-blown military operation against the PKK in northern border areas of Iraq’s Kurdistan region earlier this week.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan threatened Thursday that the Syrian fighters are not exempt from the assault. Earlier Friday, Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu publicly blamed what he said were PKK-affiliated groups for two recent bombings in Turkish cities.

A blast injured several Turkish prison officers and killed one aboard a bus in the city of Bursa earlier this week, and another reportedly hit the office of Turkey Youth Foundation NGO in Istanbul Thursday. No injuries were reported in the latter incident.

Soylu on Friday blamed the Istanbul incident on Turkey’s Revolutionary Communist Party (DKP) and the Bursa bus explosion on the Marxist-Leninist Communist Party (MKLP), which he described as groups “subcontracted to the PKK.”

No evidence of the groups’ involvement was presented, though top PKK official Duran Kalkan threatened last week to bring the fight to Turkey’s cities.

What’s Next: Turkey’s attacks have worsened the already tenuous peace between the dominant Syrian Kurdish faction and minority Kurdistan National Congress (KNC). KNC offices in three cities were burned in attacks attributed to affiliates of the Syrian Democratic Union Party (PYD), a charge which a senior PYD representative denied to Al-Monitor on Wednesday.

The Syrian Kurdish forces have addressed Turkey's escalation with the US-led coalition, spokesperson Shami told Al-Monitor. “So far there has been no reaction in the field from the [US-led] coalition or Russia, which is also a guarantor of the [2019] ceasefire,” Shami said.

Al-Monitor has reached out to the US-led coalition for comment.

Know More: To stay up-to-date on Turkey’s military operations in northeast Syria, be sure to subscribe to Amberin Zaman’s weekly newsletter.

This story was updated on April 23 to include a statement by the YPG and to clarify the US military's relationship with Syrian Kurdish-led forces.

Human rights defender Sarah Leah Whitson says Turkey’s cynical U-turn on Khashoggi case is no surprise

On the Middle East with Andrew Parasiliti and Amberin Zaman, an Al-Monitor Podcast

00:00 / 19:04

Turkey was at the forefront of an international campaign to name and shame the perpetrators of the 2018 murder in Istanbul of Saudi dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Ankara has just dropped a case to try 26 Saudi officials who allegedly took their orders from Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. The consensus is that Ankara did so to fix relations with Saudi Arabia and the powerful crown prince who it once sought to pull down. One of the main reasons for Turkey's U-turn is to drum up Gulf support for its wobbly economy, says Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director of DAWN.

 

US report offers few clues on Assad family wealth

The State Department report said the estimated net worth of President Bashar al-Assad and his family was between $1-2 billion.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his wife, Asma Assad, are seen during a visit to Moscow's State Institute for Foreign Relations on Jan. 25, 2005. Assad was awarded an honorary doctorate. 

- Salah Malkawi/ Getty Images

Elizabeth Hagedorn
@ElizHagedorn

AL-MONITOR
April 29, 2022

A congressionally mandated State Department report put the net worth of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his family at an estimated $1-2 billion but did little to shed light on how the country’s ruling family accumulates its vast fortune, analysts say.

An amendment in the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for fiscal year 2022 required the department publish a report on the Assads' sources of income, including the funds they have generated through corrupt or illicit activities. The unclassified version of the report released on Thursday described the finances of Assad and his wife, Asma al-Assad, who are known “to maintain close patronage relationships with Syria’s largest economic players.”

“The Assad family runs a complex patronage system including shell companies and corporate facades that serves as a tool for the regime to access financial resources,” the report said.

Several of the president’s close relatives are mentioned in the report, including his brother Maher Assad, who is the commander of Syria’s Fourth Armored Division, and Assad’s telecom tycoon cousin Rami Makhlouf.

The report describes the Assad family’s apparent net worth of $1-2 billion as an “inexact estimate” based on open-source information that the department was unable to independently corroborate. More information on the family’s net worth is included in a classified annex, the report said.

There was hope among Syria observers that a public report on Assad’s exorbitant wealth could both damage his domestic credibility and raise the cost of normalization among countries considering welcoming Damascus back into the diplomatic fold.

But the unclassified report offered little beyond what’s already known about the Assad family’s finances and appeared to rely heavily on media reports and other publicly accessible information.

The department’s report notes that the Assads have gone to great lengths to keep their wealth under wraps, making it difficult to accurately estimate their net worth.

Family assets are “believed to be spread out and concealed in numerous accounts, real estate portfolios, corporations and offshore tax havens,” the report says. “Any assets located outside of Syria and not seized or blocked are likely held under false names or by other individuals.”

That explanation failed to satisfy congressional critics, including Rep. Claudia Tenney (R-N.Y.), who introduced the NDAA’s reporting requirement on Assad’s wealth.

"The report was clearly rushed. The department undoubtedly could, and should, have comprised a much more comprehensive report,” Tenney told Al-Monitor, adding that she was especially disappointed that the report didn’t discuss at length the revenue generated from the trade of Captagon, an illegal amphetamine known to be produced and smuggled from Syria.

Al-Monitor reached out to the State Department for comment.

The report comes as living conditions across much of the war-torn country remain dire. Some 90% of the population is estimated to live below the poverty line, according to the United Nations. Roughly 12 million Syrians are considered food insecure.

A better understanding of Assad’s hidden wealth could help counter his narrative that Syria’s economic woes are caused mainly by Western sanctions, said Karam Shaar, a nonresident scholar at the Middle East Institute who studies Syria’s political economy.

“In reality, much of the deprivation in the country is due to his regime's corruption, mismanagement and aid diversion,” said Shaar. “Sanctions, while important, play only a secondary role.”

Some saw a missed opportunity to identify new avenues for sanctions against Assad’s inner circle.

“We lost a chance to make clear that there could be ways to tighten existing sanctions that would directly affect the upper tiers of the regime,” said Steven Heydemann, director of Middle East studies at Smith College and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

The United States has a range of sanctions, including through the so-called Caesar Act, aimed at choking off Assad's financial lifelines. The Biden administration has targeted Syrian military and intelligence officers using various sanctions authorities but hasn’t invoked the Caesar Act to squeeze Assad’s benefactors.

Joel Rayburn, the former US special envoy for Syria during the Trump administration, says there’s value in exposing the corruption that keeps Assad and his family entrenched in power.

“The Biden administration’s stated policy is to highlight the corruption of dictatorial regimes, including specifically the Assad regime,” he said. “Why they would pass up an opportunity to do that and to show that the executive branch and Congress are working together is a bit puzzling.”

Dozens hurt in fresh clashes at Jerusalem's Al-Aqsa site

Palestinian worshippers attend the last Friday prayers of the Muslim holy fasting month of Ramadan, outside the Dome of the Rock mosque at the Al-Aqsa mosque compound in Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem - AHMAD GHARABLI

by Claire Gounon
April 29, 2022 — Jerusalem (AFP)


Fresh clashes between Palestinians and Israeli police at Jerusalem's Al-Aqsa mosque compound wounded 42 people on the last Friday of Ramadan, following weeks of violence at the flashpoint religious site.

The Palestinian Red Crescent, which gave the toll, said no one was seriously hurt but 22 people were taken to hospital.

Israeli police released footage that showed young men on the compound hurling stones and fireworks in Friday's early hours. Officers entered the site at dawn.

A police statement said they went in to contain "rioters and lawbreakers", some of whom were trying to throw stones down towards the Western Wall, the sacred Jewish site below Al-Aqsa.

Police said officers used "riot dispersal means" to contain the unrest and that two people had been arrested, one for throwing stones and the other one for "inciting the mob".


An AFP journalist said Israeli police fired rubber-coated bullets while a witness said they also used tear gas.

An uneasy calm had been restored at the compound following the unrest that surrounded morning prayers, but tensions remained high.

In the early afternoon, a crowd of Muslim worshippers gathered at Al-Aqsa. Some people waved Palestinian flags and the colours of the Gaza Strip-based Hamas militant group, an AFP journalist said.

- Tensions -

Over the past two weeks, nearly 300 Palestinians have been hurt in clashes at the Al-Aqsa compound, Islam's third-holiest site. It is also Judaism's holiest place, known to Jews as the Temple Mount.

The site is located in east Jerusalem, which Israel captured in the 1967 Six Day War and later annexed, in a move not recognised by most of the international community.

Israel's incursions into the compound during Ramadan met widespread condemnation and raised fears of inflaming persistent Israeli-Palestinian tensions across Jerusalem.

But Israel has insisted it has been compelled to act against operatives from Islamist groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad. It says the militants threaten Muslim worshippers at Al-Aqsa and Jews praying at the Western Wall.

In an apparent attempt to ease tensions, Israel's Foreign Minister Yair Lapid has stressed that the government is committed to the status quo at the compound, meaning an adherence to long-standing convention that only Muslims are allowed to pray there.

Jews are allowed to visit the Temple Mount.

Muslim leaders have, however, been angered by a recent uptick in such visits. Some voiced fears that Israel was seeking to divide the compound and create a space where Jews may worship. Lapid told journalists that no such plan exists.

- 'Quds Day' -

The fresh unrest comes as the end of Ramadan nears early next week.


Violence in Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem has raised fears of another armed conflict similar to an 11-day war last year between Israel and Hamas, triggered in part by similar unrest at Al-Aqsa.

Since early last week there has been isolated rocket fire from Gaza towards Israel and Israeli reprisals, but no casualties reported on either side.

Hamas and Islamic Jihad leaders held a rally in Gaza late Thursday, with calls to "defend" Jerusalem including Al-Aqsa.

In an annual show of pro-Palestinian rallies known as Quds (Jerusalem) Day, thousands of Iranians took to streets across the Islamic republic on Friday. Flag-waving protesters chanted "Death to America" and "Death to Israel", the state broadcaster IRIB reported.

Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei made live televised remarks in support of Palestinians and slammed those in the West backing Ukraine against Russia's invasion.

"They are making so much noise about the situation in Ukraine... (and) are keeping totally silent about the crimes in Palestine," he said.

Hamas followed with a statement thanking Iran for "standing with Jerusalem and the blessed Al-Aqsa mosque, and for supporting our resisting nation by all means."

The Al-Aqsa tensions have come against a backdrop of violence since March 22 in Israel and the occupied West Bank.

Twelve Israelis, including an Arab-Israeli police officer, and two Ukrainians were killed in four separate attacks inside Israel. Two of the deadly attacks were carried out in the Tel Aviv area by Palestinians.

A total of 26 Palestinians and three Israeli Arabs have died during the same period, among them perpetrators of attacks and those killed by Israeli security forces in West Bank operations.

No fines against Amazon for warehouse collapse during tornado that killed 6 people

Nick Barrickman

WSWS.ORG

An Amazon distribution center is heavily damaged after a strong thunderstorm moved through the area Friday, Dec. 10, 2021, in Edwardsville, Ill.(AP Photo/Jeff Roberson)

On Tuesday, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) announced that Amazon would not be held liable for the deaths of six employees in the collapse of an Illinois warehouse which was struck on December 10 by an EF-3 tornado.

According to OSHA, the DLI4 facility in Edwardsville, Illinois, “met minimal safety guidelines for storm sheltering” when it was leveled by the weather system. The warehouse was among several workplaces that were struck by the storm, which caused nearly 100 fatalities across the lower Midwest United States in the month of December 2021. The Mayfield Consumer Products candle factory near Louisville, Kentucky, was hit on the same night, leading to 8 fatalities.

Although declining to fine the corporation for the catastrophe, a letter published by OSHA pointed to several “risk factors” that it noted in conducting its investigation which was started following the disaster.

Of top concern was that a megaphone, which is cited by the facility’s Emergency Action Plan (EAP), was “locked in a cage and not accessible.” In addition, “some employees did not recall the location of the DLI4 designated severe weather shelter-in-place.”

According to the letter, “Amazon managers began directing employees to go to the restroom in response to local weather alerts and tornado warnings approximately 10 minutes prior to the tornado’s touch down.” The restroom which the six victims were directed to collapsed soon after they took up shelter in it. “I recommend that you voluntarily take the necessary steps to eliminate or materially reduce your employees’ exposure to the risk factors described above,” the letter concludes.

A CNBC report from December cites comments from Debbie Berkowitz, a former OSHA official currently working with the National Employment Law Project. “They [OSHA] will try to figure out what happened, but mostly their job is to see if there was a violation of any standard,” she said. OSHA’s investigation was a “formality” and likely to be “narrowly focused on things such as whether exits are accessible or if emergency action plans were in place.”

OSHA, according to comments cited in a Business Insider article last September, is “woefully understaffed” and has “always been very limited in the size of penalties that the agency can levy on employers they catch violating the law.” As of 2021, the agency has issued less than 300 health violations throughout the pandemic for violations of health and safety practices.

On the evening of December 10, 2021, employees at the DLI4 facility were told to shelter-in-place at the Amazon facility, which is listed as a “delivery station” by the company and employs 190 people. In texts exchanged with friends and loved ones, some workers who did not survive the storm said management wouldn’t let them leave or cancel their shifts, despite the many severe weather warnings that had been issued in the previous days.

CNBC cites the experience of Craig Yost, a delivery contract worker who also took up shelter inside the unsafe restroom. According to the report, Yost and co-worker Larry Virden, 46, “ran into the men's bathroom closest to the garage where the delivery vans are parked.” They had been made to believe that the room was built to withstand the storm. “Suddenly, the lights began to flicker. ‘Then the hit came,’” it states, citing comments from another worker.

Yost was buried under rubble and suffered multiple fractures and a concussion. Virden was not so lucky and was one of the six that lost their lives that night.

According to CNBC, “All the victims were contracted delivery employees for Amazon, with the exception of [Clayton] Cope, who was a maintenance mechanic at the warehouse.” Confirming this, the New York Times wrote at the time that “[o]nly seven people at Amazon’s [DLI4] site were full-time employees.”

The DLI4 delivery station is one of many such facilities run by Amazon throughout the country. To meet its requirements during the busy holiday season, Amazon will outsource its delivery services to any one of its more than 3,000 third-party contractors. Even while many of these workers “often wear Amazon uniforms and drive Amazon-branded vans,” states CNBC, they are not entitled to many of the benefits and protections of an Amazon associate.

According to the Times, this system “complicated the rescue effort in Edwardsville.” The newspaper said that authorities had “challenges” identifying who was actually present at the facility on the evening of December 10. A Bloomberg investigation last year notes “working conditions are so tough and unforgiving… that [Amazon delivery contractors] have been known to abandon their package-laden vans on the first day of work and disappear.”

OSHA’s decision to let Amazon off scot-free follows a $60,000 wrist-slap fine by the state of Washington for “willful and serious” health and safety violations. According to the state’s government, the work processes at Amazon’s warehouse in Kent, the closest fulfillment center to the corporation’s Seattle headquarters, “create a serious hazard for work-related back, shoulder, wrist, and knee injuries.”

In early April, members of the United States House Oversight Committee announced an investigation into Amazon due to concern over “recent reports that Amazon may be putting the health and safety of its workers at risk, including by requiring them to work in dangerous conditions during tornadoes, hurricanes, and other extreme weather.”

The Democratic committee members co-signing the letter of inquiry, which include chairperson Carolyn Maloney of New York as well as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (New York) and Cori Bush (Missouri), called on Amazon CEO Andy Jassy to respond by April 14. While not publicly responding to the committee, Jassy falsely claimed in a letter to shareholders published April 14 that “[Amazon’s] injury rates are sometimes misunderstood” and that they were “about average relative to peers.”

In fact, regular studies have shown Amazon’s injury rates exceed the national average in the warehouse industry. A worldwide company incident report in January showed that even after minimizing incidents among its online retailing units, Amazon still had a higher injury rate than its competitors (6.4 injuries for every 200,000 working hours compared with a 5.5 injury average). This did not include figures among its numerous contractors.

Millions join Sri Lankan general strike to demand ouster of Rajapakse government

Our reporters

WSWS.ORG

Millions of workers throughout Sri Lanka participated in a one-day general strike yesterday demanding the resignation of President Gotabhaya Rajapakse and his government. The strike, which was almost total, involved workers from government and state-owned corporations and private sector companies.

A section of general strike demonstration in Colombo on April 28 [WSWS Media]

Government sector workers from the ports, electricity, petroleum, water, health, railway and education, as well as state administration, provincial government and local council employees, joined the industrial action. Only a handful of employees—members of the ruling party—reported for work at the port and petroleum corporations.

A majority of state and private bank workers walked out as did hundreds of thousands of estate workers from the island’s central plantation districts. Plantation workers, who are among the most oppressed sections of the Sri Lankan working class, have been hard hit by the economic crisis.

Workers from many of the country’s free trade zones (FTZ), including at Katunayake, Wathupitiwela and Koggala, also participated. Most FTZ workers are young.

Although limited by the trade unions to just one day, yesterday’s massive strike was a powerful and significant intervention by the working class into Sri Lanka’s deepening political and social crisis.

The debt-ridden Sri Lankan economy has been seriously impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic and the US-NATO proxy war against Russia in Ukraine, leading to sharp and ongoing price increases and shortages of food, fuel and other essentials.

The nationwide anti-government protests and demonstrations involving hundreds of thousands of people and yesterday’s general strike are part of a widening surge of working class struggles internationally in opposition to government attempts to impose cost-cutting and austerity measures.

The agitation erupted over the rampant inflation, shortages of essentials, including foodstuffs, medicines and fuel, and extended daily electricity cuts.

Workers and youth across the island began demanding the resignation of President Rajapakse and his government at mass demonstrations in early April. These continued throughout the month, including an ongoing three-week occupation of Galle Face Green in Central Colombo.

Sri Lanka’s official inflation rate is now 18.7 percent and food inflation is 30.2 percent. Last week, John Hopkins University Professor Steve Hanke estimated, however, that the country’s annualised real inflation rate was a staggering 119 percent, the third highest in the world.

Yesterday, striking workers protested in every major city, poor rural peasants joined some of the demonstrations, and there was support from small traders who closed their shops in many towns.

Health workers mobilised outside Kandy Hospital on 28 April [WSWS Media]

In Colombo, over 5,000 harbour, petroleum, railway, electricity and bank workers, as well as teachers, demonstrated outside Fort Railway Station and marched to Galle Face Green.

A worker from Katunayake told WSWS reporters that she and her fellow employees decided to join the strike because their unions had been silent. “The people of this country are suffering from the price hikes in essentials. We have tolerated so much but cannot survive on our current salaries. When people from all over the country started demonstrating we thought that we could not just wait and see,” she said.

A teacher who joined the Colombo protest said: “The cost of living is unbearable. Rice, dhal, sugar, petrol and cooking gas, everything has gone up. We cannot manage our family expenses on the salaries we’re now earning. A recent small salary increase has been washed away by inflation. Social inequality has widened in the country with a big portion of the national wealth heaped up by a handful of big capitalists.”

While millions of workers participated in yesterday’s general strike, the Rajapakse government is preparing even greater social attacks on working people. On April 12, it defaulted on $52 billion in foreign loans, and last week a government team headed by Finance Minister Ali Sabry held four days of talks with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to secure a bailout loan.

The IMF is demanding Colombo increase taxes, drastically cut state expenditure, and unleash an extensive privatisation program. These measures will see even greater increases in the price of essentials and the brutal slashing of jobs, wages, pensions and the remaining welfare programs.

The mounting anti-government protests and working class struggles have precipitated a political crisis for the Rajapakse government. It now has a fragile wafer-thin majority, after some partners of the ruling coalition withdrew.

Notwithstanding his weakened position, President Rajapakse is biding his time and preparing to take on the working class, conscious that the IMF-dictated assault on the working masses cannot be implemented peacefully.

On April 19, police opened fire on protesters in Rambukkana, killing one person and injuring two dozen others. The demonstrators were demanding fuel at a previous price. Last week, President Rajapakse ordered the mobilisation of the military in all 25 districts across Sri Lanka to “maintain law and order.”

In the face of these reactionary preparations, the trade unions are doing their utmost to politically disarm workers.

A leaflet issued by the collective of 100 unions and supporting organisations that called yesterday’s walkout declared: “As working people we must pressure to bring about a government with popular power that could fulfil the mass expectations and remove these failed rulers.”

But who should the workers “pressure,” who will bring about the next government and how will it “fulfil” mass expectations? None of these obvious questions are answered.

In fact, these unions are appealing to the Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB) and the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP), the other main capitalist parties, for an interim regime and elections to divert the mass working class opposition into parliamentary channels and the defence of capitalist rule.

These parties, and any interim government they might form, have no alternative to the IMF austerity policies, having demonstrated this in the past. They will be just as ruthless as the Rajapakse regime.

Koggala Free Trade Zone workers protest on 28 April [WSWS Media]

Members and supporters of the Socialist Equality Party powerfully intervened in many areas during yesterday’s strike, distributing thousands of SEP statements outlining the party’s socialist program of action for the working class.

Calling for the abolition of the autocratic executive presidency and the repeal of all repressive laws, the statement said:

Against the IMF’s austerity program that the Rajapakse government and opposition parties are all intent on carrying forward, we present a socialist program of action that puts the basic social needs of working people ahead of the profits of big business.

* Take the production and distribution of all essential goods and other resources critical for public lives under the democratic control of the workers! Nationalise banks, large corporations, large estates and other major economic centres under workers’ control!

* Repudiate all foreign loans! Reject the austerity demands of the IMF and the World Bank representing international banks and financial institutions!

* Seize the enormous wealth of the billionaires and corporations!

* Abolish all the debt of the poor and extremely poor peasants and small business holders! Reinstate all the subsidies including fertiliser subsidies for the peasantry!

* Guarantee jobs for all with decent and safe working conditions! Index wages to the cost of living!

The statement called on workers to take matters into their hands by building action committees, independent of all the capitalist political parties and the trade unions. These democratically controlled committees will provide the organisational foundations to rally the rural poor and fight for a workers’ and peasants’ government that will begin the socialist reorganisation of society.

In Colombo, SEP members joined the strikers’ demonstration, distributing over 2,500 SEP statements and discussing the party’s socialist program.

In the Central Plantation District, plantation workers action committees and SEP members organised two successful demonstrations. Strike action in Up-Cot, like other major plantation areas, shut down all production.

Glenugie Estate workers marching to Maskeliya town on April 28 [WSWS Media]

The Alton Estate Workers Action Committee organised a protest march in Up-Cot town with about 200 workers and youth participating. In the Maskeliya area, over 750 workers join a demonstration organised by the Glenugie Workers Action Committee and the SEP.

In Chilaw, Kapila Fernando, convenor of the Teachers-Students-Parents Safety Committee and a member of the SEP, addressed hundreds of striking teachers and government employees. Fernando explained the SEP’s program of action to fight the Rajapakse government attacks and the capitalist class as a whole.

Video report from funeral of Sri Lankan protester Chaminda Lakshan killed by police

Socialist Equality Party (Sri Lanka)

25 April 2022

The following video includes a brief interview with the wife and daughter of Chaminda Lakshan who was shot dead by Sri Lankan police on April 19 during a protest in Rambukkana, about 95 kilometres north-east of Colombo. Twenty-four other people were injured, three of them critically, in the vicious police attack on demonstrators opposing high fuel prices and shortages.

Video report from funeral of Sri Lankan protester Chaminda Lakshan killed by police

Protests are taking place throughout the island over acute shortages and high prices for food, fuel, medicines and other essential items.

Lakshan’s wife, R.N. Priyanganee, and her daughter, Piyumi Upekshika Lakshan, spoke to WSWS reporters before the last rites at her house at Karandagasthanne, Naranbedda in Rambukkana on April 23. The video also includes an eyewitness account of the police assault and a short speech to the funeral meeting by Socialist Equality Party Political Committee member W.A. Sunil.