Military Diplomacy

U.S. claim of ISIS strength in Afghanistan rejected by Kabul

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The Afghan caretaker government has dismissed Washington’s claim over the alleged stronger presence of Daesh, or Islamic State (IS), in Afghanistan as utterly fabricated.

“The statements of U.S. officials about the number of IS militants in Afghanistan are not true. Daesh militants have already been reduced in ranks and suppressed,” chief spokesman of the Afghan caretaker administration Zabihullah Mujahid tweeted.

U.S. Central Command chief Gen. Michael Kurilla, according to media reports, has said “IS is stronger today in Afghanistan” and warned of a possible IS attack on the interests of U.S. and allied nations within six months.

Brushing aside the baseless allegations by the U.S. general on the IS strength in Afghanistan, Mujahid said on his Twitter account, “The interest of the U.S. officials in this matter and their grandiosity is aiding and abetting the IS insurgents, which should be stopped.”

The Afghan caretaker government, which has downplayed Daesh, or the IS group, as a serious threat, has vowed to crack down on any armed opponents in the war-ravaged country.

The Afghan security forces have killed four armed militants affiliated with the rival IS group in two separate operations on the outskirts of Kabul over the past week.

Why AUKUS May Do More Harm Than Good

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Sure enough, Washington, London and Canberra have defied international opposition and announced recently the pathway to the AUKUS nuclear submarines pact. They have even coerced the IAEA Secretariat into endorsement on the safeguards issues.

Such a lowlight of March, revealing the self-serving nature of politicians from the new three-way alliance, adds nuclear proliferation risk, undermines the international non-proliferation regime, fuels arms race and destroys peace and stability in Asia-Pacific, thereby setting a damaging precedent.

Ever since the signing of AUKUS more than a year ago, the international community, especially countries from Asia-Pacific, have publicly and repeatedly expressed concerns, doubts and objections over the trilateral security pact. But the three wedded governments have turned a deaf ear to the world, and persisted on their unilateral path.

Days after the first AUKUS announcement in 2021, Indonesia, Malaysia and a few East Asian countries raised alarm bells that AUKUS will trigger a nuclear arms race in the region, showed reports by the Sydney Morning Herald.

A few days before the announcement of the pathway in mid-March this year, many IAEA member states at a board meeting called for advancing open, transparent, inclusive and sustainable intergovernmental discussions at the agency to address the AUKUS issue.

Later, former Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating published a statement, in which he called AUKUS “the worst international decision by an Australian Labor government.”

The trilateral pact marked the first time in history that nuclear weapon countries have set out to transfer naval nuclear propulsion reactors and weapons-grade highly-enriched uranium to a non-nuclear nation.

Constituting severe non-proliferation risks, the deal has blatantly trampled upon the purpose and object of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.

Worse still, the three governments’ claim that they would abide by nuclear non-proliferation commitments has turned out to be nothing but hogwash, given the current IAEA safeguards system which is not powerful enough to ensure effective supervision and prevent nuclear materials from being used in seeking weapons.

If the three countries are bent on defying international rules, other countries are likely to be prompted to follow suit, which will gravely harm global non-proliferation efforts and jeopardize peace and stability in Asia-Pacific and the world at large.

An article published in The National Interest magazine last year noted that AUKUS has “set a dangerous precedent” since potential nuclear proliferators “may use naval reactor programs as a cover for developing nuclear weapons and, with the deal as a precedent, they may escape intolerable costs for doing so.”

“This will weaken the deterrence of IAEA safeguards and make nuclear proliferation more likely,” it said.

Nuclear submarines cooperation is an international affair bearing heavily on the interests of all IAEA member states, and its safeguards issues should be settled through intergovernmental discussions by all interested IAEA parties.

Washington, London and Canberra have no right to put their own geopolitical ends above international laws and regulations or the interests of other countries, nor should they, or any other parties, put AUKUS in place before broad consensus is reached.

Considering AUKUS’ profound and long-time impact on international non-proliferation drive, global security order as well as regional and world peace and stability, all IAEA member states need to work together to keep intergovernmental discussions in place, find a way to resolve the safeguards issues and firmly defend the international non-proliferation regime so as to safeguard global peace and security.

The Long Arm of Washington Extends Into Africa’s Sahel

On March 16, 2023, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced—during his visit to Niger—that the United States government will provide $150 million in aid to the Sahel region of Africa. This money, Blinken said, “will help provide life-saving support to refugees, asylum seekers, and others impacted by conflict and food insecurity in the region.” The next day, UNICEF issued a press release with information from a report the United Nations issued that month stating that 10 million children in the central Sahel countries of Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger need humanitarian assistance. UNICEF has appealed for $473.8 million to support its efforts to provide these children with basic requirements. According to the Human Development Index for 2021, Niger, despite holding large reserves of uranium, is one of the poorest countries in the world (189th out of 191 countries); profits from the uranium have long drained away to French and other Western multinational corporations. The U.S. aid money will not be going to the United Nations but will be disbursed through its own agencies, such as the U.S. Agency for International Development’s Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance.

Northeast of Niger’s capital Niamey, near the city of Agadez, is Air Base 201, one of the world’s largest drone bases that is home to several armed MQ-9 Reapers. During a press conference with Blinken, Niger Foreign Minister Hassoumi Massoudou affirmed his country’s “military cooperation” with the United States, which includes the U.S. “equipping… our armed forces, for our army and our air force and intelligence.” Neither Blinken nor Massoudou spoke about Air Base 201, from where the United States monitors the Sahel region, trains Niger’s military, and provides air support for U.S. ground operations in the region (all of this made clear during the visit by Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force JoAnne S. Bass to the base at the end of December 2021). The U.S. will spend $280 million on this base—twice the humanitarian aid promised by Blinken—including $30 million per year to maintain operations at Air Base 201.

Blinken is the first U.S. Secretary of State to visit Niger, a country that his own department accused of “significant human rights issues” like “unlawful or arbitrary killings, including extrajudicial killings by or on behalf of government” and torture. When a reporter asked Blinken during the press conference what the U.S. will do “to bring democracy” to Burkina Faso and Mali, he replied that the United States is monitoring the “democratic backsliding, the military coups, which so far have not led to a renewal of a democratic constitutional process in these countries.” The military governments in Burkina Faso and Mali have ejected the presence of the French military from their territories and have indicated that they would not welcome any more Western military intervention. A senior official in Niger told me that Blinken’s hesitancy to directly speak about Burkina Faso and Mali might have been because of the distress about the faltering democracy in Niger.

Niger President Mohamed Bazoum has faced serious criticisms within the country about corruption and violence. In April 2022, president Bazoum wrote on Twitter that 30 of his senior officials had been arrested for “embezzlement or misappropriation,” and they would be in prison “for a long time.” This was a perfectly clear statement, but it obscured the deeper corruption within Bazoum’s own administration—including the detention of his Communications Minister Mahamadou Zada on corruption charges—which was revealed through an audit of the country’s 2021 spending that highlighted millions of dollars of missing state funds. Furthermore, a third of the money spent by Niger to buy $1 billion in weapons from arms companies between 2011 and 2019 was pilfered by government officials, according to a report by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project.

In December 2022, during the U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit, President Bazoum joined Benin’s President Patrice Talon to be part of the U.S. project known as the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC). The U.S. government pledged $504 million toward facilitating transportation between Benin and Niger, to help increase trade between these two neighbors. The MCC, set up in 2004 in the context of the U.S. war on Iraq, has been expanded into an instrument used by the U.S. government to challenge the Chinese-led Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Senior officials in Niger, who requested anonymity, and several studies by independent authorities indicate that this MCC money is being used to upgrade African farmlands and that the corporation has been working with U.S.-funded institutions such as the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates and Rockefeller foundations), and turn these agricultural resources over to multinational agribusinesses. The MCC grants, the senior officials said, are used to “launder” Niger’s land to foreign corporate interests and to “subordinate” Niger’s political leadership to U.S. government interests.

At the press conference, Blinken was asked about Russia’s Wagner Group. “Where Wagner has been present,” Blinken said, “bad things have inevitably followed.” Statements have been made recently about the Wagner Group operating in Burkina Faso and Mali by the U.S. State Department’s Vedant Patel after the second coup in the former country in September 2022, and by the RAND Corporation’s Colin P. Clarke in January 2023. Governments in both Burkina Faso and Mali have denied that Wagner is operating from their territory (although the group does operate in Libya), and informed observers such as the Nigerien journalist Seidik Abba (author of Mali-Sahel, notre Afghanistan à nous, 2022) said that countries in the Sahel region are being wary about any foreign intervention. Despite repeating many of Washington’s talking points about Wagner, Niger Foreign Minister Massoudou conceded that focus on it might be exaggerated: “As for the presence of Wagner in Burkina… the information that we have does not allow us to say that Wagner is still in Burkina Faso.”

Before Blinken left for Niger and Ethiopia, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Molly Phee said that Niger is “one of our most important partners on the continent in terms of security cooperation.” That is the most honest assessment of U.S. interests in Niger—largely about the military bases in Agadez and Niamey.

This article was produced by Globetrotter.

The AUKUS military alliance and the submarine deal; Foresight or Folly?

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Former Prime Minister of Australia Paul Keating has labelled the AUKUS military alliance and more specifically the recently concluded submarine deal as the worst mistake Australia has done in its history. His national press club address has been widely publicised and does not need repetition here.

It is however interesting to discuss a few basic issues he mentioned as reasons for his criticism. Firstly, his assertion that the AUKUS alliance is all about maintaining US hegemony over the South China sea and containing, to the extent possible, China’s ability to move freely within and outside this area of the sea. Secondly, the futility of a few submarines, nuclear or otherwise, attempting to do this in the shallow, easily detectible sea off China and thirdly, the formation of a military alliance that includes Australia where Australia faces no threat militarily from China.

At the outset, in context, it is useful to mention Newtons third law that every action has an equal and opposite reaction. The formation of this alliance too could be looked at from this perspective. Accordingly, while trading profitably with each other, the three countries in the Alliance, the US, Australia, and UK, will strengthen their military and China will do their best to outdo, but more importantly outsmart all three. The already accelerated arms race will get to high gear now with billions of dollars being spent more on posturing than on any real military encounter by any of the constituents of AUKUS. Consequences for the ordinary people in all these countries and all other countries will have a flow on effect as funds available for the welfare of the people will be eroded and diverted to military expenditure.

Before Newton, Buddha came out with a truism called dependent origination or in Pali, paticca samuppada. As stated in a Buddhist enquiry article (https://www.buddhistinquiry.org/article/dependent-origination/, “what the dependent origination or paicca-samuppāda actu­ally describes is a vision of life or an un­derstanding in which we see the way everything is interconnected—that there is nothing separate, nothing standing alone. Everything effects everything else. We are part of this sys­tem. We are part of this process of de­pendent origination—causal relation­ships effected by everything that happens around us and, in turn, effecting the kind of world that we all live in in­wardly and outwardly.”

This is the first reality one will have to understand and accept as a reality. Many actions will follow from the military alliance and the submarine deal. The alliance appears to not understand and to disregard the interconnected nature of these actions These will lead to ongoing consequences, most which will be negative rather than positive. Although not a military issue, Australia and the world witnessed the reaction of the Chinese government when some actions of Australia, including its role in the WHO attempt to carry out an inspection of Chinese facilities to ascertain whether the COVID virus originated in a Chinese laboratory. This attempt by Australia without any discussion with China, cost the country dearly with several commercial sanctions which incidentally are still in place.  As Mr Keating said, diplomatic and commercial disagreements are being linked to non-existent military confrontations in the guise of foreign policy.

The distrust created with China by AUKUS and the submarine deal will have consequential reactions from China. It is hard if not impossible to see how trust can be restored in an environment where diplomacy has been superseded by militarism. It is unfortunate for the future generations that the current leadership of the two major political parties in Australia have consigned them, without any discussion with them, to an uncertain and confrontational future with China, the worlds next superpower in the not-too-distant future.

In any military conflict, irrespective of which side “wins”, there are no real winners or losers. It is just a scenario where the aggressors, the defenders and the bystanders play musical chairs, with each category moving around taking on each other’s roles in a cyclical manner. It is a futile, costly exercise that could have been avoided if disagreements were discussed and resolved through compromise and respect for each other. Many either ignore or are indifferent to the damage a war inflicts on the families and loved ones within each category, and a countless number of people who are not directly associated with a war.

According to the Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_I_casualties), the total number of military and civilian casualties in World War I was about 40 million: estimates range from around 15 to 22 million deaths and about 23 million wounded military personnel, ranking it among the deadliest conflicts in human history. The total number of deaths includes from 9 to 11 million military personnel. The civilian death toll was about 6 to 13 million.

During World War 2, estimates for the total number of casualties in the war vary because many deaths went unrecorded. Most suggest that some 75 million people died in the war, including about 20 million military personnel and 40 million civilians. Many civilians died because of deliberate genocide, massacres, mass-bombings, disease, and starvation. The Soviet Union lost around 27 million people during the war, including 8.7 million military and 19 million civilian deaths. (https://courses.lumenlearning.com/suny-hccc-worldhistory2/chapter/casualties-of-world-war-ii/

Outside of World War 1 and 2, the Korean war, the Vietnam war, the Afghanistan, Iraq and other military conflicts have witnessed the deaths of millions.

If a war is to be fought, and countries are indifferent to the death and destruction it causes, each side has to have the resolve, strength and the equipment to match the other side. As Mr Keating says, whether a few submarines, nuclear powered but firing conventional weapons does not seem to be indicative of parity. In the name of parity, if nuclear weapons are to replace conventional ones, the nuclear arms race will intensify, and more people will face death and destruction if a military engagement occurs and nuclear weapons are used. In such possible scenarios,  it likely that China will enhance their defence capability in the face of AUKUS nations ramping their military capabilities. With technology advancements being what they are and potentially exponential advancements, the nuclear submarines being designed and built could well be obsolete when they are built and are seaworthy. The world does spend a lot of money to kill people.

Mr Keatings third point is about the military strategy Australia has chosen in association with the US and UK over a diplomatic strategy with China. He has maintained, rightly, that China is Australia’s largest trading country and therefore commercial considerations rather than military ones should underpin the relations between the two countries. Again, as he says, the country’s foreign policy should not be dictated by military requisites but diplomatic requisites and mutual trust and not distrust. A military build up as envisaged is bound to foster mistrust between China and Australia and eventually impact adversely on the trading relationship between the two countries.

According to the website Statista (https://www.statista.com/statistics/622568/australia-export-partners-by-value/), in 2021, China was Australia’s leading export partner, importing approximately 115 billion U.S. dollars’ worth of goods, followed by Japan and the European Union. Tensions have been building up in China-Australia relations and has impacted on trade.

Data released by the General Administration of Customs (GAC) showed that, in 2022, bilateral trade between the two countries reached US$220.91 billion, down 3.9 percent year-on-year, with Australia’s exports to China amounting to US$142.09 billion, a decrease of 13.1 percent from 2021. China remains a primary export market for many Australian products, such as coal, iron ore, and wine. However, several of these products lost their market share as domestic businesses looked for substitutes to lessen the risk of interruption amid thawing ties (https://www.china-briefing.com/news/china-australia-trade-relations-growing-stronger/). Besides this, the website also states that quote “notwithstanding the scope of market opportunities for China and Australia, bilateral ties have not always been favourable. Over the past five years, tensions have piled up on a range of issues related to technology, politics, and trade. In 2018, invoking concerns for national security, Australia became the first member of the Five Eyes intelligence alliance to prohibit Chinese tech giants Huawei and ZTE telecommunications gear from participating in its telecom infrastructure. In addition, Australia openly supported a number of US-led efforts aimed at containing China’s expanding influence in the Indo-Pacific, including the AUKUS alliance, the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework, the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, and the Partners in the Blue Pacific. Early in 2020, amid tensions over the nature of COVID-19, bilateral ties took a sudden turn for the worst. China imposed import bans on a variety of Australian exports, including coal, barley, wine, cattle, and seafood. Australia responded by escalating the trade dispute to the World Trade Organization (WTO) and canceling the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) deal previously agreed to between China and the state of Victoria.

Such occurrences have had a negative impact on trade. Australian exports of wine, barley, lobsters, cattle, and coal were severely impacted, while Chinese companies were subject to increased scrutiny, particularly for transactions involving crucial infrastructure. As a result of escalating diplomatic tensions, several Chinese companies adjusted their coal purchases from Australia to reduce potential risks. Consequently, China imported 66.37 million tons less Australian coal in 2021 than it did in 2020, a decrease of more than 85 percent year-on-year” unquote.

In summary, one cannot be but convinced that Mr Paul Keating is right that the AUKUS military alliance and the submarine deal will have a negative effect on Australia/China relations in the long term and that future generations will face the consequences of this serious mis step in military strategy camouflaged as foreign policy. The question the younger generations should ask themselves is whether Australia should overlook the misdemeanours of the US when it supports countries like Saudi Arabia and other dictatorships and argue that they, the USA, is a protector of democracy, and that they are taking on China because of its undemocratic policies and practices. Not much or in fact anything is said about the rise in living standards in China and the very significant drop in poverty levels in China. Nothing is also said about poverty in the USA, the citadel of democracy, where, according to https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2022/demo/p60-277.html, the official poverty rate in 2021 was 11.6 percent, with 37.9 mil­lion people in poverty. In contrast, as estimated by the World Bank, China’s poverty rate had fallen from 88 percent in 1981 to 0.7 percent in 2015, as measured by the percentage of people living on the equivalent of US$1.90 or less per day in 2011 purchasing price parity terms, which still stands in 2022 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_China).

It does appear that the US is driven by the fear that China will overtake them as the superpower of the world soon and they are garnering support from willing allies like Australia and UK to delay the inevitable as much as possible. The danger for Australia is that they will be like, to quote a pithy Sinhala idiom ‘Girayata ahuwechcha puwak gediya wage (an arecanut caught between the two levers of a giraya, a familiar object in most Sinhala homes, fashioned out of brass, steel, silver or gold and used to slice arecanuts) –a paradoxical situation from which there is hardly any chance of escape. Australia has chosen this path and to be in an Anglo/Indian world, away from  South East Asia and China where its prosperity and future lies.

The U.S. and UK’s Submarine Deal Crosses Nuclear Red Lines with Australia

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The recent Australia, U.S., and UK $368 billion deal on buying nuclear submarines has been termed by Paul Keating, a former Australian prime minister, as the “worst deal in all history.” It commits Australia to buy conventionally armed, nuclear-powered submarines that will be delivered in the early 2040s. These will be based on new nuclear reactor designs yet to be developed by the UK. Meanwhile, starting from the 2030s, “pending approval from the U.S. Congress, the United States intends to sell Australia three Virginia class submarines, with the potential to sell up to two more if needed” (Trilateral Australia-UK-U.S. Partnership on Nuclear-Powered Submarines, March 13, 2023; emphasis mine). According to the details, it appears that this agreement commits Australia to buy from the U.S. eight new nuclear submarines, to be delivered from the 2040s through the end of the 2050s. If nuclear submarines were so crucial for Australia’s security, for which it broke its existing diesel-powered submarine deal with France, this agreement provides no credible answers.

For those who have been following the nuclear proliferation issues, the deal raises a different red flag. If submarine nuclear reactor technology and weapons-grade (highly enriched) uranium are shared with Australia, it is a breach of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) to which Australia is a signatory as a non-nuclear power. Even the supplying of such nuclear reactors by the U.S. and the UK would constitute a breach of the NPT. This is even if such submarines do not carry nuclear but conventional weapons as stated in this agreement.

So why did Australia renege on its contract with France, which was to buy 12 diesel submarines from France at a cost of $67 billion, a small fraction of its gargantuan $368 billion deal with the U.S.? What does it gain, and what does the U.S. gain by annoying France, one of its close NATO allies?

To understand, we have to see how the U.S. looks at the geostrategy, and how the Five Eyes—the U.S., the UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand—fit into this larger picture. Clearly, the U.S. believes that the core of the NATO alliance is the United States, United Kingdom, and Canada for the Atlantic and the United States, United Kingdom, and Australia for the Indo-Pacific. The rest of its allies, NATO allies in Europe and Japan and South Korea in East and South Asia, are around this Five Eyes core. That is why the United States was willing to offend France to broker a deal with Australia.

What does the U.S. get out of this deal? On the promise of eight nuclear submarines that will be given to Australia two to four decades down the line, the U.S. gets access to Australia to be used as a base for supporting its naval fleet, air force, and even U.S. soldiers. The words used by the White House are, “As early as 2027, the United Kingdom and the United States plan to establish a rotational presence of one UK Astute class submarine and up to four U.S. Virginia class submarines at HMAS Stirling near Perth, Western Australia.” The use of the phrase “rotational presence” is to provide Australia the fig leaf that it is not offering the U.S. a naval base, as that would violate Australia’s long-standing position of no foreign bases on its soil. Clearly, all the support structures required for such rotations are what a foreign military base has, therefore they will function as U.S. bases.

Who is the target of the AUKUS alliance? This is explicit in all the writing on the subject and what all the leaders of AUKUS have said: it is China. In other words, this is a containment of China policy with the South China Sea and the Taiwanese Strait as the key contested oceanic regions. Positioning U.S. naval ships including its nuclear submarines armed with nuclear weapons makes Australia a front-line state in the current U.S. plans for the containment of China. Additionally, it creates pressure on most Southeast Asian countries who would like to stay out of such a U.S. versus China contest being carried out in the South China Sea.

While the U.S. motivation to draft Australia as a front-line state against China is understandable, what is difficult to understand is Australia’s gain from such an alignment. China is not only the biggest importer of Australian goods, but also its biggest supplier. In other words, if Australia is worried about the safety of its trade through the South China Sea from Chinese attacks, the bulk of this trade is with China. So why would China be mad enough to attack its own trade with Australia? For the U.S. it makes eminent sense to get a whole continent, Australia, to host its forces much closer to China than 8,000-9,000 miles away in the U.S. Though it already has bases in Hawaii and Guam in the Pacific Ocean, Australia and Japan provide two anchor points, one to the north and one to the south in the eastern Pacific Ocean region. The game is an old-fashioned game of containment, the one that the U.S. played with its NATO, Central Treaty Organization (CENTO), and Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) military alliances after World War II.

The problem that the U.S. has today is that even countries like India, who have their issues with China, are not signing up with the U.S. in a military alliance. Particularly, as the U.S. is now in an economic war with a number of countries, not just Russia and China, such as Cuba, Iran, Venezuela, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, and Somalia. While India was willing to join the Quad—the U.S., Australia, Japan, and India—and participate in military exercises, it backed off from the Quad becoming a military alliance. This explains the pressure on Australia to partner with the U.S. militarily, particularly in Southeast Asia.

It still fails to explain what is in it for Australia. Even the five Virginia class nuclear submarines that Australia may get second hand are subject to U.S. congressional approval. Those who follow U.S. politics know that the U.S. is currently treaty incapable; it has not ratified a single treaty on issues from global warming to the law of the seas in recent years. The other eight are a good 20-40 years away; who knows what the world would look like that far down the line.

Why, if naval security was its objective, did Australia choose an iffy nuclear submarine agreement with the U.S. over a sure-shot supply of French submarines? This is a question that Malcolm Turnbull and Paul Keating, the Australian Labor Party’s former PMs, asked. It makes sense only if we understand that Australia now sees itself as a cog in the U.S. wheel for this region. And it is a vision of U.S. naval power projection in the region that today Australia shares. The vision is that settler colonial and ex-colonial powers—the G7-AUKUS—should be the ones making the rules of the current international order. And behind the talk of international order is the mailed fist of the U.S., NATO, and AUKUS. This is what Australia’s nuclear submarine deal really means.

Source: Globetrotter

Exclusive: Ukraine Stands Firm Against Russian Aggression, Says Charge de Affairs

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by Our Diplomatic Affairs Editor 

During an exclusive interview with our diplomatic affairs editor at his New Delhi office, Ivan Konovalov, Charge de Affairs a.i. at the Embassy of Ukraine in the Republic of India (concurrently in Sri Lanka), expressed his belief that Ukraine would achieve more victories on the battlefield this spring. He emphasized that the Ukrainian people have never desired to engage in war but were compelled to defend themselves against the aggression of Russia. Konovalov asserted that this conflict is imperialist in nature, indicating that Russia’s actions are driven by a desire for territorial expansion and control.

Furthermore, Konovalov stated that the victory of Ukraine would represent a triumph for democracy across the globe, as it would be a victory for the principles of self-determination and the right of nations to decide their own fate. He highlighted the importance of recognizing that the conflict in Ukraine is not merely a regional issue but rather a struggle for values that are fundamental to the democratic world. Ultimately, Konovalov’s comments underscore the ongoing importance of supporting Ukraine in its efforts to defend its sovereignty and territorial integrity.

Excerpts from the interview;

Sri Lanka Guardian (SLG):  You are playing a key role in these extraordinary times to protect Ukraine’s national interests; What challenges do you and your teammates face as a diplomat representing a country now at war with neighbouring Russia?

Ivan Konovalov (IK): Our small in comparison but capable team in the Embassy is working hard to change the perception of Ukraine in the countries of our accreditation – India, Bangladesh Sri Lanka, Maldives, Nepal. It’s a priority for Ukrainian Foreign Ministry, as it is stated by the President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy, to work closer with the countries of Global South on different aspects of cooperation. 

SLG: Exactly one year ago, Russia launched a limited military action against your country calling it “demilitarisation and denazification”. Please give a brief overview of the situation as this conflict has completed a year.

IK: First of all let us please use the right words (terms) and timings. It’s not just a conflict, and it’s not a limited military action. It’s Russian full scale war against Ukraine or Russian aggression against Ukraine. Russia is aggressor, Ukraine is a victim of Russian aggression. 

In 2014 Russia started this war with illegal annexation of Crimea and further Russian aggression in the East of Ukraine.

So we have 9 years of Russian war against Ukraine and 1 year of full scale aggression against Ukraine.

As of now Ukrainian Armed Forces could kick out Russian occupiers from 40% of territories occupied since February 2022. This spring will bring more victories on the battlefield for Ukraine. 

SLG: Some people are arguing that Ukraine is fighting someone else War; in fact, Ukraine is a “scapegoat”, they say.  May I have your take, please?

IK: Ukrainians have never chosen war, it was imposed by Russia. This war is imperialist in its nature, one should understand this. Russia couldn’t accept the collapse of Soviet Union and if they conquered Ukraine – that would be just a first step, they would continue this barbaric practices with other countries which they consider to be the sphere of their interests.

We are fighting for our freedom and independence. we fight against Russia protecting others in Europe from this threat and our partners understand this very well.

Ukraine as any other democracy in the world wants to decide its destiny without external dictatorship which Russia tries to impose through our history. 

We have our own will to join the EU and NATO as we consider ourselves as an integral part of Europe. 

SLG: At the beginning of the conflict, both countries tried to find a solution through negotiation. Do you still believe that Ukraine can find a solution through negotiation? If not, what is the way out?

IK: Moscow has no intention for peace. When they talk about negotiations it means they want time to regroup and replenish supplies and further relaunch their attack on Ukraine. It’s obvious.

Negotiations can happen and should happen one day. But the reason for the negotiations about future peace deal can only begin after unconditional withdrawal of Russian troops from the territory of Ukraine within the internationally recognised borders including Crimea. This is also stated in the UN General Assembly Resolution as of 23 February 2023, which was supported by 141 countries.

SLG: What is the outcome of the 10 points peace formula introduced by your president but unfortunately, rejected by Russia stating that the formula is the basis for negotiations?

IK: Russia has not yet shown any readiness to bring a lasting peace, and continues to perpetrate international terrorism, commit genocide against Ukrainians, and commit war crimes.

The Peace Formula’s ten elements, which may be followed collectively or individually, have the potential to bring about long-term peace in Ukraine, Europe, and the globe. We welcome countries from all across the world to join us in making it a reality. 

The EU has approved President Zelenskyy’s Peace Formula and committed to actively working with Ukraine to put it into action, which demonstrates that the Formula is completely consistent with core European values and ideals.

Ukrainian Peace Formula is based on respect for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of any country, with any aggression against a sovereign country being completely unacceptable and those responsible for any

such acts facing justice.

SLG: Do you think NATO and Western countries, who are pouring military equipment, will stand with Ukraine to find a lasting solution soon?

IK: We are deeply grateful to all our allies and all peace-loving states of the world for their support in our fight against evil. Russia has to be defeated so this won’t repeat in future. Our partners are clear – they will stand with Ukraine as long as it takes, till the victory.

Victory of Ukraine is a victory of a democratic world.

SLG: You are representing Ukraine in South Asia; tell us your take on the responses you have from the countries here.

IK: The countries of our accreditation don’t support Russia’s aggression against Ukraine and this is very important. We are grateful for this position. I believe there is much more we can do to deepen our relationship on the mutually beneficial basis.

Attacks by Israeli Settlers on West Bank Result in Death of 65 Palestinians in the First Two Months of 2023

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Hundreds of Israeli settlers attacked different towns and villages near the West Bank city of Nablus on February 26. At least one Palestinian—identified as 37-year-old Sameh Aqtash—was killed, and more than 100 were injured, according to WAFAAround 65 Palestinians, including 13 children, have been killed in 2023 by Israeli forces in the first two months of 2023 alone in the areas of occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.

The settlers also attacked and burned dozens of Palestinian houses and vehicles across the region. Palestinians claimed that the settlers unleashed their violence under the protection of the Israeli occupation forces. They also claimed that the Israeli forces prevented medical aid from reaching those who needed it.

Nablus and nearby Jenin in the occupied West Bank have been the focal points of Israeli violence in the last few months. On February 22, Israeli occupation forces killed at least 11 Palestinians and injured more than 100 in Nablus in a daytime raid.

Following the attacks, Israeli forces imposed a siege around Nablus, restricting the movement of Palestinians, stated WAFA. The siege of Nablus was intensified when Israeli occupation forces increased deployment, claiming that they were attempting to apprehend the gunman who allegedly opened fire and killed two Israeli settlers in Huwara, just south of Nablus, in late February.

from the Peoples Dispatch / Globetrotter News Service

Pakistan: The Curse of Frankenstein

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We did not need to make Mujahideen. We created Mujahideen and then they became terrorists- Federal Interior Minister Rana Sanaullah while addressing the Senate on January 31, 2023.

On January 30, 2023, at least 84 persons were killed and another 220 were injured in a suicide blast inside a mosque in the Police Lines area of Peshawar, the provincial capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP). The suicide attacker, who was in Police uniform, was present in the front row during the Zuhr prayer (second prayer offered at noon). The Capital City Police Officer (CCPO), Peshawar, Ejaz Khan, disclosed that around to 300 to 400 Policemen usually offered Zuhr prayers at the venue.

Two Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) leaders, Sarbakaf Mohmand and Omar Mukaram Khurasani, claimed that the attack was “revenge” for the death of the chief of TTP’s splinter group, Jamaat-ul-Ahrar (JuA), Khalid Khorasani, in the Barmal District‎ of ‎Paktika Province of Afghanistan on August 7, 2022. However, TTP central ‘spokesman’ Muhammad Khorasani denied any involvement in the attack. “Regarding the Peshawar incident, we consider it necessary to clarify that Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan has nothing to do with this incident. According to our laws and general constitution, any action in mosques, madrasas, funerals grounds and other sacred places is an offence,” Muhammad Khorasani declared in a statement.

On January 27, 2023, three Army personnel were killed and several others injured when the Baloch Liberation Army (BLA) targeted an Army base from three directions near the Dandaar area of Kolwah town in the Awaran District of Balochistan. BLA ‘spokesman’ Jeehand Baloch claimed responsibility for the attack. “BLA will continue to intensify its attacks against the occupying forces till their full withdrawal from Balochistan”, Jeehand Baloch added.

On January 19, 2023, three Police constables were killed in a suicide attack at the Takhta Beg Police checkpost in Jamrud tehsil (revenue unit) of Khyber District in KP. Police said terrorists armed with hand grenades, entered the premises and opened fire using a sub-machine gun. After the firing, a suicide bomber blew himself up. The TTP claimed responsibility for the attack.

On January 14, 2023, three Policemen, including Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP) Badaber Sardar Hussain and his two Police guards, Irshad and Jehanzeb, were killed in a terrorist attack on the Sarband Police Station in Peshawar. KP Inspector General of Police (IGP) Moazzam Jah Ansari stated that sniper rifles were used by the terrorists in the incident, for the first time in Peshawar. TTP claimed responsibility for the attack.

According to partial data compiled by the South Asia Terrorism Portal (SATP), Pakistan has recorded 182 terrorism-related fatalities, including 132 Security Force (SF) personnel, 44 terrorists and six civilians, so far, in the current year (data till February 5, 2023). During the corresponding period of 2022, the province recorded 96 such fatalities, including 38 Security Force (SF) personnel, 37 terrorists and 21 civilians.

Meanwhile, overall terrorism-linked fatalities in Pakistan in 2022 had surged to 971 [229 civilians, 379 Security Force (SF) personnel and 363 terrorists], from 663 (214 civilians, 226 SF personnel and 223 terrorists) in 2021, an increase of 46.45 per cent. Reversing the declining trend in Pakistan between 2015 and 2019, overall fatalities have been increasing since 2020. With the return of the Taliban in Afghanistan on August 15, 2021, terrorism has increasingly been spilling over into Pakistan. 

There were 365 incidents of killing in 2022, as compared to 267 in 2021. 113 incidents in 2022 were major (each resulting in three or more fatalities), in which 626 persons were killed (127 civilians, 235 SF personnel and 264 terrorists). There were 88 major attacks (417 fatalities: 140 civilians, 113 SF personnel and 164 terrorists) in 2021. Out of 113 major incidents in 2022, there were 13 suicide attacks resulting in 109 fatalities, including 79 civilians, 17 SF personnel and 13 terrorists. There were only four suicide attacks in 2021, resulting in 25 fatalities, including 15 civilians, six SF personnel and four terrorists.

Other parameters of violence also indicate a worsening security situation in the country. There were 151 incidents of explosion in 2022, resulting in 247 fatalities, including 124 civilians, 98 SF personnel and 25 terrorists. The number of explosions reported in 2021 was 110, resulting in 165 fatalities, including 97 civilians, 62 SF personnel and six terrorists.

Among the principal reasons for the spike of violence in Pakistan in 2022 were the re-grouping of the TTP in August, 2020, and the capture of the Afghanistan Government by the Taliban in August 2021. The Taliban’s seizure of power in Kabul strengthened the TTP, giving them the courage and wherewithal to return to tribal areas of Pakistan, which they had fled during Operation Zarb-e-Azb [Sword of the Prophet] in 2014. Despite the fact that the Pakistan-bred and supported Haqqani Network was a dominant power, and was at the helm of the Ministry of Internal Security, in Afghanistan, TTP has made deep inroads into the tribal areas of Pakistan.

Any doubts that TTP and the Afghan Taliban are ideological twins have now been squarely removed. During an interview with on July 26, 2021, TTP ‘chief’ Noor Wali Mehsud asserted that his group had a ‘good relationship’ with the Afghan Taliban and hoped to benefit from the latter’s victories in Afghanistan. He further warned that TTP would continue its “war against Pakistan’s security forces” and declared that the outfit’s goal was to “take control of the border regions and make them independent.” This was the first time that TTP’s leadership called for an independent state to be carved out of Pakistan’s tribal areas.

Instead of taking strong actions against TTP, and despite the fact that the group had stepped up attacks in the Province, the Pakistan Government, sought to negotiate with the outfit with the help of the Taliban. As a result, both sides agreed on a month-long ceasefire between November 9 – December 9, 2021. On December 9, 2021, however, TTP declined to extend the ceasefire with the Government, alleging that the state forces had not only failed to implement the decisions reached between the two sides. The SFs had conducted raids in Dera Ismail Khan, Lakki Marwat, Swat, Bajaur, Swabi and North Waziristan, killing and detaining many TTP fighters. TTP consequently declared, “Under these circumstances, it is not possible to extend the ceasefire.” Mufti Noor Wali Mehsud announced an end to the ceasefire and asked his fighters to resume attacks.

There is, moreover, adequate evidence to indicate that the ceasefire was just a deceitful move by TTP to buy time and to revitalise its cadres. The Pakistani Government fell into the trap and released more than 100 TTP prisoners as a “goodwill gesture,” in response to the TTP’s acceptance of the ceasefire. During the month-long ceasefire, though five SF personnel were killed in three terrorism-related incidents, no TTP terrorist was killed.

After the collapse of the ceasefire, the TTP resumed its attacks against SFs. At a time when the TTP increased its attacks on SFs, the Imran Khan led PTI-Government in Islamabad sought to buy an improbable peace. A 10-day ceasefire agreement, starting May 1,2022, was reached between the Army and the TTP on the account of Eid (May 2, 2022). On May 10, TTP announced that the ceasefire was extended by another five days and stated that new directives would be issued on May 16. Though no announcement was made on May 16, on May 18, TTP announced that the ceasefire had been extended till May 30.

Under the auspices of the Afghan Taliban, talks commenced between committees of the TTP and the Government of Pakistan. However, sporadic violence continued from both sides. Eventually, however, on November 28, 2022, TTP announced an end to the then seven month-long ceasefire, declaring, in a statement released on Umar Media (TTP’s official website), that TTP’s ‘Minister of Defence’ had “ordered” TTP forces throughout Pakistan “to launch attacks anywhere in the country” in response to Pakistani military operations. The outfit claimed that it chose to end the ceasefire after “the Army and intelligence agencies continue to raid and attack” its forces. “And now our revenge attacks will continue in the whole country,” the TTP statement added.

As ‘official’ talks between the TTP and the Government collapsed with the TTPs declaration of an end to the ceasefire, an escalation of violence in KP and other areas of Pakistan was inevitable.

In 2022, the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province, which was the most affected by the TTP resurgences, recorded the highest fatalities in a year since 2014. KP recorded a total of 527 fatalities (119 civilians, 173 SF personnel and 235 terrorists) in 184 incidents of killing in 2022, as against 300 such fatalities (71 civilians, 108 SF personnel, and 121 terrorists) in 129 such incidents in 2021, registering an increase of 75.66 per cent in overall fatalities. In terms of SF fatalities, the 2022 tally was the highest since 2013, when there were 181 SF fatalities. Terrorist fatalities in 2022 were the highest since 2011, when there were 372 such fatalities. The number of civilians killed in 2022 touched three digits after a gap of five years, with 122 civilians killed in 2016. Other parameters of violence also indicated a worsening security situation in the Province.

The ceasefire and peace-talks between the Government and TTP gave the terrorists space and time to find their feet in KP.  An October 12, 2022, report suggested that the TTP had re-emerged violently in the restive Swat region. Earlier, an August 12, 2022, report noted that TTP militants had established a check-post at Balasoor Top, besides roaming about freely in other areas of the Matta tehsil of Swat. Significantly, the Geo News correspondent in Swat, Mehboob Ali, claimed that at least 200-250 TTP terrorists were present and operating in the area. Other bordering Districts of the Province had also seen increased terrorist activities. After analysing the overall law and order situation in KP, the Police department declared South and North Waziristan, Lakki Marwat and Bannu Districts, terrorist ‘trouble spots’.

On December 27, 2022, Federal Interior Minister Rana Sanaullah disclosed that there were around 7,000 to 10,000 TTP fighters in the region, and they were accompanied by 25,000 members of their families. This statement was later confirmed by former Prime Minister Imran Khan who, on January 10, 2023, revealed that his government had planned to resettle TTP militants in the erstwhile Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), with the help of the Afghan Taliban. Imran Khan stated that the fall of Kabul and the rise of the Afghan Taliban to power provided Pakistan with a ‘golden opportunity’ to deal with the TTP threat. “The Afghan Taliban pressurised the TTP, which had over 5,000 fighters among its 40,000-strong group, to go back to Pakistan and we took a number of steps to deal with it,” he added.

On February 1, 2023, immediately after the Peshawar Police Lines Mosque suicide attack of January 30, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif accused, the Imran Khan led PTI Government for bringing about the resurgence of terrorism in the country. Targeting Imran Khan, he questioned, “Who regarded the terrorist as ‘jihadi’ and let them return?” In his remarks at a meeting of the Federal Cabinet, the Prime Minister argued that PTI had been ruling the KP for the past 10 years and was responsible for the safety of the lives of the innocent people of the province, who were suffering under the new spate of terrorist incidents.

After KP, the most affected province in Pakistan was Balochistan, in terms of terrorism related fatalities. Balochistan recorded a total of 406 fatalities (88 civilians, 202 SF personnel and 116 terrorists) in 160 incidents of killing in 2022, as against 308 such fatalities (111 civilians, 107 SF personnel, and 90 terrorists) in 111 such incidents in 2021, registering an increase of 31.82 per cent in overall fatalities. In terms of SF fatalities, the 2022 tally is the highest since the SATP database started documenting fatalities in Pakistan.

The escalating attacks on SFs in Balochistan are substantially a consequence of the continuing frustration among Baloch nationalist groups over the systematic extermination of ethnic Baloch through enforced disappearances and extrajudicial killings by Pakistan security agencies, in addition to the persistent neglect of the basic needs of the population. The annual report released on January 12, 2023, by Paank, the human rights organization of the Baloch National Movement (BNM), claimed that Pakistani forces in Balochistan forcibly disappeared 629 persons, extra-judicially killed 195, and tortured 187 people in 2022. 187 forcibly disappeared people were released from the torture cells of the Pakistani Army. Under the Universal Periodic Review process at the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in Geneva on January 30, 2023, member states called on Pakistan to stop enforced disappearances and other human rights abuses and demanded the protection of people.

Though the over-all security situation in Sindh remains relatively calm, echoes of the Baloch insurgency reverberated in Karachi, the provincial capital of Sindh and commercial capital of the country, when Baloch Liberation Army (BLA) female Fidayeen (suicide cadre) Shaari Baloch aka Bramsh, from the Majeed Brigade (BLA’s suicide bomber squad), blew herself up near a van transporting Chinese nationals from a Karachi University (KU) hostel to the Confucius Institute, on April 26, 2022. Five persons, including three Chinese nationals, their Pakistani driver and a security guard, were killed.

Apart from this attack, terrorism-related incidents were at an all-time low in Sindh, with just 21 fatalities in 12 incidents recorded in 2022. Fatalities in 2021 totalled 28 in 13 incidents. The highest terrorism-related fatalities in the province were reported in 2013, when there were 1,656 such deaths.

However, street crime remained a major headache for the security establishment in Karachi, with as any as 85,000 incidents of armed street robberies recorded in the city in 2022. This was disclosed by Sindh Chief Minister, Syed Murad Ali Shah, on January 5, 2023, while chairing the meeting of the Apex Committee during a mention of the crime data compiled by the Citizens Police Liaison Committee (CPLC). Over 100 persons lost their lives in these incidents, while more than 400 citizens suffered injuries. In 2021, Karachi recorded over 73,000 armed street robberies, resulting in the killing of 69 citizens and injuries to another 418.

The Punjab Province recorded the lowest number of terrorism-related fatalities in 2022. According to partial data compiled by the SATP database, Punjab recorded just 11 terrorism-linked fatalities in 2022, including 10 civilians and one terrorist, as against 20 fatalities, including nine civilians, six terrorists and five Security Force (SF) personnel in 2021. However, the threat of terrorism in the province is far from over, with the year 2023 starting on a violent note, as one TTP terrorist shot dead two Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) officers posted in the Punjab Counter Terrorism Department (CTD) at a roadside restaurant on the National Highway, near Pirowal in Khanewal city (Khanewal District), on January 3. TTP ‘spokesman’ Mohammad Khorasani, in a statement to the media, stated, “Yesterday, a secret squad of TTP killed ISI Deputy Director Multan, Naveed Sadiq, along with his colleague Inspector Nasir Butt, at Bismillah Highway in Khanewal district of Punjab”.

While mainstream Islamist extremist groups took a back seat, blasphemy allegations continued to occur in the Punjab, as radicalisation remained rampant. While two incidents of blasphemy were reported in 2021, resulting in the death of one of the accused, 2022 recorded three blasphemy related incidents, with three of the accused done to death. Religious minorities in Punjab have long been under constant threat of abuse, abduction, rape and harassment by Islamist extremists. The abduction of minority girls for rape and forced conversion continues unabated in the province. According to a report titled “Conversion without Consent” released by Voice for Justice and Jubilee Campaign on December 10, 2022, as many as 100 cases of abduction, forced conversion, forced and child marriage of girls and women belonging to the Christian community, have been recorded between January 2019 and October 2022 in Pakistan.

While terrorism has declined sharply in Punjab and Sindh, insurgent and terrorist violence has escalated in the border provinces of KP and Balochistan. The Pakistan state and security establishment have been busy with the blame game over the deteriorating security situation, even as the likelihood of terrorism once again spilling over into the rest of Pakistan increases dramatically.

Ukraine: Scapegoat of NATO expansion

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Nearly a year in, the war in Ukraine has cost hundreds of thousands of lives and brought the world to the brink of, in President Joe Biden’s own words, “Armageddon.” Alongside the literal battlefield, there has been a similarly bitter intellectual battle over the war’s causes.

Commentators have rushed to declare the long-criticized policy of NATO expansion as irrelevant to the war’s outbreak, or as a mere fig leaf used by Russian President Vladimir Putin to mask what former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and former Defense Secretary Robert Gates recently called “his messianic mission” to “reestablish the Russian Empire,” in a Washington Post opinion piece. Fiona Hill, a presidential adviser to two Republican administrations, has deemed these views merely the product of a “Russian information war and psychological operation,” resulting in “masses of the U.S. public… blaming NATO, or blaming the U.S. for this outcome.”

Yet a review of the public record and dozens of diplomatic cables made publicly available via WikiLeaks show that U.S. officials were aware, or were directly told over the span of years that expanding NATO was viewed by Russian officials well beyond Putin as a major threat and provocation; that expanding it to Ukraine was a particularly bright red line for Moscow; that such action would inflame and empower hawkish, nationalist parts of the Russian political spectrum; and that it could ultimately lead to war.

In a particularly prophetic set of warnings, U.S. officials were told that pushing for Ukrainian membership in NATO would not only increase the chance of Russian meddling in the country but also risked destabilizing the divided nation—and that the United States and other NATO officials pressured Ukrainian leaders to reshape this unfriendly public opinion in response. All of this was told to U.S. officials in both public and private by not just senior Russian officials going all the way up to the presidency, but by NATO allies, various analysts and experts, liberal Russian voices critical of Putin, and even, sometimes, U.S. diplomats themselves.

This history is particularly relevant as U.S. officials now test the red line China has drawn around Taiwan’s independence, risking military escalation that will first and foremost be aimed at the island state. The U.S. diplomatic record regarding NATO expansion suggests the perils of ignoring or outright crossing another military power’s red lines and the wisdom of a more restrained foreign policy that treats other powers’ spheres of influence with the same care they extend to the United States.

An Early Exception

NATO expansion had been fraught from the start. The pro-Western, then-Russian President Boris Yeltsin had told then-U.S. President Bill Clinton he “[saw] nothing but humiliation for Russia if you proceed” with plans to renege on the verbal promises made years earlier not to extend NATO eastward, and warned that this move would be “sowing the seeds of mistrust” and would “be interpreted, and not only in Russia, as the beginning of a new split in Europe.” Just as containment architect George Kennan had predicted, the decision to go ahead with NATO expansion helped inflame Russian hostility and nationalism: The Duma (the Russian parliament) declared it “the largest military threat to our country over the last 50 years,” while the leader of the opposition Communist Party called it “a Treaty of Versailles for Russia.”

By the time Putin became president the day before the new millennium, “the initial hopes and plans of the early ’90s [were] dead,” a leading liberal Russian politician declared. The first round of NATO enlargement was followed by the organization bombing Yugoslavia in 1999, which was done without the UN Security Council authorization, and triggered Russia to cut off contact with the alliance. By 2000, the revised Russian national security strategy warned that NATO’s use of force beyond its borders would be seen as “a threat of destabilization of the whole strategic situation,” while military officers and politicians started claiming “that if NATO expands further, it would ‘create a base to intervene in Russia itself,’” the Washington Post reported.

Ironically, there would be one exception to the next two decades’ worth of rising tensions over NATO’s eastward expansion that followed: the early years of Putin’s presidency, when the new Russian president defied the Russian establishment to try and make outreach to the United States. Under Putin, Moscow reestablished relations with NATO, finally ratified the START II arms control treaty, and even publicly floated the idea of Russia eventually joining the alliance, inviting attacks from his political rivals for doing so. Even so, Putin continued to raise Moscow’s traditional concerns about the alliance’s expansion, telling NATO’s secretary-general it was “a threat to Russia” in February 2001.

“[I]f a country like Russia feels threatened, this would destabilize the situation in Europe and the entire world,” he said in a speech in Berlin in 2000.

Putin softened his opposition as he sought to make common cause with then-President George W. Bush administration. “If NATO takes on a different shape and is becoming a political organization, of course, we would reconsider our position with regard to such expansion, if we are to feel involved in the processes,” he said in October 2001, drawing attacks from political rivals and other Russian elites.

As NATO for the first time granted Russia a consultative role in its decision-making in 2002, Putin sought to assist its expansion. Then-Italian President Silvio Berlusconi made a “personal request” to Bush, according to an April 2002 cable, to “understand Putin’s domestic requirements,” that he “needs to be seen as part of the NATO family,” and to give him “help in building Russian public opinion to support NATO enlargement.” In another cable, a top-ranking U.S. State Department official urged holding a NATO-Russia summit to “help President Putin neutralize opposition to enlargement,” after the Russian leader said allowing NATO expansion without an agreement on a new NATO-Russia partnership would be politically impossible for him.

This would be the last time any Russian openness toward NATO expansion was recorded in the diplomatic record published by WikiLeaks.

Allies Weigh In

By the middle of the 2000s, U.S.-Russian relations had deteriorated, partly owing to Putin’s bristling at U.S. criticism of his growing authoritarianism at home, and to U.S. opposition to his meddling in the 2004 Ukrainian election. But as explained in a September 2007 cable by then-President of New Eurasia Foundation Andrey Kortunov, now director general of the Russian International Affairs Council—who has publicly criticized both Kremlin policy and the current war—United States mistakes were also to blame, including Bush’s invasion of Iraq and a general sense that he had given little in return for Putin’s concessions.

“Putin had clearly embarked on an ‘integrationist’ foreign policy at the beginning of his second presidential term, which was fueled by the 9/11 terrorist attacks and good relations with key leaders like President Bush” and other leading NATO allies, Kortunov said according to the cable. “However,” he said, “a string of perceived anti-Russian initiatives,” which included Bush’s withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty and “further expansion of NATO,” ultimately “dashed Putin’s hopes.”

What followed was a steady drumbeat of warnings about NATO’s expansion, particularly regarding neighboring Ukraine and Georgia, much of it from Washington’s NATO allies.

“[Former French presidential diplomatic adviser Maurice] Gourdault-Montagne warned that the question of Ukrainian accession to NATO remained extremely sensitive for Moscow, and concluded that if there remained one potential cause for war in Europe, it was Ukraine,” reads a September 2005 cable. “He added that some in the Russian administration felt we were doing too much in their core zone of interest, and one could wonder whether the Russians might launch a move similar to Prague in 1968, to see what the West would do.”

This was just one of many similar warnings from French officials that admitting Ukraine and Georgia into NATO “would cross Russian ‘tripwires’,” for instance. A February 2007 cable records then-French Director General for Political Affairs Gérard Araud’s recounting of “a half-hour anti-U.S. harangue” by Putin in which he “linked all the dots” of Russian unhappiness with U.S. behavior, including “U.S. unilateralism, its denial of the reality of multipolarity, [and] the anti-Russian nature of NATO enlargement.”

Germany likewise raised repeated concerns about a potentially bad Russian reaction to a NATO Membership Action Plan (MAP) for Ukraine and Georgia, with then-Deputy National Security Adviser Rolf Nikel stressing that Ukraine’s entry was particularly sensitive. “While Georgia was ‘just a bug on the skin of the bear,’ Ukraine was inseparably identified with Russia, going back to Vladimir of [Kyiv] in 988,” Nikel recounted, according to the cable.

Other NATO allies repeated similar concerns. In a January 2008 cable, Italy affirmed it was a “strong advocate” for other states’ entry into the alliance, “but is concerned about provoking Russia through hurried Georgian integration.” Norway’s then-Foreign Minister (who is now the prime minister) Jonas Gahr Støre made a similar point in an April 2008 cable, even as he insisted Russia mustn’t be able to veto NATO’s decisions. “At the same time he says that he understands Russia’s objections to NATO enlargement and that the alliance needs to work to normalize the relationship with Russia,” reads the cable.

Almost Complete Consensus

The thinkers and analysts that U.S. officials conferred with likewise made clear that the anxieties of Russian elites over NATO and its expansion, and the lengths they might go to counteract it. Many were transmitted by then-U.S. Ambassador to Russia William Burns, who is presently Biden’s CIA director.

Recounting his conversations with various “Russian observers” from both regional and U.S. think tanks, Burns concluded in a March 2007 cable that “NATO enlargement and U.S. missile defense deployments in Europe play to the classic Russian fear of encirclement.” Ukraine and Georgia’s entry “represents an ‘unthinkable’ predicament for Russia,” he reported six months later, warning that Moscow would “cause enough trouble in Georgia” and counted on “continued political disarray in Ukraine” to halt it. In an especially prescient set of cables, he summed up scholars’ views that the emerging Russia-China relationship was largely “the by-product of ‘bad’ U.S. policies,” and was unsustainable—“unless continued NATO enlargement pushed Russia and China even closer together.”

Cables record Russian intellectuals across the political spectrum making such points again and again. One June 2007 cable records the words of a “liberal defense expert Aleksey Arbatov” and the “liberal editor” of a leading Russian foreign policy journal, Fyodor Lukyanov, that after Russia had done “everything to ‘help’ the U.S. post-9/11, including opening up Central Asia for coalition anti-terrorism efforts,” it had expected “respect for Russia’s ‘legitimate interests.’” Instead, Lukyanov said, it had been “confronted with NATO expansion, zero-sum competition in Georgia and Ukraine, and U.S. military installations in Russia’s backyard.”

“Ukraine was, in the long term, the most potentially destabilizing factor in U.S.-Russian relations, given the level of emotion and neuralgia triggered by its quest for NATO membership,” stated the counsel of Dmitri Trenin, then-deputy director of the Russian branch of the U.S.-based Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, in a Burns-authored February 2008 cable. For Ukraine, he said prophetically, it would mean “that elements within the Russian establishment would be encouraged to meddle, stimulating U.S. overt encouragement of opposing political forces, and leaving the United States and Russia in a classic confrontational posture.”

Indeed, opposing NATO’s enlargement eastward, particularly in Ukraine and Georgia, was “one of the few security areas where there is almost complete consensus among Russian policymakers, experts and the informed population,” stated a cable of March 2008, citing defense and security experts. Ukraine was the “line of last resort” that would complete Russia’s encirclement, said one defense expert, and its entry into NATO was universally viewed by the Russian political elite as an “unfriendly act.” Other experts cautioned “that Putin would be forced to respond to Russian nationalist feelings opposing membership” of Georgia, and that offering MAP to either Ukraine or Georgia would trigger a cut-back in the Russian military’s genuine desire for cooperation with NATO.

From Liberals to Hardliners

These analysts were reiterating what cables show U.S. officials heard again and again from Russian officials themselves, whether diplomats, members of parliament, or senior Russian officials all the way up to the presidency, recorded in nearly three-dozen cables at least.

NATO enlargement was “worrisome,” said one Duma member, while Russian generals were “suspicious of NATO and U.S. intentions,” cables record. Just as analysts and NATO officials had said, Kremlin officials characterized NATO’s designs on Georgia and Ukraine as especially objectionable, with the Russian Ambassador to NATO from 2008 to 2011, Dmitry Rogozin, stressing in a February 2008 cable that offering MAP to either “would negatively impact NATO’s relations with Russia” and “raise tension along the borders between NATO and Russia.”

Then-Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Grigory Karasin “underscored the depth of Russian opposition” to their membership, a different March 2008 cable stated, underlining that the “political elite firmly believes” “that the accession of Ukraine and Georgia represented a direct security threat to Russia.” The future, Karasin said, rested on the “strategic choice” Washington made about “‘what kind of Russia’” it wanted to deal with—‘a Russia that is stable and ready to calmly discuss issues with the U.S., Europe and China, or one that is deeply concerned and filled with nervousness.’”

Indeed, numerous officials—including then-Director for Security and Disarmament Anatoly Antonov, who is currently serving as Russia’s ambassador to the United States—warned pushing ahead would produce a less cooperative Russia. Pushing NATO’s borders to the two former Soviet states “threatened Russian and the entire region’s security, and could also negatively impact Russia’s willingness to cooperate in the [NATO-Russia Council],” one Russian foreign ministry official warned, while others pointed to the policy to explain Putin’s threats to suspend the Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE) treaty. “CFE would not survive NATO enlargement,” went a Russian threat in one March 2008 cable.

Maybe most pertinent were the words of Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, at the time a veteran diplomat respected in the West, and who continues to serve in the position today. At least eight cables—many, though not all of them, written by Burns—record Lavrov’s expressions of opposition to expanding NATO to Ukraine and Georgia over the course of 2007-2008, when Bush’s decision, over the objections of allies, to publicly affirm their future accession led to a spike in tensions.

“While Russia might believe statements from the West that NATO was not directed against Russia, when one looked at recent military activities in NATO countries… they had to be evaluated not by stated intentions but by potential,” went Burns’s summary of Lavrov’s annual foreign policy review in January 2008. On the same day, he wrote, a foreign ministry spokesperson warned that Ukraine’s “likely integration into NATO would seriously complicate the many-sided Russian-Ukrainian relations” and lead Moscow to “have to take appropriate measures.”

Besides being an easy way to garner domestic support from nationalists, Burns wrote, “Russia’s opposition to NATO membership for Ukraine and Georgia is both emotional and based on perceived strategic concerns about the impact on Russia’s interests in the region.”

“While Russian opposition to the first round of NATO enlargement in the mid-1990s was strong, Russia now feels itself able to respond more forcefully to what it perceives as actions contrary to its national interests,” he concluded.

Lavrov’s criticism was shared by a host of other officials, not all of them hardliners. Burns recounted a meeting with former Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov, a Gorbachev protégé who had negotiated over NATO’s first expansion with former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who warmly eulogized him years later as a pragmatist. The U.S. push for MAP for Georgia and Ukraine “‘infuriated’ Russians and threatened other areas of U.S.-Russia strategic cooperation,” Primakov had said, according to Burns, mentioning Primakov was asked later that day on TV about rethinking Crimea’s status as Ukrainian territory. “[T]his is the kind of discussion that MAP produces,” he said—meaning that it inflamed nationalist and hardline sentiment.

“Primakov said that Russia would never return to the era of the early 1990s and it would be a ‘colossal mistake’ to think that Russian reactions today would mirror those during its time of strategic weakness,” Burns’s cable stated.

This went all the way to the top, as U.S. officials noted in cables reacting to a famously strident speech Putin gave at the Munich Security Conference in February 2007, which saw Putin assail NATO expansion and other policies as part of a wider, destabilizing U.S. abuse of its sole-superpower status. Putin’s tone may have been “unusually sharp,” Primakov told Burns, but its substance “reflected well-known Russian complaints predating Putin’s election,” shown by the fact that “talking heads and Duma members were almost unanimous” in supporting the speech. A year later, a March 2008 cable reported then-German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s farewell, two-hour-long meeting with Putin, in which he “argued strongly” against MAP for Ukraine and Georgia.

Putin’s Exit

Any illusions this stance would evaporate with Putin leaving the presidency were quickly dispelled. Such warnings continued and, if anything, grew more intense after Putin was replaced by his liberal successor, Dmitry Medvedev as president of Russia, whose ascent sparked hopes for a more democratic Russia and an improved U.S.-Russian relationship.

Under Medvedev, officials from the Russian ambassador to NATO and various officials in the foreign ministry to the chairman of the Duma’s international affairs committee made much the same warnings, cables show. In some cases, as with Karasin and Lavrov, it was the same officials making these long-standing complaints.

Medvedev himself “reiterated well known Russian positions on NATO enlargement” to Merkel on his first trip to Europe in June 2008, even as he avoided bringing up MAP for Ukraine and Georgia specifically. “Behind Medvedev’s polite demeanor, Russian opposition to NATO enlargement remained a red-line, according to both conservative and moderate observers,” one June 2008 cable reads, a view shared by a leading liberal analyst. Even critics to his right read Medvedev’s words as “an implicit commitment to use Russian economic, political and social levers to raise the costs for Ukraine and Georgia” if they moved closer to the alliance. The cable’s author, then-Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow Daniel Russell, concluded he “agree[d] with the common wisdom.”

By August 2008, following the war with Georgia, Medvedev started to sound a lot more like his predecessor, threatening to cut ties with the alliance and restating grievances about encirclement. A cable from after the end of the five-day war between Russia and Georgia—which an EU-commissioned report would later blame the Georgian government for starting—stated that “even the most pro-Western political experts” were “pointing the finger at the U.S.” for jeopardizing the U.S.-Russian relations, with U.S.’s dismissal of Russia’s concerns over, among other things, NATO expansion being a key part of their analysis. Echoing Burns, one analyst argued that Russia finally felt “strong enough to stand up to the West” when it ignored its concerns.

Those concerns were central at a roundtable of Russian analysts months later— a January 2009 cable showed—who explained to a group of visiting U.S. congresspeople Russians’ “deep displeasure” with the U.S. government, and stressed the “bitter divorce” between Russia and Georgia would be even uglier with Ukraine. Pushing MAP for the country “helped the ‘America haters come to power’ in Russia and gave legitimacy to the hard-liners’ vision of ‘fortress Russia,’” said one Russian analyst.

Increasingly, cables show, such warnings came from liberals, even those who hadn’t previously viewed NATO and the United States as Russia’s chief threats. An August 2008 cable described a meeting with Russian Human Rights Ombudsman Ambassador Vladimir Lukin—described as “a liberal on the Russian political scene, someone disposed toward cooperation with the U.S.”—who explained Medvedev’s post-war recognition of the independence of Georgia’s breakaway regions, which he had at first opposed, as a security-driven response to NATO’s drift toward Russia’s borders. Because escalations like the 2008 U.S.-Poland missile defense agreement showed anti-Russia actions “would not stop,” he said, “Moscow had to show that, like the U.S., it can and will take steps it deems necessary to defend its interests.”

The cable concluded that Lukin’s views “reflect the thinking of the majority of Russian foreign policy elite.”

Selling NATO to Ukraine

Other than Burns—whose Bush-era memos warning of the breadth of Russian opposition to NATO expansion and that it would provoke intensified meddling in Ukraine have become famous since the Russian invasion—U.S. officials largely reacted with dismissal.

Russian objections to the policy and other long-simmering issues were described over and over in the cables as “oft-heard,” “old,” “nothing new,” and “largely predictable,” a “familiar litany” and a “rehashing” that “provided little new substance.” Even NATO’s ally Norway’s position that it understood Russian objections even as it refused to let Moscow veto the alliance’s moves was labeled a case of “parroting Russia’s line.”

U.S. officials were similarly dismissive of explicit warnings—from Kremlin officials, NATO allies, experts and analysts, even Ukrainian leadership—that Ukraine was “internally divided over NATO membership” and that public support for the move was “not fully ripe.” The east-west split within Ukraine over the idea of NATO membership made it “risky,” German officials cautioned, and could “break up the country.” Ukraine’s three leading politicians all “took foreign policy positions based on domestic political considerations, with little regard to the long-term effects on the country,” one said.

Those very politicians likewise made clear public opinion wasn’t there, whether anti-Russian former Foreign Minister Volodymyr Ogryzko of Ukraine, or more Russian-friendly former Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych—later misleadingly painted as a Kremlin puppet and was ousted as president in the 2014 Maidan protests—who boasted to a U.S. diplomat that support for NATO had jumped under his tenure. In response, the cables show, NATO officials pressed Ukrainian leaders to take a firm public stance in favor of joining, and discussed how to persuade Ukraine’s population “so that they would be more favorable [toward] it.” Ogryzko later disclosed to Merkel “that a public education campaign is already underway,” and that Ukraine “had discussed the issue of public education campaigns with Slovakia and other nations that had joined NATO recently.”

This came in spite of acknowledged risks. Cables record liberal Russian analysts cautioning “that [then-Ukrainian President Viktor] Yushchenko was using NATO membership to shore up a Ukrainian national identity that required casting Russia in the role of enemy,” and that “because membership remained divisive in Ukrainian domestic politics, it created an opening for Russian intervention.”

“Experts tell us that Russia is particularly worried that the strong divisions in Ukraine over NATO membership, with much of the ethnic-Russian community against membership, could lead to a major split, involving violence or at worst, civil war,” Burns wrote in February 2008. Russia, he further wrote, would then “have to decide whether to intervene; a decision Russia does not want to have to face.”

Despite the dismissive attitude of many U.S. officials, parts of the U.S. national security establishment clearly understood Russian objections weren’t mere “muscle-flexing.” The Kremlin’s anxieties over a “direct military attack on Russia” were “very real,” and could drive its leaders to make rash, self-defeating decisions, stated a 2019 report from the Pentagon-funded RAND Corporation that explored theoretical strategies for overextending Russia.

“Providing more U.S. military equipment and advice” to Ukraine, it stated, could lead Moscow to “respond by mounting a new offensive and seizing more Ukrainian territory”—something not necessarily good for U.S. interests, let alone Ukraine’s, it noted.

Warnings Ignored

Nevertheless, in the years, months, and weeks that led up to the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, successive U.S. administrations continued on the same course.

Ukraine’s cooperation with NATO has “deepened over time,” the alliance itself says today. By the war’s outbreak, the country frequently hosted Western troops at a military base, Ukrainian soldiers received NATO training, it planned two new NATO-linked naval bases, and has received unprecedented sums of U.S. military aid, including offensive arms—a former President Donald Trump policy his liberal predecessor had explicitly rejected, out of concern for provoking a disastrous response from Moscow. Three months before the invasion, Ukraine and the United States signed an updated Charter on Strategic Partnership “guided” by Bush’s controversial Bucharest declaration, which both deepened security cooperation between the two countries and supported Ukraine’s membership aspirations, viewed as an escalation in Moscow.

As U.S. military activity has increased in the region since 2016, sometimes involving Ukraine and Georgia, NATO-Russian tensions have ratcheted up too. While Moscow publicly objected to U.S. missions in Europe that experts feared were too provocative, NATO and Russian forces have experienced thousands of dangerous military encounters in the region and elsewhere. By December 2022, with fears of invasion ramping up, Putin told Biden personally that “the eastward expansion of the Western alliance was a major factor in his decision to send troops to Ukraine’s border,” the Washington Post reported.

None of this means other factors played no role in the war’s outbreak, from Russian domestic pressures and Putin’s own dim view of Ukrainian independence to the copious other well-known Russian grievances toward U.S. policy that frequently appear in the diplomatic record, too. Nor does it mean, as hawks argue, that this somehow “justifies” Putin’s war, any more than understanding how U.S. foreign policy has fueled anti-American terrorism that “justifies” those crimes.

What it does mean is that claims that Russian unhappiness over NATO expansion is irrelevant, a mere “fig leaf” for pure expansionism, or simply Kremlin propaganda are belied by this lengthy historical record. Rather, successive U.S. administrations pushed ahead with the policy despite being warned copiously for years—including by the analysts who advised them, by allies, even by their own officials—that it would feed Russian nationalism, create a more hostile Moscow, foster instability and even civil war in Ukraine, and could eventually lead to Russian military intervention, all of which ended up happening.

“I don’t accept anyone’s red line,” Biden said in the lead-up to the invasion, as his administration rejected negotiations with Moscow over Ukraine’s NATO status. We can only imagine the world in which he and his predecessors had.

This article is distributed by Globetrotter in partnership with the American Committee for U.S.-Russia Accord.

Myanmar’s audacious military coup: Two Years On

Today is 1st February 2023. The daring military takeover in Myanmar two years ago on February 1 will be remembered as the start of the most oppressive administration in recent memory on February 1, 2023. The situation in Myanmar has deteriorated drastically since February 2021, and a civil war between the military and the pro-democracy front is still raging. The years 2021 and 2022 were sad for the state of human rights as the military, often known as the Tatmadaw, used excessive violence to put an end to the call for democracy.

A resolution was vetoed in the UN Security Council because to Chinese and Russian support for the Tatmadaw, therefore it might be said that the situation has reached this point as a result of the lackluster response and insufficient strict steps of the international community.

Unprecedented agony and hardship for the people of Myanmar resulted from the military’s unrelenting violence and repression in 2022.

Aung San Suu Kyi was one of the prominent leaders of the National League for Democracy (NLD) who was detained by the Tatmadaw two years ago after they attempted a coup and made the absurd claim that elections had been rigged. Despite the fact that the NLD won the election with an overwhelming majority of seats and 83 percent of the vote overall, Tatmadaw, the “King Maker,” rejected the outcome out of concern for its continued control over Myanmar politics. The general populace of Myanmar protested against the coup and denounced it. The demonstration quickly evolved into the civil disobedience movement (CDM), in which professionals from all fields refused to report to work and sought the return of democracy.

The Tatmadaw’s choice to satiate the demand with bullets covered Myanmar’s streets in blood. According to the Thailand-based human rights organization Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, the Tatmadaw has killed roughly 1,500 people and detained up to 9,000 others in the past year (Burma). Additionally, the Tatmadaw employed stringent monitoring techniques to stifle protestors’ voices. 120 journalists have been detained under the recently implemented harsh provision, Section 505A of the penal code, of whom 15 have been found guilty and 50 are still awaiting trial. Seven media outlets’ licenses as well as those for satellite television have been revoked.

After the People’s Defence Force (PDF) was established as the political branch of the National Unity Government in the midst of the bloody crackdown, the CDM changed into an armed resistance group (NUG). Even though NUG has the least power over the force, former NLD officials and pro-democracy fronts founded NUG and PDF as their armed wings. PDF and NUG gradually became one of the main political groups in Myanmar. To combat PDF, Tatmadaw has increased its level of aggression, whereas PDF prefers guerrilla warfare. According to UN estimates, at least 406,000 people have been displaced due to the increasing civil war.

Myanmar’s economy has also been destroyed by political unrest. Foreign companies’ withdrawal and currency depreciation have stifled the nation’s economic expansion.

Even while previous military coups encountered the least resistance and protest, this one resulted in a hitherto unheard-of movement against the dictatorship. The youth of the nation have demonstrated a strong belief in democracy and have remained in the forefront of the protest. The “Five Twos,” often referred to as Myanmar’s “Generation Z,” have taken the Tatmadaw and the rest of the world by surprise. Their political awareness is commendable, and they exhibit an unwavering spirit of resistance.

The Tatmadaw started to experience an image crisis after the youth rebellion was violently put down, and they now worry about maintaining power in the face of unabated popular hatred. Outside of Myanmar, the Tatmadaw has substantial backing from mighty nations like China and Russia.

On the other hand, the people of Myanmar rely on the international world to change things and bring back democracy. With the military’s withdrawal from power, it is clear that the situation will change for the better, necessitating the major engagement of the international community. Ironically, there has been no progress toward resolving this political problem by the international community, which is still bitterly split.

The lives of Myanmar’s residents and ethnic communities are wretched and perpetually unstable due to the lackluster responses of the international community, the geopolitical alignment of major countries, the lengthy history of military rule, and the Tatmadaw’s counter-insurgency operations. Torture, famine, and displacement are the three main pillars of modern-day Myanmar society.

The Tatmadaw has not been significantly impacted by major corporations leaving the country in protest of violations of human rights, such as Chevron and Total. The causes of humanity, genocide, and ethnic cleansing are not what drive the global world; rather, it is geopolitical interests. Although many people believed NUG would have international assistance to drive the Tatmadaw out, in reality, it has not succeeded in securing the backing of significant international players beyond mere lip service.

Situations like these, ranging from the Rohingya catastrophe to the Middle East conflict, have demonstrated how keenly global powers have focused on securing their own interests through strategic realignments and readjustments. Bangladesh is affected by the military takeover in Myanmar and the subsequent political developments in that country since the repatriation of 1.1 million Rohingyas from Bangladesh has been put on hold.

The Tatmadaw’s violence, repression, and civil war in Myanmar have left people living in perpetual fear and uncertainty. The international community must restore democracy to Myanmar’s youth and give displaced people like the Rohingyas new hope. Before it’s too late, the international community must respond in a concerted and strict manner. The Tatmadaw would gain strength as a result of the great nations failing to act, prolonging the agony and vulnerability of the people of Myanmar in 2023 and beyond.

We honor the lives lost over the previous year, especially those of women, children, humanitarian workers, human rights advocates, and nonviolent protestors, on this second anniversary of the coup. We vehemently condemn the country’s widespread human rights abuses and breaches committed by the military dictatorship, especially those committed against Rohingya and other racial and religious minorities. We express our deep concern about the verifiable reports of sexual and gender-based violence as well as torture. We are really concerned about the additional more than 400,000 people who have fled their homes since the coup. We further express our serious concern for the worsening humanitarian situation throughout the nation and call on the military regime to grant immediate, complete, and unrestricted access to vulnerable communities for humanitarian purposes, including COVID-19 immunization.

We express our severe concern with the enormous number of people who have been jailed without warrants as well as the sentencing of State Counselor Aung San Suu Kyi and other political prisoners.

All members of the international community are urged to support initiatives aimed at promoting justice for the people of Myanmar, to hold those accountable for abuses and violations of human rights accountable, to stop providing the military and its representatives with arms, equipment, and technical assistance, and to continue assisting them in meeting immediate humanitarian needs.

We want to be clear that we support the ASEAN Five-Point Consensus and the Special Envoy of ASEAN in his efforts to promote a peaceful resolution that serves the needs of the people of Myanmar. In order to ensure that the ASEAN Special Envoy has access to all stakeholders in Myanmar, including pro-democracy organizations, we urge the military administration to actively participate in ASEAN’s efforts to achieve complete and urgent implementation of the Five-Point Consensus. We also applaud the work of the UN Special Envoy for Myanmar and call on the military government to cooperate constructively with her.

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