UK to Ban Hezbollah: What are the Repercussions

Trump’s Middle East Policy: An Arab Perspective

A Weekly Political News Magazine

Tehran Leadership: Erratic Behavior at Home, Aggression Abroad

A Weekly Political News Magazine

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Issue 1737 - March - 01/03/2019

Men Embrace the Nip ’N’ Tuck

Issue 1737 - March - 01/03/2019

www.majalla.com

UK to Ban Hezbollah: What are the Repercussions ? www.majalla.com

Editorial Through modern history, the Middle East has been a hotbed of conflict and political crisis. Such conflicts include territorial disputes, civil wars, sectarian/tribal/religious violence and terrorism. The last ten years have not been any different since the region has witnessed lasting events such as the US invasion of Iraq, the Arab Spring and the increasing frequency of Iran’s destabilising actions throughout the region. This issue of Majalla takes an in-depth look at the current state of the Middle East and recent events that have either had a positive or negative impact on the region. The issue also explores the implications and possible outcomes that will result from the actions that are taken by both state and non-state actors both within and outside the Middle East.

This week’s cover story by Hanin Ghaddar talks about the decision taken by British Home Secretary Sajid Javad to designate Hezbollah a terrorist organization. Like the rest of the EU, the UK had previously distinguished between the group’s military and political wings but has now decided to recognize all factions of the group as a terrorist organization. If parliament approves this motion, then this might trigger a domino effect for other European governments to do the same, thus further isolating the group and the Iranian regime.

Ali El Shamy writes on the first joint Arab League-European Union Summit, which took place in Sharm El Sheik, Egypt. The summit proved to be a significant one since major leaders from both blocs were in attendance as they discussed many shared concerns and issues.

The writer takes a look at the topics that were discussed throughout the summit and the goals that the blocs set out to accomplish before the next one is due to take place at Brussels in 2022.

Yasmine El-Geressi spoke with the former World Bank director, Professor Jamal Saghir, as she took a look on the impacts that climate change can potentially have on the region. While there are manifest effects such as rising sea levels causing floods in coastal cities or increased water draughts, the writer notes that there are latent effects that will happen as a result of climate change. For instance, Professor Saghir noted that the droughts that happened in Syria throughout the last ten years caused a population displacement whereby farmers in rural areas moved to major cities only to live in poverty. This lead to increased dissatisfaction toward the government, especially those from the disenfranchised and impoverished classes, thus helping plant the seeds that would eventually lead to the Syrian civil war.

We invite you to read these articles and more on our website eng. majalla.com. As always, we welcome and value our reader’s feedback and we invite you to take the opportunity to leave your comments on our website.

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A Weekly Political News Magazine

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A Weekly Political News Magazine

16 Pressure Mounts on Hezbollah

Issue 1737 - March- 01/03/2019

38 Conflict and Terrorism in a Warming Middle East

32 32 What’s Driving the Crisis in Zimbabwe?

32 28 Is the Taliban Making a Pledge It Cannot Keep?

46 Giving Patients a New Beginning

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Renewed Bilateral Relations:

48 The Monkees’ Peter Tork: 3

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Rami Malek, winner of Best Actor for 'Bohemian Rhapsody,' poses in the press room during the 91st Annual Academy Awards at Hollywood and Highland on February 2019 24 in Hollywood, California.

He became the first Arab-American to win the award. (Getty)

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Supporters of Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido take part in a march in Caracas, on February 2019 23.

Venezuelan security forces fired tear gas and rubber bullets Saturday to disperse a crowd demanding to cross the VenezuelaColombia border, ordered closed by President Nicolas Maduro as tensions in the Latin American country soared ahead of an opposition deadline to bring in humanitarian aid. (Getty) 7

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to the bilateral relationship. “Hezbollah is continuing in its attempts to destabilise the fragile situation in the Middle East – and we are no longer able to distinguish between their already banned military wing and the political party,” British Home Secretary (interior minister) Sajid Javid said.

Thousands of Algerians Protest Against Bouteflika's Re-Election Bid Tens of thousands of Algerians students have been protesting in the capital and other cities for over a week against President Abdelaziz Bouteflika’s plan to extend his -20year rule by seeking a fifth term. In the capital, Algiers, there were brief scuffles with police who fired tear gas. Reports say many more students avoided confronting police by rallying on campus grounds in Algiers and other cities. Bouteflika suffered a stroke in 2013, has been seen in public only a few times since and has given no known speeches in years. Despite the rare outpouring of public dissent, Bouteflika’s campaign manager said the president would file formal papers for

re-election on March 15 ,3 days before the vote.

Britain to Expand Ban on Lebanon's Hezbollah Britain said on Monday it plans to ban all wings of Hezbollah due to its destabilising influence in the Middle East, classing the Lebanese Islamist movement as a terrorist organisation. London had already proscribed Hezbollah’s external security unit and its military wing in 2001 and 2008 respectively, but now wants to outlaw its political arm too. Hezbollah has a role in the Lebanese government so the move may raise questions for Britain’s relationship with Lebanon, although Lebanon’s Hezbollah-allied foreign minister said the UK had informed the country of its commitment

At Least 25 Killed, 43 Injured in Crash and Fire at Cairo Train Station At least 25 people were killed and dozens injured when a locomotive smashed through the buffers and burst into flames at Cairo’s main train station on Wednesday. Egypt’s public prosecutor said a preliminary investigation indicated the driver stepped off the train to talk to another driver without pulling the hand brake, causing the unattended locomotive to speed off and hit a concrete platform.

But the driver, who has been arrested, blames corroded brakes, reports say. Security camera footage from inside the capital’s Ramses station showed the train failing to stop as it arrived at platform six, smashing through the buffers and a metal end railing and exploding into a huge ball of fire.Transport minister Hisham Arafat said the train’s diesel tank had exploded. He resigned later on Wednesday.

Trump Scraps North Korea Summit Deal U.S. President Donald Trump said he had walked away from a nuclear deal at his summit with Kim Jong Un in Vietnam on Thursday because of unacceptable demands from the North Korean leader to lift punishing U.S.-led sanctions.Trump said two days of talks in the Vietnamese capital Hanoi had

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made good progress in building relations and on the key issue of denuclearization, but it was important not to rush into a bad deal. “It was all about the sanctions,” Trump said at a news conference after the talks were cut short. “Basically, they wanted the sanctions lifted in their entirety, and we couldn’t do that.”Trump and Kim cut short their talks, skipping a planned working lunch at the French-colonialera Metropole hotel after a morning of meetings.

“Sometimes you have to walk, and this was just one of those times,” Trump said, adding “it was a friendly walk”.

Michael Cohen Accuses 'Racist, Conman' Trump of Criminal Conspiracy Donald Trump’s former attorney Michael Cohen accused the president in explosive public testimony before Congress of knowing in advance about key events under investigation in the Russia inquiry and of committing criminal conspiracy in the covering up of an extramarital affair. In a day of high drama before the House oversight committee, Cohen delivered a string of bombshells that could spawn fresh investigations by Congress and the FBI. Testifying on Wednesday, he labelled the US president a “racist” and “conman”, produced signed checks that he said were proof of a fraudulently disguised conspiracy to silence a former adult film actor, and gave what he claimed were eyewitness accounts that implied Trump had prior knowledge

of crucial Russia links.

India-Pakistan Clash Intensifies with Downed Jets and Captured Pilot

Pakistani and Indian jet fighters clashed in the skies above their disputed border, with each side claiming to have shot down at least one warplane and Pakistan capturing an Indian pilot, escalating military hostilities between the nuclear-armed rivals.

The clashes represent a significant escalation since India said on Tuesday it had successfully bombed a major Pakistani militant training camp, in the first airstrikes across the de facto border in Kashmir since 1971. Reuters described it as the first time in history that two nuclear powers had exchanged airstrikes.

Pakistan’s prime minister Imran Khan, told a joint sitting of parliament that the Indian wing commander, Abhinandan Varthaman, who was shot down over the heavily guarded ceasefire line in disputed Kashmir on Wednesday, would be released on Friday as “peace gesture”.

Theresa May Delays Meaningful Vote on Final Brexit deal MPs may have to wait until 12 March for a meaningful vote on the government’s final Brexit deal, Theresa May has said in an intervention that deepened splits in her cabinet. The prime minister confirmed on Sunday that she would not hold the vote this week as she flew to Sharm el-Sheikh in Egypt for EU summit with Arab leaders. If her deal is voted down, May has promised that lawmakers

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will get a chance to vote the day after on whether to leave with no deal and then on March 14 to vote on asking the EU to delay the deadline. After his own alternative plan for a Brexit deal was rejected by MPs on Wednesday, Britain’s opposition Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn gave ambiguous backing for another referendum, saying he would push for one alongside a British parliamentary election.

Venezuela Hit With New U.S. Sanctions After Clashes Over Food Aid on Border The United States targeted Venezuela's government with new sanctions on Monday and called on allies to freeze the assets of its state-owned oil company PDVSA after deadly violence blocked humanitarian aid from reaching the country over the weekend. As Colombia's foreign minister warned about "credible threats to the life" of Venezuela's opposition leader Juan Guaido, the Trump administration also took its pressure campaign to the United Nations Security Council, asking it to discuss the situation in Venezuela, diplomats said. The US vicepresident, Mike Pence, repeated a veiled threat of military intervention in Venezuela, but Washington appeared increasingly isolated in its willingness to contemplate using force to oust President Nicolás Maduro.

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UK to Ban Hezbollah: What are the Repercussions?

by Hanin Ghaddar

inviting support for — the three organizations will be a criminal offense carrying a -10year prison sentence, the Home Office said.

The United Kingdom is set to ban Hezbollah, along other groups such as Ansarul Islam and Jama'at Nusrat al-Islam Muslimeen (JNIM), the UK's Home Office "Hezbollah is continuing in its attempts to destabilize the fragile situation in the Middle East — and we are said in a statement earlier this week. no longer able to distinguish between their already Like European countries, the UK previously banned military wing and the political party," Home distinguished the Lebanese Shia group’s military and Secretary Sajid Javid said as part of the statement. political branches. However, the measure, if approved "Because of this, I have taken the decision to proscribe by parliament, will mean that being a member of — or the group in its entirety," he added.

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The classification of Hezbollah as a terrorist organization in Europe will squeeze the party financially and limit its sympathizers’ activities, not only in the UK, but in Europe as a whole.

Police officers talk to a demonstrator who is wearing a Hezbollah flag during the pro and antiIsraeli demonstrations outside Downing Street in London, England ahead of a visit by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on September 2015 ,9.

(Getty)

EUROPE UNDER THE SPOTLIGHT This step has brought the debate about the distinction between Hezbollah’s military and political wings back to the surface, as the US is raising the rhetoric against Iran, and the differences with Europe on how to counter Iran are still unresolved. After the UK decision, all eyes are now in Europe and the question is still whether European countries will follow suit.

Hezbollah operatives have been engaged in terrorist and criminal activities across Europe for many years.

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In 2012, Hezbollah carried out an attack on a tour bus in Burgas, resulting in the death of five Israelis and their Bulgarian bus driver.

However, most of Hezbollah’s activities in Europe are focused on money laundering, drugs trafficking, and other criminal activity. A number of individuals and companies have been designated and some have been arrested by authorities for carrying out illicit business activity in Europe on behalf of Hezbollah, mainly in Lithuania, France and Germany.

In January 2016 law enforcement and judicial authorities from France, the US, Germany, Belgium, Italy, the Netherlands and Spain, supported by Europol, took action against a prominent Lebanese crime group suspected of being involved in financing terrorism through Hezbollah’s military wing. The group was responsible for the laundering of profits from cocaine sales throughout Europe.

Although many of these activities are non-military in nature, many European countries still prefer to turn the blind eye on Hezbollah’s fundraising activities in Europe, preferring to attribute them to Hezbollah’s military wing.

However, the classification of Hezbollah as a terrorist organization in Europe will squeeze the party financially and limit its sympathizers’ activities, not only in the UK, but in Europe as a whole.

SYMBOLIC OR PRACTICAL MEASURE? According to a paper published recently by BICOM, the UK decision has practical significance. For example, under current British law, it is a criminal offence to belong to, fundraise, and encourage support for any part of the military wing of Hezbollah. However, under the guise of its ‘political wing’ Hezbollah can raise funds for its activities in the UK, as well as potentially undermining local counter-terrorism efforts. “A full

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proscription would significantly constrain the group’s ability to raise funds and prevent it from using UK banks to transfer money around the world,” the reports confirms.

Accordingly, British law enforcement agencies would have greater powers to freeze Hezbollah’s assets in the UK, including those masquerading as charities.

In addition, any expression of support for the group would be deemed a criminal offence.

According to BICOM, this would close the loophole that allows Hezbollah supporters to march on the streets of London with Hezbollah flags on Al-Quds Day. Because the political and military wings of Hezbollah use the same flag, the current interpretation of UK legislation creates a situation whereby British Police and the Crown Prosecution Service are unwilling to classify the use of Hezbollah flags as an offence under Section 13 of the Terrorism Act 2000.

However, British officials could still meet with their Lebanese counterparts, and the proscription will not affect the UK’s ability to send funds to the Lebanese Armed Forces. The US, which considers Hezbollah a terrorist organization in its entirety, has provided 1.7$ billion to the LAF since 2006.

CONTEXT AND REPERCUSSIONS Obviously, this decision is not sudden, and is certainly not out of context. The British public opinion has been discussing this issue following an uproar, due to Hezbollah’s public rallies on the Quds Day. Beyond the UK, the context of this measure is an international shift of policy towards Iran and an increased effort to contain its role in the region.

The Trump administration’s withdrawal from the Nuclear Deal, the rounds of US sanctions on Iran and its regional proxies, the Gulf States’ military

The international community seems to be moving further from Iran and more attentive to its regional destabilizing operations.

and diplomatic initiatives to counter Iran’s proxies in the Gulf and the rest of the region, and last but not least, the UK plan to ban Hezbollah, all are signs of a growing international restlessness regarding Iran’s behavior.

For Iran, the decision itself might not be very significant, as the regime still enjoys acceptable relations with Europe, but considered in the larger context, Iran should be worried, and Hezbollah should take this very seriously. The international community seems to be moving further from Iran and more attentive to its regional destabilizing operations.

There might not be any American military plan to go after Iran, but this administration is nonetheless determined to continue with the sanctions policy, until

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Lebanese people and leaders need to take action to show the international community that there is – in fact – a distinction between Hezbollah and Lebanon, before it is too late to draw this distinction.

A Hezbollah fighter stands at attention in an orange field near the town of Naqura on the LebaneseIsraeli border in 2017. (Getty)

the international community supported Lebanon, and many Arab states and people supported the resistance and criticized Israel for hitting civilians. Iran was not heavily involved in the region, and the money for the reconstruction flew from all sides, especially the Gulf States.

This time around, Hezbollah will not be able to enjoy the same support. Iran is heavily involved in the region, and Hezbollah is becoming Iran’s right arm in its regional and international operations. The UK decision falls within this context, and it sheds the light on the international community’s shifts in both attitudes and practical steps when it comes to Hezbollah and Iran’s activities. Patience is growing thin and Hezbollah will probably be more isolated in the coming months and years.

As Hezbollah enjoys more control over the Lebanese government and its security and military decision, the Lebanese should also see the UK measure in the larger context. Following the British Government’s statement, statements from Lebanese leaders - such as the prime minister and the foreign minister - fell short of addressing the real problem. Ignoring the repercussions of this step and its context will only drag Lebanon into more conflict and crisis.

This ban cannot be seen as one single measure, separately from the context that clearly signals an international shift against Iran and its regional proxies.

If Hezbollah and Iran insist on defying this reality and do not mind getting more isolated and sanctioned, Lebanese people and leaders need to take action to show the international community that there is – in fact – a distinction between Hezbollah and Lebanon, before it is too late to draw this distinction.

Iran runs out of money. As for Hezbollah, the problem is two-folded. Besides the many signs of their own financial crisis resulting from sanctions, Hezbollah will eventually have to face Israel in Lebanon.

Israel has been striking Hezbollah’s military facilities in Syria, where Hezbollah and the IRGC have been transforming rockets to precise weapons. To protect these facilities and continue the process of transforming these weapons, Iran decided to move them to Lebanon, where Israeli strikes are more complicated. But as this is a very significant project for Hezbollah and Iran, it is also a big concern for Israel, which is constantly threatening Hezbollah and Lebanon about its risks and repercussions. *Hanin Ghaddar is the Friedmann Visiting Fellow, Washington In 2006 – last time Israel and Hezbollah went to war - Institute for Near East Policy

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Tehran Leadership: Erratic Behavior at Home, Aggression Abroad

by Joseph Braude* The Iranian government has been showing signs of discord in its senior ranks, with the attempted resignation of the popular foreign minister Javad Zarif over his exclusion from a meeting with Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad. At the same time, the Iranian military has taken an increasingly aggressive posture in

the Persian Gulf -- by testing new missiles -- and in the cyber realm, by authorizing hacks on sensitive Western targets.

ZARIF RESIGNS, KHAMENEI WELCOMES ASSAD On February 25, Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif resigned

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The Iranian military has taken an increasingly aggressive posture in the Persian Gulf -- by testing new missiles -- and in the cyber realm, by authorizing hacks on sensitive Western targets. footage of the Iranian navy testing a new “ship-killer” missile designed to leave a submarine encapsulated in a torpedo.

The missile then separates from the torpedo, homing in on enemy ships. Military experts believe the demonstration was intended as a warning to Western naval forces in the Persian Gulf.

On the cyber front, evidence continues to mount of a longstanding Iranian offensive against Western targets. According to a recently released report by Los Angeles-based Resecurity, the February 8 hack of the Australian Parliament "is a part of a multi-year cyber-espionage campaign" by an Iranian-backed hacking group called “Iridium.” The hackers obtained thousands of records from both parliaments containing names, email addresses, birthdates and other information on lawmakers and their staff.

ISRAEL MAINTAINS WARY EYE ON IRANIAN PRESENCE IN SYRIA

President Hassan Rouhani (right) attends a meeting with Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif in Tehran in July 2018.

(AFP)

in an Instagram post otherwise concerned with International Women’s Day. Two days of tumult ensued, with multiple offices contesting whether or not Zarif had resigned and whether or not Rouhani had accepted it. The fog only cleared when President Rouhani publicly rejected the resignation and Zarif returned to his post.

Zarif’s abortive resignation was reportedly prompted by his exclusion from a meeting between Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei and Syrian president Bashar al-Assad. Adding an additional wrinkle, the Syrian flag was not displayed alongside the Iranian flag at the meeting between Khamenei and Assad — a signal of condescension, some observers noted, if not relegation of Syria to vassal status.

AGGRESSION ABROAD On February 24, the semi-official Fars News agency released

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Drawing on a series of interviews with Israeli military officers, The Daily Beast reported that Iran has been attempting for the last several months to smuggle suitcase-sized components of precision-guided missiles onto rockets in Lebanon and Syria.

This comes on the heels of a long Israeli campaign to degrade Iranian capabilities in Syria. According to former IDF chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot, the IDF dropped over 2,000 bombs on Iranian targets in Syria in 2018 alone.

This counter-offensive appears to have taken a toll. According to a recently published Israeli military intelligence assessment, repeated Israeli airstrikes have prompted the IRGC to redeploy a considerable portion of its assets out of Syria and into Iraq.

As Prime Minister Netanyahu told VOA Persian last week, the Iranians “are still there,” but “they would have been in a much greater presence if we hadn’t done it. And in fact, the presence has shrunken somewhat.” *Middle East specialist Joseph Braude is the author of Broadcasting Change: Arabic Media as a Catalyst for Liberalism (Rowman & Littlefield). He is Advisor to the Al-Mesbar Center for Research and Studies and tweets@josephbraude.

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Pressure Mounts on Hezbollah It is clear that US pressure on Hezbollah is increasing. The Americans want to dry up the party's resources, particularly those that the US Treasury accuse of illegal trade in drugs and arms in Latin America and Africa.

Last December, Lebanese businessman Kassim Tahideen, who is being tried in New York, pleaded guilty to laundering more than 1$ billion with five of his partners to Hezbollah. If his plea agreement is approved by the US Justice Department, Tajideen will serve five years in prison and pay a 50$ million criminal forfeiture.

This trend began when former US Attorney General Jeff Sessions designated Hezbollah as a transnational criminal group and announced that he had set up a special task force comprised of experts in international drug smuggling, terrorism, organized crime and money laundering to target these groups with more rigorous investigations and judicial procedures.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo recently claimed that Hezbollah maintains “active cells” in Venezuela, a risk his country intends to take down. Of course, the Venezuelan president hastened to deny these accusations, as did the Secretary General of Hezbollah.

In the context of these mounting pressures, the Israelis discovered tunnels extending from southern Lebanon into Israel. Israel also accused Iran of building missile factories in Lebanon.

This growing pressure suggests that the Trump Administration’s decision to resume targeting Iran and its proxies, especially Hezbollah, after it was largely suspended following President Obama's negotiations with Iran which led to the signing of the nuclear agreement that President Trump withdrew from, has come info effect.

The final and most significant event was the civil lawsuit brought on by American nationals who were injured, and by the families of American nations who were killed or injured in Hezbollah’s bombing attacks in Iraq. The lawsuit accuses 10 Lebanese banks of giving the terrorist group access to the US financial system through the SWIFT international payments system. The suit alleges that these banks were aware of such operations, which include money laundering and the circumventing US sanctions.

The plaintiff filed a case containing interesting details about Hezbollah’s network and businessmen and companies linked to the group in more than six hundred pages, and accused the ten Lebanese banks of dealing with these companies despite their prior knowledge of their relations with Hezbollah.

Without a doubt, these banks will attempt to defend themselves to avoid being accused of violating US laws by dealing with a group classified as a terrorist organisation. Perhaps they will also search for a settlement that satisfies the families that brought on the lawsuit because if Lebanese banks were to operate outside the US banking system or be subjected to any kind of sanctions of the US Department of Justice, it would spell disaster, particularly as the banking sector is one of the most important pillars of the Lebanese economy.

The Lebanese should ask themselves: To what extent can the Trump's administration’s decision to confront Hezbollah affect the country and its economy? For those that bet on President Trump not being reelected for a second term, can they guarantee that the next president will not the tougher on Hezbollah and Iran? And what if Trump is elected for a second term? Who will be able to restrain his anti-Iranian policies? Lebanon cannot afford these costs.

Hezbollah media, its leaders and its secretary-general often boast that the party has become a regional power and that the Lebanese should look at the group from this perspective. They also boast that they do not use their great power against the Lebanese people in internal matters - of course, this excludes the events of May 7. It seems that the majority of the Lebanese are convinced by this theory, and have begun dealing with the group on the basis that Hezbollah have the final word in matters such as electing the president, imposing strange parliamentary electoral laws, or forming a government, and that these decisions cannot be made without the group’s approval. Indeed it is a big problem for the world to see symbols of the Cedar revolution begging Hezbollah for a governmental positions, but the biggest problem would be if the world also adopted this theory and equated the Lebanese state with Hezbollah.

What will the Lebanese do the.

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by Elie Fawaz

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Trump’s Middle East Policy: An Arab Perspective

by Dennis Ross* One official I met in travelling in the Middle East said, “There are two projects in the Middle East. One is Turkey, Qatar, and Iran and the other is Saudi Arabia, the Emirates, Egypt, Jordan and Israel. And, the United States

should be supporting the latter group because they are committed to preserving the long-term stability of the region.”

It was an interesting statement that has many parts to it. First, obviously Turkey, Qatar and Iran are not the same. But this official was

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In effect, he was saying that America does not seem to recognize that Turkey and Qatar are acting in a way that ultimately will threaten the stability of the region and US interests in it. militias are threats that must be resisted, and the existing political order offers the most hope for long-term stability.

Third, the statement that America should be supporting this second group implies that it is not currently doing so. That would come as news to the Trump Administration which probably believes that it is doing so. Perhaps, the intent of this official was to convey that the Trump Administration was not sufficiently acting to support this second group.

U.S. President Donald Trump (left 3) is welcomed by Saudi Arabia's King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud (R) during his arrival at the King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia on May ,20 2017.n (Getty)

saying that Turkey and Qatar are basically about supporting the Muslim Brotherhood, and that means promoting a Sunni Islamist approach to the Middle East. And the implications of that are to promote a new regional order where borders need not be respected, and Islam will be politicized for the purpose of monopolizing power. Turkey is the senior partner in the pursuit of this new Middle East. Iran, of course, is different. While it, too, seeks to change the regional order, it is to serve a Shia Islamist agenda and in this case Iran’s dominance of the area—and it uses terror and intimidation to pursue its longer-term aim of hegemony.

Second, the alternative grouping may also not be the same, but they share a similar strategic orientation: nation-states and their sovereignty are to be respected, non-state actors and their

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Here again, we probably see two different meanings. On the one hand, the Trump Administration approach to Turkey and Qatar was worrisome to this official. In effect, he was saying that America does not seem to recognize that Turkey and Qatar are acting in a way that ultimately will threaten the stability of the region and US interests in it.

The implication was that the Administration’s relationship should be shaped differently, pressuring more and acquiescing less with these two states.

On the other hand, when it comes to Iran and the Shia militias, the America policy—at least in the eyes of this official—seemed to be that it was tough rhetorically and economically but not necessarily in a way that was countering their actions on the ground. A propos of that concern, the policy on Syria seemed geared only to ISIS. Moreover, the president’s declaration on withdrawal suggested that Iran could entrench itself there if it chose to do so. The reversal now to keep 400 US special forces in Syria for

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at least the time-being is probably reassuring to this official but does not necessarily address his concerns about America’s priorities and staying power in the region.

There is one last element of the statement that I found interesting and thought provoking. The inclusion of Israel in the group suggested something else: there may

The Trump Administration should engage in quiet strategic discussions with key Arab leaders and do a better job of explaining what it is willing to do vis-à-vis Iran

not be normalization with Israel, but there is a new normal in the region between many Arab leaderships and Israel. Israel is seen as sharing the same basic strategic orientation as these leaderships. Its leadership sees the same threats—both from Iran/Shia militias and from radical Sunni Islamists. Moreover, Israel does not just talk about these threats but acts against them. Ironically, the more the US is doubted—something that began in the region under Obama and continues under Trump—Israel is perceived in practical terms as a silent partner. In a real sense, Israel becomes a bulwark against common threats. But cooperation with it remains mostly below the radar screen because of the Palestinian issue. Still, it means that leading Arab states will quietly work with it and even in international settings, there will be a willingness to engage in discussions with it. I certainly saw that in the recent Warsaw Conference where panels were held almost as if they were seminars geared toward trying to

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Participants, including U.S. Vice President Mike Pence, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, U.K. Foreign Minister Jeremy Hunt, Polish President Andrzej Duda and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attend a group photo prior to the dinner on the opening evening of the 'Ministerial to Promote Peace and Security in the Middle East' on February 2019 ,13 in Warsaw, Poland.

(Getty)

come up with the best ideas and approaches for countering the Iranians and extremist groups. (In serving as a moderator there and observing this, I felt that the Palestinians had made a mistake by boycotting the conference; had they been there every Arab minister and many of the Europeans would have pushed the Palestinian issue and the need to address it. But without their presence, it was discussed only in passing and was clearly subordinate to threats that were seen as far more pressing.)

What should we make of all this? Because I believe this particular Arab official is, in fact, representative of many others in leading positions in Arab states, it is important for the Trump Administration to recognize there is a problem. It should engage in quiet strategic discussions with key Arab leaders and do a better job of explaining what it is willing to do vis-Ă -vis Iran in the region as well as what it expects from regional partners. It also

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needs to explain its policies toward Turkey now; yes, it is a member of NATO and yes it is a critical player in Syria now, and it is essential to reach some understandings with Turkey on what will and not happen in northeastern Syria. Beyond that, however, the Administration needs to hear the concerns that many Arab leaders now have about Turkey and show it is not only aware of them but will factor them into our policy.

Sometimes short statements can reveal a great deal. Clearly, the Arab official I quoted on the two competing projects in the region offered an interesting take on the Middle East and the implications for how the Trump Administration should be approaching it. *American Middle East envoy Dennis Ross has served in the Administrations of Presidents Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama, and is counselor and Distinguished Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy in Washington.

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Renewed Bilateral Relations: Talking Points from the First LAS-EU Summit By: Ali El Shamy The first ever joint summit between the Arab League and European Union came and went, as major leaders convened in Sharm El Sheik, Egypt on -24

25 February 2019. Topics that were discussed in the summit included the challenges that both blocs are facing such as terrorism, illegal migration and climate change. Egypt’s president Abd El Fatah El Sisi and President of the European Council Donald

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In his opening statement, cochairman to the summit, President Abdel Fatah El Sisi of Egypt, said that terrorism was spreading like a “cursed plague” as he called on world leaders to do their part to stand up against terror.

TERRORISM

European Council President Donald Tusk (L)shakes hands with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi (R) during a press conference at the end of the first joint European Union and Arab League summit in the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm elSheikh, on February ,25 2019. (Getty)

Tusk were co-chaired the summit which was attended by the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Salman, President of the European Commission JeanClaude Junker, British Prime Minister Theresa May and German Chancellor Angela Merkel. While both blocs and some individual states within both blocs have disagreements with regards to how to resolve these issues, both agreed that it was necessary to have constructive conversations on said issues. The fact that both parties have shown the willingness to convene and discuss these topics in a civil manner can be interpreted as a major positive step toward improved bilateral relations between Arab and European states.

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In his opening statement, co-chairman to the summit, President Abdel Fatah El Sisi of Egypt, said that terrorism was spreading like a “cursed plague” as he called on world leaders to do their part to stand up against terror.

Just days before the joint summit, Egypt had been hit by two subsequent terror attacks, one in North Sinai and the other in Cairo. This indicates the ongoing battle many Arab states face against terror and the underlying need for a concerted international effort to fight against these attacks and take preventative measures to protect civilian lives.

He also affirmed that certain states use terrorism as a tool to spread chaos towards neighbouring countries. While he did not specify any state in particular, the statement was most likely alluding to Qatar and Turkey, two states with close ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, a pan-Islamist group classified as a terrorist organization in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

President El Sisi also stated that Egypt had a comprehensive vision to combat terrorism and that the vision was one that could appeal to all participating parties and appealed to the protection of human rights.

Meanwhile, Donald Tusk prioritised the role of education in helping to neutralise violent extremism.

YEMEN CRISIS AND IRANIAN EFFORTS TO DESTABILIZE THE MIDDLE EAST The Saudi monarch, King Salman Bin Abdulaziz used the summit as an opportunity to discuss the continued Yemen crisis. He urged the international community to support the legitimate government in Yemen and blamed Iran for supporting Houthi rebel militias in Yemen, thus making it difficult to find a political solution to the crisis.

The rapid need for humanitarian aid delivery to Yemen

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was also agreed on in the summit’s final statement. Just days after the summit concluded, both Saudi Arabia and the UAE lead the way in the UN’s third pledging conference for Yemen, as both Gulf States provided 1.5$ billion in funds for the war ravaged country. King Salman has also urged for more international pressure on Iran as its regime has proved to be a destabilizing force in the region. Such calls were addressed in the 13th article of the summit’s final statement which called for the preservations of “the global nuclear non-proliferation architecture, based on the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, and the objective of a Middle East region free of weapons of mass destruction and their means of delivery”.

PALESTINIAN ISSUE Both King Salman and President Abdel Fatah El Sisi asserted the importance of the Palestinian cause and the fact that most Arab states prioritise the issue. King Salman praised EU countries’ stances on the issue, while El Sisi held a meeting with Mahmoud Abbas the president of the Palestinian National Authority. In the meeting, El Sisi said that Egypt would continue its efforts towards the reconciliation of Palestinian factions. Both leaders reaffirmed their stances of a two-state solution based on 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as the capital of the Palestinian state. In his opening statement, JeanClaude Junker stated the European Union’s efforts for a diplomatic solution to the problem, reminding the audience of the EU’s continued aid to the Palestinians.

Article 7 of the final statement affirmed both blocs’ “common positions on the Middle East Peace Process, including on the status of Jerusalem”, moreover it declared both sides’ commitment of reaching a two state solution “on the basis of all relevant UN resolutions”.

SYRIA, LIBYA AND REGIONAL STABILITY The main theme of the conference was the establishment

King Salman has also urged for more international pressure on Iran as its regime has proved to be a destabilizing force in the region.

and maintenance of stability in the Middle East, this issue is also important for European states since history has proven that instability in the Arab world will inevitably spill over to European lands.

With regards to Syria, the final statement asserted the need of a peaceful political transition in Syria, one that is based on UN Resolution 2254 which called for a ceasefire in Syria and a Syria-led transition towards free and fair elections and an adoption of a new constitution.

The statement also condemned all acts of terror and human rights violations on Syrian civilians and called for all parties guilty of such acts to be held accountable.

Jean-Claude Juncker also indicated that the EU has provided 17$ Billion in humanitarian assistance to the Syrians and that the EU will be working closely with the

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Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi (R) meets Saudi Arabia's King Salman bin Abdulaziz al-Saud (L) within The EU-League of Arab States (LAS) Summit in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt on February 2019 ,24 (Getty)

Arab League in that regard.

On Libya, both blocs agreed to support UN efforts in implementing the 2015 Libyan Political Agreement and called on Libya to try not to do anything that would derail its path toward peaceful democratic transition.

As such, it is evident that both parties agreed that their close geographical proximities and shared histories has made it undeniably imperative to establish stability within the region as to ensure peace within both Europe and the Arab world.

CLIMATE CHANGE One of the global challenges discussed in the summit

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was that of climate change. Despite not being a hot topic issue in the summit, Junker did mention the importance of committing to the Paris Climate Agreement in his opening statement and even commended Morocco for its solar panel plant. Donald Tusk also stated that their needs to be a real political will to achieve Paris Agreement.

Furthermore, the third article of the final statement talked on multilateralism to tackle a myriad of global challenges which included climate change.

ENSURING A BETTER FUTURE The summit discussed the importance of establishing a better future for today’s youth. Donald Tusk indicated that key for change in both regions centres on the role of the youth. Jean-Claude Juncker took the opportunity

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talk about trade and investment between the Arab League and European Union, stating that increased investments and trade would create more opportunities for both parties, as the EU is the primary investor for the Arab League. He would also say that there is a need to further promote trade and investment between both entities as to create more job opportunities for those living in both blocs. He further expressed the importance of giving hope to the youth living in Arab countries.

Luckily, both Egypt and Saudi Arabia have thus far exerted efforts towards working for a better future for their youth. For example, since 2017 Egypt has hosted the annual World Youth Forum in which thousands of Egyptian and international youths convene to discuss many underlying issues plaguing the world today.

Participants also prepare presentations on an idea he or she believes can help make a positive impact on the world. Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia recently launched its Vision 2030 initiative which seeks to shift its energyfocused economy into other sectors. It also seeks to create more opportunities for young people living in the Kingdom, for example the Kingdom’s plans to become a technological hub by 2030 has encouraged many young men and women to seek new fields to get into and master.

BREXIT While the issue of Britain leaving the European Union was not on the discussion agenda, the fact that Theresa May, Angela Merkel, Donald Tusk and Jean-Claude Juncker came to Sharm El Sheik was a dead giveaway that the European leaders were going to discuss the issue alone. Before arriving in Egypt, May postponed the parliamentary “meaningful vote” to March 12, just over three weeks before the UK is meant to leave the EU on March 29, leaving many to speculate that she is attempting to run down the clock to make her deal the only viable option. Given the circumstances, both Donald Tusk and Austria’s Chancellor Sebastian Kurz suggested that Brexit to be delayed and Article 50 to be extended. Nevertheless, May stayed adamant on the May 29 deadline day, feeling confident that her deal would go through parliament.

AFTERMATH OF SUMMIT Both the Arab League and the European Union

praised the summit as a success, as both promised a new era in bilateral relations and cooperation.

Moreover, it became apparent that both blocs face shared challenges that they must overcome together, for instance Angela Merkel noted: “The fate of the European Union depends to a significant degree on the fate of the countries of the Arab League.” Arab League spokesman Mahmoud Afifi said that the most significant outcome from the summit was the EU’s new understanding of how the Arab World and the Middle East operates. There is now new hope that these renewed bilateral relations and understanding will lead to more concrete and cooperative efforts from both sides in tackling the threats they share be they terrorism, illegal migration, armed conflicts or climate change. It is also paramount that the European Union applies more pressure on both state and nonstate actors that pose a danger to the stability of the Arab World and the Middle East, lest the chaos spill over to Europe. Both blocs now have three years to address the issues they discussed before their next joint summit set to take place in Brussels, Belgium in 2022.

Egypt can also be happy with the summit as it exposed one of its significant Red Sea resorts to

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European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker attends a press conference during the closing session of the first joint European Union and Arab League summit in the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm elSheikh, on February 2019 ,25. (Getty)

It is also paramount that the European Union applies more pressure on both state and nonstate actors that pose a danger to the stability of the Arab World and the Middle East, lest the chaos spill over to Europe. the world and photos of European leaders enjoying Sharm El Sheik has sent a message to the world on the Egyptian government’s efforts in restoring the national security. This comes at a critical time in which initial reports indicate that 9 million tourists visited the country in 2018, a record turnout since the 2011 events. Furthermore, these same reports indicate that the revenue from the previous year might be as high as 9$ billion dollars indicating Egypt’s tourism is on the rise.

Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri (up-L) speaks with Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May (up-R) above Cyprus' President Nicos Anastasiades (down-L) speaking with Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas during the first joint European Union and Arab League summit at the International Congress Centre in the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, on February 2019 ,24.

(Getty)

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Is the Taliban Making a Pledge It Cannot Keep?

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Questions remain about whether the Taliban is genuinely willing to break with al Qaeda—the very prospect at which the group balked back in 2001, prompting the United States to invade.

States to invade.

The terrorist landscape in South and Central Asia extends far beyond al Qaeda. The Taliban has been fighting the Islamic State’s affiliate in the region, the Islamic State in Khorasan (ISK), inflicting serious losses without succeeding in eradicating this rival. Since 2002, the Taliban-led insurgency in Afghanistan has been a unifying cause for militant organizations in the region.

At least 18 terrorist groups operate in Afghanistan. The Taliban exercises some influence over the activities of 14 of them, providing entrée to the insurgency in exchange for manpower and expertise. These groups will expect a payoff in the event of a Taliban victory and will likely seek to continue using Afghan territory as a base for terrorist activities. If the Taliban proves unwilling or unable to prevent the country from becoming a free-for-all for militant organizations after the U.S. withdrawal, the United States, as well as Pakistan, India, and the Central Asian states, will be threatened.

THE THREAT TO THE UNITED STATES

In this photo taken on February 2019 ,9, internally displaced Afghan men sit around a mat in Kandahar city, after fleeing conflict with the Taliban in the Deh Rawood district of Uruzgan province.

(Getty)

By Tricia Bacon* In Doha in late January, the United States and the Afghan Taliban agreed in principle to the contours of a peace deal. Under its terms, the Taliban would guarantee that Afghan territory will never be used by terrorists. The concession is critical to the United States, but while some commentators have heralded the Taliban’s promise as a major breakthrough, analysts have noted that the group has made, and failed to keep, similar assurances in the past.

Questions remain about whether the Taliban is genuinely willing to break with al Qaeda—the very prospect at which the group balked back in 2001, prompting the United

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From the United States’ standpoint, the Taliban’s most important affiliation is with al Qaeda, which continues to prioritize striking the United States homeland. The Taliban has never successfully curtailed al Qaeda’s activities.

Rather, it supplied the group a safe haven in Afghanistan while its leadership planned and executed attacks on the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998; the USS Cole in Yemen in 2000; and the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in 2001. Al Qaeda leadership did not ask the Taliban permission to conduct these attacks; in fact, al Qaeda carried them out in direct defiance of Taliban orders to abstain from international attacks. The 11/9 attacks led the United States to invade Afghanistan and remove the Taliban from power. Nonetheless, the Taliban refused to sever ties with al Qaeda and remained unable to prevent its rogue behavior.

Since 2001, al Qaeda has continued to enjoy refuge with the Taliban. In particular, al Qaeda found haven in North Waziristan in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas

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(FATA), under the protection of the Haqqani network, a faction within the Taliban. Until 2014, when a Pakistani military offensive disrupted a number of militant groups operating in this area, most of al Qaeda’s major plots and attacks against the United States and Europe emanated from the tribal areas, particularly North Waziristan. There is no evidence that the Taliban or the Haqqani network assisted in these attacks or that it even knew about them, but it also did not to prevent them.

Another of the Afghan Taliban’s allies, the Pakistani Taliban, has a vendetta against the United States, which is responsible for the deaths of three of its leaders. In 2010, this group planted a bomb in Times Square. (The device did not detonate.) The Pakistani Taliban is a highly decentralized umbrella group that seeks to expel Pakistani forces from the tribal areas, overthrow the Pakistani government, eliminate Shiite Muslims from Pakistan, and push the United States out of Afghanistan. Ever since the Pakistani military forced many of its operatives over the border following operations in South Waziristan in 2009 and North Waziristan in 2014, the Pakistani Taliban has operated in large part from Afghanistan. And while its agenda is more localized than al Qaeda’s, it will likely exploit opportunities to attack the United States if and when they arise.

The Taliban has not demonstrated a genuine willingness to actively hinder the operations of the two groups that are most likely to attack the United States. And even if it wanted to do so, it probably lacks the ability. If the Taliban continues to allow either group to operate in territory under its control—as it is likely to do—it will be seriously hamstrung in delivering on its pledge to prevent international attacks emanating from Afghanistan.

Another of the Afghan Taliban’s allies, the Pakistani Taliban, has a vendetta against the United States, which is responsible for the deaths of three of its leaders.

In 2010, this group planted a bomb in Times Square. (The device did not detonate.)

THE THREAT TO THE REGION The Taliban has long received funds and haven from the Pakistani security establishment, but the relationship between the two is fraught with complexity. The Taliban cooperates with militant groups that seek to overthrow the government in Islamabad. In the past it has urged these groups to focus on Afghanistan and abstain from attacking Pakistan, to no avail. Al Qaeda’s affiliate in South Asia, for example—al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent—cooperates closely with the Taliban’s insurgency in Afghanistan; it also conducts terrorist attacks throughout Pakistan with the intent of weakening the government. Other groups, such as the Pakistani Taliban and its offshoots, and Lashkar-eJhangvi, also target the Pakistani government but also have long-standing ties with the Taliban and participate in the insurgency in Afghanistan.

The conflict in Afghanistan has served as a pressure valve for Pakistan, providing an outlet for anti-state groups such as these, particularly for those in the tribal areas. Pakistani security forces have made truces with some groups, promising to leave them alone in Pakistan as long as they focus their activities on Afghanistan. If the Taliban’s

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Former President of Afghanistan Hamid Karzai (L) and related special representatives attends press brifing after the peace talks on Moscow format at the President Hotel in Moscow, Russia on February 2019 ,6. The Taliban representatives met a number of nongovernment Afghan politicians in the Russian capital Moscow on for the landmark peace talks.

(Getty)

Harakat ul-Mujahedeen and Harakat ul-Jihad-al-Islami, were also close to the Taliban in the 1990s and still have operatives in the insurgency in Afghanistan. These groups are no longer organizationally coherent, but people affiliated with them remain in Afghanistan and have been integrated into broader networks of militants. With more operating space in Afghanistan, these weaker groups could rebuild.

Even the Central Asian republics have something to fear from an Afghan state that is once again dominated by the Taliban. A smattering of terrorist groups with Central Asian origins have long operated in exile in Afghanistan.

Groups such as Islamic Jihad Union, Eastern Turkistan Islamic Movement, and factions of the Islamic Movement are primarily committed to the insurgency in Afghanistan and to opposing the Pakistani state, but they still nurture ambitions to strike their homelands. They will likely take advantage of a haven in Afghanistan under the Taliban to rebuild and develop their external capabilities.

And so while the United States has reason to be concerned, these countries likely face an even graver threat from the militant groups allied with the Taliban. The Taliban’s pledge would require it to police over a dozen organizations with ambitions to strike at least five other countries.

Making good on such a commitment would be a major undertaking for any government—let alone an insurgent group with long-standing ties to those organizations.

AN EMPTY PROMISE insurgency ends and these groups gain more freedom to operate from within Afghanistan, they will likely choose to direct their attention toward Pakistan instead.

India also stands to lose if the Taliban does not keep its pledge. The greatest threat to India is that the Taliban will allow Pakistani militant groups traditionally close to the Pakistani state, notably Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-eMohammed, to operate in its territory. Both of these groups work closely with the Taliban’s insurgency in Afghanistan, but their primary cause is contesting India’s control of Kashmir. The groups also oppose India more broadly and have attacked other parts of the country. Both groups are closely aligned with the Pakistani security establishment, which uses them as weapons against India. In the event that the Taliban is charged with managing militant groups in its territory, Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed would almost certainly seek to use Afghanistanas a safe haven to train and plan attacks against India and Indian Kashmir. The use of Afghan territory offers Pakistan plausible deniability. Pakistan used Afghanistan in exactly this way when the Taliban ruled in the 1990s.

Two other Pakistani militant groups that target India,

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The Afghan Taliban is the central hub in South and Central Asia around which other militant organizations revolve. Its insurgency enjoys substantial ideological authority and support. But this privileged position does not translate into control over the Taliban’s partners, who would need to be persuaded to relinquish their external ambitions—an unlikely proposition. And so to keep its pledge, the Taliban would have to be willing to either turn its back on longtime allies or use force to restrain them. Both scenarios are difficult to imagine.

Having supported the Taliban’s campaign for more than 17 years, its militant partners certainly expect to see some benefit when the insurgency emerges victorious.

The ultimate prize would be safe haven in areas under Taliban control, with the freedom to pursue their external agendas. In pledging to prevent terrorism emanating from Afghanistan, the Taliban is making a promise that it will struggle to keep—if it even intends to try. *TRICIA BACON is an Assistant Professor at the School of Public Affairs at American University and author of Why Terrorist Organizations Form International Alliances.

This article was originally published on ForeignAffairs.com.

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What’s Driving the Crisis in Zimbabwe?

Its Rulers Care More About Power Plays Than Economic Reforms

By Stephen Chan* Over the course of his nearly 40 years in power, former Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe demonstrated again and again how disconnected his rule was from the needs of his people. The violent pogroms he ordered in the 1980s against a largely imaginary enemy in the west of the country and the land nationalization program of the first decade of this century he carried out without any

economic plan to ensure continued productivity are cases in point.

Mugabe was ousted in a coup in 2017, and since then, many Zimbabweans have hoped for a change of course, including economic reform. Soon after taking office, Emmerson Mnangagwa, Mugabe’s successor, proclaimed the country “open for business.” But his rhetoric has not translated to action, and the new president seems no less disconnected than Mugabe did from his nation’s woes.

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The protests turned violent, and the state security services responded with shocking force, shooting protesters, beating hundreds near to death, and raping women. depend on commuter buses for transport into the city.

The protests turned violent, and the state security services responded with shocking force, shooting protesters, beating hundreds near to death, and raping women. The violence became so intense that Mnangagwa had to cut his European tour short, canceling a speech at the World Economic Forum at Davos to return home.

The military crackdown on protesters took place on the watch of the country’s vice president, Constantino Chiwenga, who was acting as president during Mnangagwa’s absence. And the turmoil that has followed stems from divisions within the ruling Zimbabwe African National Union–Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) party, particularly between those around Mnangagwa and those around Chiwenga, a retired general and the country’s former defense minister. For now, the president and vice president work uneasily together. But the two men—one preaching openness, the other with a reputation for violent ruthlessness—have come to embody contrasting views of the future, both for their party and for Zimbabwe. While Mnangagwa propagates a mantra of Zimbabwe’s being open for business, Chiwenga’s preoccupation is security and control of political discourse. For him, economic stability means stability within the public sector and conditions of employment there. He has no sympathy for protests against poor conditions and pay. And much as Mugabe’s government did in the last years of its rule, the leaders of today’s ruling party have their minds far more on power plays than on sound economic policy.

A DIVIDED GOVERNMENT, A BROKEN ECONOMY Zimbabwe's former President Robert Mugabe appears in public in capital Harare for the first time since the military moved against him, on November ,17 2017 in Harare, Zimbabwe. (Getty)

Just last month, Mnangagwa announced one day that the government would more than double gasoline prices and flew off on a European tour the next. Given the country’s currency shortages and other economic difficulties, the price increase was sure to cause hardship to ordinary Zimbabweans, but the president seemed oblivious.

For Zimbabweans, the new tax was a last straw. The increased cost of transportation would make looking for work, and even food, far more difficult. Riots erupted, particularly in the poorer outlying suburbs of Harare that

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The crackdown was so brutal that even some senior police officers expressed horror at the actions of men in army uniforms. Immediately upon his forced return, Mnangagwa announced that the security personnel guilty of the worst excesses would be punished. But the incident was not the new government’s first use of violence against protesters, and the fact that Chiwenga was the one to deploy the security services in this instance has exposed the administration’s internal tensions.

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Immediately following Zimbabwe’s last election, in August 2018, supporters of the opposition party massed to protest delays in announcing the results. The military responded with gunfire that killed six. Zimbabwe analysts such as Ibbo Mandaza believe that Chiwenga was the official behind the military response then. Now rumors are circulating in Harare—both in ZANU-PF party circles and among the general public—that the vice president ordered the recent crackdown in order to goad Mnangagwa into moving against him, thus giving Chiwenga an excuse to depose the president by force. The response of Mnangagwa seems to have been to wait until Chiwenga was out of the country, receiving treatment in India for an undisclosed illness, before retiring four senior generals with close links to Chiwenga and his approach to security by violent enforcement.

The ZANU-PF is an oligarchic party that seeks to stay in power so that its elite leaders can retain their privileges.

But the party’s shared interest in maintaining power does not prevent its leaders from engaging in power struggles. After all, very little ultimately threatens the party’s monopoly. Nelson Chamisa, the candidate of Zimbabwe’s main opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change(MDC), almost forced a runoff in last year’s presidential election—but Chamisa is more popular than his party, which was heavily defeated in the parliamentary polls. Like the ZANU-PF, the MDC has a reputation for politicized corruption; but unlike the ZANU-PF, Chamisa’s party is not in power and therefore not constrained by the need to ensure that one of its constituencies actually benefits from its actions.

But the need to placate key constituencies ignores the need to uplift the nation as a whole. The sad truth is that no one in Zimbabwe’s government has an economic plan to secure the country’s future. Mnangagwa has worked futilely to coax investment into Zimbabwe, but the country is so heavily indebted, and its political situation so unstable, that major investors are unwilling to play ball.

Mnangagwa may have inherited many of Zimbabwe’s economic problems, but his government has still managed to create some that are new and were likely avoidable.

On his European tour, Mnangagwa sought investment from countries such as Ukraine that lack the capacity to relieve Zimbabwe’s enormous shortage of capital. The president can rely only on small, short-term, speculative investments for the foreseeable future. He may be able to secure some funds for specific infrastructure projects but will not be able to stabilize the country’s budget or import subsidized fuel. (South Africa reportedly refused to export fuel to Zimbabwe at subsidized rates in December, leading to the price hikes in January.) For 20 years, Zimbabwe financed itself by borrowing. Now no one will lend the country more money—not even China, which has invested heavily elsewhere in Africa. Mnangagwa had hoped investment would stave off the day when serious engagement with the International Monetary Fund becomes inevitable. The IMF wants Zimbabwe to meet its debt obligations under what is called the Lima process, a repayment schedule of loans already outstanding whose targets have not been met and would in any case require the country to adopt painful austerity measures.

Mnangagwa may have inherited many of Zimbabwe’s economic problems, but his government has still managed to create some that are new and were likely avoidable.

In a country with a hugely diminished formal economic sector, there had remained some vibrancy in the informal sector, which now provides income to the majority of the

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President Emmerson Mnangagwa (R) with his vice president Constantino Chiwenga (L) arrive at a press conference where he announced the discovery of oil and gas deposits in Zimbabwe by Invictus an Australian listed company, on November 2018 1. (Getty)

urban and peri-urban population. Mnangagwa’s minister of finance, Mthuli Ncube, tried to broaden the country’s tax base in late 2018 by imposing a tax on cell phone financial transactions. But because the Zimbabwean economy lacked bank notes bearing real value (such as U.S. dollars, the main currency used nationally), and because the bond notes printed by the government failed to instill trust or acquire value in the minds of the public, virtual transactions conducted by cell phone monetary transfers became popular in the street markets of the main cities. In the absence of sufficient hard currency, people hoped that virtual transactions would be recognized by the banks as bearing the same value as those made in hard currency. These were sustaining the entire informal economic sector, upon which the majority of Zimbabweans depend. In one stroke, Ncube destroyed confidence in the virtual economic sector by imposing his tax on cell phone transactions. The fuel price hikes were a similar exercise in incompetence. When an item is in short supply, the textbook response is to dampen demand by raising prices. But raising the price of fuel grinds entire commercial and industrial sectors to a halt.

Ncube’s national budget reveals how desperate Zimbabwe’s situation really is, in that it allocates hardly any funds for investment and stimulus. Nor are there funds for import subsidies, not even of essential products.

The budget seeks to alleviate a particularly pointless tax on sanitary products, but this is at a time when women in

A man sets tyre on fire as angry protesters barricade the main route to Zimbabwe's capital Harare from Epworth township on January 2019 14 after announced a more than hundred percent hike in fuel prices. (Getty)

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many parts of the country can no longer access sanitary products at all. It is a real crisis, particularly in rural areas, where women, including young women in school, can no longer find sanitary products and miss education when having their periods. Such imported items are in short supply because the country has ever scarcer funds available to meet its imports bill, which is far greater than its exports revenue. Under Mugabe, Zimbabwe became a country of borrowing, of acquisition, of accumulation. It ceased to be a country of production, capital investment, and circulation and shows no sign of changing course. The oligarchy around Mugabe, and now around Mnangagwa and Chiwenga, purchases beautiful mansions and acquires farmland for ostentatious display but, in the case of the farms, seems disinclined to invest in productive capacity, in machines, in infrastructure, and in all the ingredients required for a successful agriculture industry. The sense seems to be that more money can always be stolen rather than generated by economic productivity.

WHAT COMES NEXT? Where does the state of Zimbabwe’s government and economy leave the abject protesters? General Chiwenga will likely not be ordered to behave more carefully. Some of his close allies in the military may have been retired over the last week, but his influence in the army runs deep and he has a considerable following in the party at large.

But his heavy-handedness is far from helpful. He once dealt with striking nurses by firing them all—in a country that needs medical capacity. Time and again, Mnangagwa has had to come to the rescue in crises his vice president has caused. Protests continue to flare as the country goes downhill, and the state security services will likely crack down on them again, leaving Mnangagwa to repeat his rescue act of smoothing over the situation.

The deeper conflict in a securitized Zimbabwe may be not

Under Mugabe, Zimbabwe became a country of borrowing, of acquisition, of accumulation. It ceased to be a country of production, capital investment, and circulation and shows no sign of changing course.

the one between the security forces and citizens protesting the cost of living but the one within the security forces themselves. Civilian intelligence is at odds with military intelligence, while the police are aghast at the strong-arm tactics of the military. The military probably contains several factions—elite forces vs. regular forces; younger officers vs. older commanders such as Chiwenga— but even among the older commanders, not all admire Chiwenga’s draconian ways.

South Africa will also play a role in Zimbabwe’s future.

In private briefings given to journalists, the government has made it clear that it will not tolerate a coup by Chiwenga. Whatever economic lifeline Zimbabwe

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A protester holds a placard during a demonstration of Zimbabwean citizens outside the Zimbabwean Embassy in Pretoria on January 2019 ,16, following the announcement of a petrol price hike in Zimbabwe and the recent shut down of mobile phone networks and internet services.

(Getty)

has left comes from or through South Africa. Thus it has leverage to prevent another constitutional crisis in Zimbabwe caused by a coup. Still, if Zimbabwe has no economic policy for the future, South Africa has no organized policy as to what to do about Zimbabwe.

President Cyril Ramaphosa likely won’t turn his mind to the country until he has gotten his own national elections out of the way later this year. He has enough problems on his hands at home without the need to take risks over Zimbabwe.

The South African elections are expected in May, meaning there will likely be three months of continuing political drift in Zimbabwe, and possibly more if Ramaphosa is

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weakened in his elections and must deal with pressing domestic issues of his own. Zimbabwe thus remains a problem on hold, provided turbulence does not overspill its borders. Without any sign of foreign direct investment arriving on a major scale in Zimbabwe, the economic outlook remains dire. Any IMF program of debt relief will involve even greater austerity and thus even greater suffering for a country that has, under Mugabe and now Mnangagwa, lost its way. *STEPHEN CHAN is Professor of World Politics at the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies.

This article was originally published on ForeignAffairs.com.

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Conflict and Terrorism in a Warming Middle East Former World Bank Director Professor Jamal Saghir Speaks to Majalla about the Security Implications of Climate Change in the Region 38

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is particularly vulnerable to climate-inducted conflict.

HOW IS CLIMATE CHANGE EFFECTING THE MIDDLE EAST? As global temperatures rise, they will rise even faster in MENA and therefore the region will be more heavily impacted by climate change trends than the global average. By 2030, temperatures in the region which is already the hottest and driest on earth, could rise by two degrees. With this increase, rainfall in MENA is projected to decline by 20 to 40 percent. Increasing water scarcity will have an economic impact, and is expected to lower growth by 6 to 14 percent by 2050. There are now less than 1,000m3 of renewable water resources per person in MENA, as compared to 4,500m3 in East Asia Pacific countries, and 9,000m3 in the United States. Competing demands among agriculture, population growth and rapid urbanization are putting immense pressure on the region’s scarce water resources.

Mossul dam, Regional Government of KurdistanIraq. An armed soldiers patrolling near Mossul's Dam at about 40 kilometers north-west of the city. On June 10th, 2014, Mossul was taken by rebels leaded

by ISIS but the Regional Government of KurdistanIraq's peshmergas prevented them to takle the dam which is the biggest of Iraq giving water and electricity to a majeur part of the region serving as irrigation for the cultures of Ninive Province. (Getty)

Jamal Saghir, a former World Bank director and currently professor at McGill University, explained to Majalla that the region is already the world’s most water-scarce, food-import dependent region, and that climate change could trigger a further %40-20 decline in food and water productivity and that this will further exacerbate in the near future, with less precipitation and increased drought frequencies and heat waves.

Mr Saghir highlighted that the Nile-Delta is among the most threatened areas, with sea-level rise potentially displacing millions.

by Yasmine El-Geressi Climate change, by altering the world’s physical and ecological landscape, is also changing its geopolitical landscape. Recent years have witnessed the outbreak of multiple wars in some of the hottest and driest regions on earth, leading to increasing suggestions that climate change will be an exacerbator of conflict throughout the 21st century. Given a combination of structural fragilities, population growth, war, and its susceptibility to some of the most severe consequences of climate of global warming, including lethal heat waves, extensive drought and rising sea levels, the Middle East

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“Beyond this, agriculture - a source of income and employment in the Middle East region - will diminish more in the short- to mid-term, climate change will likely decrease agricultural output due to heat stress and reduced available water,” said Mr Saghir.

CLIMATE CHANGE AND SECURITY Changing dynamics will impact the foundational resources that people and nations depend on for survival, security and prosperity, and these

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impacts are already contributing to increased state fragility and security problems. Militaries around the world, across the Americas, UK, Europe, and the Asia Pacific, have highlighted the “threat multiplier” impact of climate change and extreme weather events.

The Global Military Advisory Council on Climate Change has warned the impact of global warming will drive massive refugee movements of an “unimaginable scale”, and that climate represents “the greatest security threat of the 21st century”.

Mr Saghir explained that from 2017-2007, the region saw one of its most severe drought cycles in the last 1000 years, triggering internal displacement in Syria, famine and poverty in Somalia, and social disruption and instability across the region.

For supporters of the view that climate change will become a ‘threat multiplier’ for instability in the decades ahead, the Syrian civil war has become a common reference point, providing apparently compelling evidence that we are already witnessing such conflict effects today.

The devastating civil war that began in Syria in March 2011 is the result of interrelated factors and the triggers include a broad set of religious and sociopolitical factors but some experts believe that the challenges associated with human-induced climate change played a direct role in the conflict.

Mr Saghir explained that the economic struggles stemming from drought vulnerability, loss of agricultural land and displacement were a contributing factor in the deterioration of Syria’s social economic conditions and widespread dissatisfaction with the government, which untimely lead to political unrest.

“The drought in Syria, which began in 2006 with

a period of extreme hot and dry weather, caused the devastation of agricultural land on which at least 800,000 people depended in eastern Syria, and resulted in the death of at least %85 of their livestock. Crop yields failed by one-half to twothirds, pushing the 800,000 Syrians into food insecurity and prompting 1.5 million of the rural population to migrate to cities, where violence first erupted,” said Mr Saghir.

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“In fact, it was observed that displaced inhabitants of rural areas who went to seek employment in Syria’s larger cities, a large portion of which were already overpopulated, formed disenfranchised belts of disparate communities surrounding Hamah, Homs, and Daraa. This was another factor contributing ultimately to extreme political unrest outbreak of conflict in Syria, and followed by President Bashir al Assad use of his

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armed forces against them.”

While the relationship between climate change and human security is not casual, climate change alone will not directly generate conflict. Conflict is a culmination of several interconnected factors that develop steadily over decades and therefore caution must be applied when discussing climate change in this context.

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“The connection between climate change impacts and conflict outcomes is highly place and time-specific, and is the product of many different, intersecting factors. Hence, climate change is not the only important parameter of future violence and security considerations.

Other factors such as human development, effective institutions, and governance also affect the likelihood of violent conflict. It must be acknowledged that these conflicts have extremely complex historical, political, social and economic foundations, meaning that climate change should only be considered an exacerbating factor – rather than a direct driver – of conflict in the Middle East,” explained Mr Saghir.

THE TERROR THREAT Countries ravaged by drought, food and water shortages, near-economic collapse and weak governments can spur or exacerbate terrorist organisations by providing them with a ripe recruiting ground and an environment where they can thrive.

In 2011, much of the Iraqi countryside was in desperate financial straits. According to World Bank, some 39 percent of people in rural areas were living in poverty, two and a half times the country’s urban rate. Almost half lacked safe drinking water. The problems were so devastating in 13-2012 that tens of thousands of villagers ditched their fields altogether, preferring to try their luck in the slum districts of nearby cities instead. These circumstances played into the ISIS’s hands.

Mr Saghir explains that in Iraq, ISIS used money, food and water as weapons of war to expertly exploit the most environmentally damaged Sunni Arab villages which emerged as the organisation’s foremost recruiting grounds.

“ISIS capitalize on the devastation wrought by climate change to attract new members as it happened in several agricultural villages in Iraq, many of which were successfully taken by ISIS via their recruitment tactics that were created to entice impoverished farmers who had their lives and incomes devastated by a series of natural disasters, such as drought and harsh winds,” Saghir explained “These ISIS recruiters even offered money, food, and other riches to rural Iraqis to allure them into joining the ranks of the jihadist group.”

Broke and unable to deal with their fast changing environment which blasted their lands and livelihood, Saghir explained that many farmers ate it up.

“With no means to sustain themselves through agricultural means, many farmers and other rural Iraqis accepted ISIS’s bribes for both monetary and morale support.”

Saghir highlighted that water was a potent force used by the militant group in Iraq and Syria.

“The importance resources hold for terrorist organizations is emphasized by the efforts of ISIS, to capture the Mosul and Fallujah dams in Iraq, as well as the Iraqi regions of Zumar, Sinjar, and Rabiah, in order to gain control of the waters of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers as well as water sources in Syria, and fertile regions suitable for agriculture in both countries.”

Saghir highlighted there were similar occurrences in Sudan and Nigeria where water shortages were exploited to fuel acts of terrorism and strengthen recruiting efforts by terrorist groups.

In Darfur, in western Sudan, “rainfall had declined by %30 and agricultural production had fallen by %70, while the average annual temperature rose by 1.5 degrees, contributing to

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region is to accelerate the investment in climateresilient infrastructure.

“It is imperative to invest in resilient infrastructure, including water management (irrigation, hydropower, water supply, and flood control), roads, bridges, energy, and other transport infrastructure. All countries will have to invest significant public and private resources in infrastructure, both to upgrade existing systems and build new networks,” explains Saghir.

Therefore, the climate change challenge for the Middle East is primarily about adaptation and making development climate-climate-resilient which requires leadership and commitment from individual countries, resources, innovation and the adoption of effective practices from around the world.

conflict between pastoral and agricultural tribes over the use of land for grazing livestock or growing crops.”

The emergence of Boko Haram in Nigeria can be also be traced to environmental developments and climate change. The founding of Boko Haram can be linked “to the proliferation of victims of environmental crises in Nigeria, who lacked food, shelter, and other basic necessities of life. Boko Haram’s ranks then swelled after the migration of Chadian farmers as a result of droughts and desertification in Chad," Saghir explained.

WHAT’S NEXT? As the Middle East is a top hot spot for climate change, conflict and fatalities, the challenges are enormous and confronting them will require changes across all segments of society. Saghir explains that the immediate priority for the

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“This requires the improvement of our knowledge of climate impacts and effective technologies, techniques, and products (e.g. climate-smart agricultural practices and drought resistant crop varieties) and their application; integration of climate considerations into development policies and plans (e.g. siting and building standards of large infrastructure projects, city design, land use planning); and building local capacity for improved preparedness and adaptation,” Saghir explains.

Saghir says that “transformative” policies are needed in the Middle East to confront the new global climate reality, and that in pursuing such policies, special attention needs to be given to “preventative measures that anticipate and mitigate exacerbated risks to avoid insecurity driven by food, water, and energy scarcities."

“The transition to a more energy and water secure and more diversified region, I think, is one of the most important ways that we can invest and seek advantages. Rather than focusing on the threats of climate change, this is an opportunity to use our climate awareness and our ability to innovate,” he added.

A Weekly Political News Magazine

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Issue 1737 - March - 01/03/2019

Men Embrace the Nip ’N’ Tuck www.majalla.com

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The Monkees’ Peter Tork: A Real Musician Who Also Played One on TV 46

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“When we did ‘Headquarters,’ suddenly, this issue was moot, end of story: We’re a band,” Tork said in 2012.

“Among other things, we actually were a band. We were also an acting troupe and a performing troupe.

Musician Peter Tork of The Monkees performs at the Pantages Theatre on September 2016 ,16 in Hollywood, California. (Getty)

By Randy Lewis* Early on in his life as one-fourth of the Monkees, Peter Tork learned a cruel truth about the gargantuan gulf between image and reality in Hollywood.

He dutifully arrived at a recording studio one day, guitar in hand, after being told some new Monkees songs would be coming together that day.

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Upon arrival, he was greeted by “The Monkees” television show’s songwriters and producers, Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart, who quickly asked why he was there.

Confused, Tork told them what seemed obvious to him: He was there to play his parts, he told me a few years ago, while preparing for a 2012 Monkees reunion tour. “They told me, ‘No, Peter, you don’t understand. You can put the guitar down.’ ” They had already finished the session, without so much as a note played by an actual Monkee.

Anyone who’s ever spent hours trying to improve their skills as a musician had to empathize with the seismic shock Tork, who died Thursday at age 77, surely felt.

At that point in the Monkees’ embryonic development, the music used each week on the show was being handled by behind-the-scenes professionals — the ace L.A. studio musicians later to be called the Wrecking Crew.

It hadn’t fully set in yet that Tork, even though he was a seasoned folk musician when he was cast in 1965 to be part of “The Monkees” TV show, hadn’t been hired for his musicianship, but simply as an actor who would pretend to be a musician for a national TV audience.

It was the same dilemma that faced lead guitarist and, sometimes, lead singer Michael Nesmith, an accomplished folk-rock musician and songwriter from Texas who also passed the auditions, along with former child actor Micky Dolenz and English musical theater veteran Davy Jones.

Dolenz and Jones took little issue with the show’s central deceit because of their histories handling various roles in the theater and for film or television.

But Tork and Nesmith struggled to assert their musical impulses during their tenure as Monkees, at times running headlong into the distinctly different ideas that the show’s creators, and especially music supervisor Don Kirshner, had in mind for them.

But the reality outside Hollywood quickly intruded as those songs became bona fide hit records, and, suddenly,

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real kids in real cities wanted to see and hear the Monkees live. Dolenz took lessons on the drums he sat behind in so many TV episodes, and Jones essentially relegated himself to mastering the art of singing while shaking a tambourine or two or three maracas in each hand.

Soon, they became the kind of aspiring garage band they played on the show — competent enough to headline concerts before thousands of screaming fans who couldn’t hear much of what they played, or didn’t play, anyway.

By the time it came to record a third album, “Headquarters,” the group members demonstrated they could indeed handle their instruments, and it became their first, and only, album to feature only Tork, Nesmith, Dolenz and Jones.

“When we did ‘Headquarters,’ suddenly, this issue was moot, end of story: We’re a band,” Tork said in 2012.

“Among other things, we actually were a band. We were also an acting troupe and a performing troupe.

“It was like (‘Star Trek’ co-star) Leonard Nimoy becoming a real Vulcan,” he said. “But it was more like ‘Glee,’ where real singers and dancers are playing the part of singers and dancers. It would be like having actors who are also medical students playing the part of doctors and, then, they got to work in hospitals. It’s unlikely, but it’s real.”

Indeed, after quitting the Monkees at the end of 1968, and then trying to separate himself from that role as he pursued a solo career in the 1970s, Tork — like Nesmith — eventually came to an acceptance of and even appreciation for what the Monkees had been.

“I did say it was unfair,” Tork said of the way the four men were often pilloried, not only by some of the show’s executives, but also by critics (the quartet was quickly dismissed as “the Prefab Four”) and even other musicians.

“I wasn’t at all happy about not being the musicians on our records, and I was absolutely triumphant when we did get to be.”

To that end, he expressed sadness that the Monkees have

After the Monkees, Tork - the show’s resident goofball - spent some years teaching mathematics, music, social studies, French, history, and even served as a baseball coach.

not been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, despite a string of some of the catchiest hit singles heard on AM radio in the second half of the 1960s, and some remarkably experimental tracks that surrounded them. Not least among those was the Nesmith song “Daily Nightly,” featuring one of the earliest uses of the Moog synthesizer on a rock music recording.

MTV brought “The Monkees” back in front of a whole new generation through reruns shown on the then-new music cable channel, leading to a 30th-anniversary reunion album, 1996’s “Justus.” Tork, Dolenz and Jones periodically toured as a trio, while Nesmith kept himself busy with various music and business ventures.

After Jones’ death in 2012, the three surviving Monkees pulled together again for a reunion tour that celebrated their recently departed band mate, and also focused on “Headquarters,” the album that allowed each to shine musically. (“Of course we miss Davy,” Tork said at the time, “and it’s sad to be playing without him. But when Davy, Micky and I were touring, it was sad to play without Mike.”)

Then, Tork proudly described his banjo part at the opening of Nesmith’s song “You Told Me,” the first track on “Headquarters.”

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Davy Jones, Mickey Dolenz, Peter Tork and Mike Nesmith on the set of the television show The Monkees in December 1967 in Los Angeles, California.

(Getty)

“When I play ‘Headquarters’ for my friends and it starts off with ‘You Told Me,’ with Mike’s guitar and, then, the banjo starts roaring along pretty well, I’ve always gotten a kick out of hearing that,” he said. “That’s what pop music is all about: a little of this, a little of that, you drop in, and, suddenly, you’re into a train race. We get to do that on this tour.”

And you want to talk about the disconnect between TV and reality? After the Monkees, Tork — the show’s resident goofball — spent some years teaching mathematics, music, social studies, French, history, and even served as a baseball coach.

Dolenz and Nesmith responded to Tork’s death quickly Thursday.

“There are no words right now … heart broken over the loss of my Monkee brother,” Dolenz said from England on Facebook.

Nesmith, always the most erudite Monkee, posted his thoughts on his Facebook page too.

“Peter Tork died this AM. I am told he slipped away peacefully,” Nesmith wrote. “Yet, as I write this, my tears are awash, and my heart is broken. Even though I am clinging to the idea that we all continue, the pain that attends these passings has no cure. It’s going to be a rough day.

“A band no more — and yet the music plays on — an anthem to all who made the Monkees and the TV show our private — dare I say ‘secret’ — playground,” Nesmith added. “As for Pete, I can only pray his songs reach the heights that can lift us and that our childhood lives forever — that special sparkle that was the Monkees. I will miss him — a brother in arms. Take flight my Brother.”

Tork had been equally complimentary to the other Monkees when they came together once more, far enough down the road that any qualms he’d had about being known as a Monkee had faded into the past.

“For me, the most important aspect of the rehearsals is listening to these same guys … do these same songs, and astoundingly, neither of them sounds a whit less well than they did back then,” Tork told me during a pre-tour rehearsal. “I actually get nostalgic.

“The kind of garage band that we always were when we actually played — it sounds exactly the same now,” he continued. “We’re going out on the road being the Monkees cover band, to play Monkees music. It’s astounding.” *Randy Lewis has covered pop music for the Los Angeles Times since 1981, working in that time as a reporter, music critic and editor for the Calendar section.

CIRCA 1970: Photo of Peter Tork Photo

by Michael Ochs Archives. (Getty)

This article was originally published in the LA Times>

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Men Embrace the Nip ’N’ Tuck Why More Men are Undergoing Cosmetic Procedures

by Jocelyne Elia

because feeling better about your appearance will have a positive impact on your confidence.

London: Historically, those who underwent plastic/cosmetic surgery were mostly women who wanted to look better and in many ways look younger. However, recently many more men have sought to undergo cosmetic surgery as they too want to find ways to fight against the clock and maintain their youthful appearance. Many men today will go through multiple procedures to stay young; among said procedures are Botox/filler injections, or even a complete head to toe operation that starts with face lifts and hair transplants and extends to liposuction surgeries.

On the question of whether Westerners are more open to idea of men getting cosmetic surgery then their Arab counterparts the Dr. Hard said: “The increasing number of men who seek cosmetic surgery is noticeable in both Western and Arab countries, it is highly likely that Arab men are getting influenced from the Western media they see every day and social media platforms which encourages them to change something they don’t like about their physical appearance.” Dr. Harb added that: “10 to 15 per cent of all the patients who come to this clinic are men.”

According to the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery (ASAPS), in 1.5 2015 million men in the United States had cosmetic surgery; this roughly amounted to 10 per cent of all plastic surgery procedures that took place in the US that year. Moreover, the number of men seeking plastic surgery had tripled since 1997. Men aren’t as embarrassed to seek cosmetic surgery as they used to in the past; many of them are now as keen as most women to improve their outward appearance.

The most popular cosmetic procedures that men undergo are hair transplants and breast reduction surgery for overweight men, which make many of them feel insecure when they go to public places where they take off their shirts, such as public pools. Liposuction on the stomach and the chest area is the second most popular male cosmetic procedure and finally nose jobs, masculinizing or “squaring” jaws, contouring and reducing wrinkles are the third most popular non-surgical procedures that men seek. Most non-surgical procedures for both men and women depend on the use of filler.

There are many factors behind this recent phenomenon, the first reason is the growing influence of social media as well as the multiple celebrities, male models and influencers who use these social media platforms to normalize male cosmetic surgery.

To find out more about the world of men seeking cosmetic surgery, I spoke to Dr. Ayad Harb in his cosmetic clinic in Harley Street, London.

He began by saying: “Beauty is not exclusive to women, which is why we are seeing new advances in the male cosmetic industry.”

He went on to say that there is both a social and personal factor behind this new phenomenon. Socially, men have become more open towards improving their physical appearance and aren’t as conservative or embarrassed to talk about such topics, again social media’s influence can be attributed to this. Moreover, today’s society does not view men who seek these procedures as deviants. On a personal level, men, just like women, have physical insecurities that they wish to improve; this is

Although the facial structure of men and women is identical in terms of muscles and skin layers, men’s skin does not age as fast women’s skin; this is mostly because men’s skin is much thicker than that of women’s.

Dr. Harb adds: “Even though we use the same medical material on both men and women, we aim for different results. For women we seek to enhance their feminine features, while for men we seek to maintain their masculine features.”

Undergoing cosmetic procedures has become fashionable, as many men and women are now obsessed with the concept, some to quite disturbing degrees. Dr. Harb went on to tell me that plastic surgeons should be honest with their clients and suggest the best procedures based on their conditions and budgets. Plastic surgeons also need to tell their clients about the potential side effects of certain procedures, firstly because it is a doctor’s duty to protect their patients’ health and secondly to protect their own reputations as reputable cosmetic physicians. For instance,

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while filler doesn’t pose any health hazards or side effects, Botox can potentially paralyze facial muscles; as such doctors need to mention the possible side effects of the latter.

It is important to note that Dr. Eyad Harb is the first doctor to perform rhinoplasty without surgery and has instead relied on the use of the filler. He performs the same procedure for both sexes by injecting this material into three focal points which results in a cosmetic reshaping of the nose. The only difference is in the intended outcome whereby a woman’s nose tip is lifted to highlight her feminine features, while a man’s nose is kept straight as to better compliment his male facial features.

Dr. Ayad Harb thinks that both women and men share the same fear of getting older and losing their youthful appearance, so it’s only natural for some men to undergo cosmetic procedures. At that moment he smiled and said: “Who wouldn’t want to keep his boyish and wrinkle-free face?”

METHODS OF FIGHTING THE AGING PROCESS Dr. Harb has cited liposuction, Fractora, radio frequency and BodyTite as alternatives to both surgical and non-surgical procedures. He did warn, however, that these methods do not work for all cases and aren’t as quick as more traditional operations.

Rather, they work as a catalyst which enables the skin and skin cells to produce collagen again. Collagen is the protein that maintains the skin’s thickness and flexibility thus making faces look younger. If a client suffers from deep scars or too many wrinkles, then these other methods are not likely to be successful, surgery will then become necessary in such cases.

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The increasing number of men who seek cosmetic surgery is noticeable in both Western and Arab countries.

On beauty lotions and creams, Dr. Ayad had this to say: “We’re exposed to ads for such products on a daily basis, more and more of these ads target men and claim they can help reduce wrinkles and scars. However, these creams are too commercialised and are often ineffective, furthermore one can gain the results advertised simply by moisturising every day”.

Hair transplants have become the procedure that most men seek and Turkey has become the world capital in said operation. Nevertheless, Dr. Harb noted that the procedure’s drawback is that it requires many follow-up sessions; as such many men are either forced to stay in Turkey for some time until the procedure is complete or they leave with an incomplete hair transplant as they go back home to attend to their responsibilities.

Dr. Harb finally noted that the high demand for hair transplants has made the procedure technologically advance at an unprecedented pace. For instance, there are now robots that quickly and carefully remove hair follicles, which doctors then implant into the client’s bald spots, thus making the operation much quicker and more effective.

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Giving Patients a New Beginning 3D Printer Helps Surgeons Rebuild Deformed Jaws in Haiti 52

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While all eight surgeries were successful, the surgeons achieved a better fit for the two patients whose jaw models had been printed in advance, Curry said.

This year they tried a new tactic: making models of the patients’ jaws in advance, with 3D printers in Philadelphia.

The idea was to use the plastic models as a guide, allowing the physicians to bend titanium surgical plates in the exact shape of each patient’s jawbone — a task normally done during surgery.

Shaping the plates in advance would save up to an hour in the operating room, reducing time under anesthesia, the risk of infection, and other complications, and it also would help the surgeons achieve a more faithful reconstruction of each patient’s original anatomy.

The concept is unusual even in the United States.

Jefferson physicians have been making jaw models for this type of surgery only for the past year and a half, using a suite of printers housed in a former bank vault in Philadelphia.

For patients in poverty-stricken Haiti, still recovering from the 2010 earthquake, the hightech advance was like something from another world.

Using a 3D printer, Jefferson University researchers modeled the jawbones of Haitian patients whose faces were disfigured by tumors. (TNS)

By Tom Avril* PHILADELPHIA — For five years, Jefferson University Hospital surgeons have been traveling to Haiti to rebuild the jaws of patients whose faces are disfigured by benign, yet massive tumors. These are delicate operations, made all the more challenging because the doctors cannot see what they are dealing with until they arrive in a sparsely equipped operating room in Port-au-Prince and meet their patients.

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“It was life-changing,” said Patrick Jean-Gilles, chief resident of the ear, nose and throat/head and neck surgery department at Haiti State University Hospital.

Jean-Gilles sent discs containing three patients’ CT scans to Jefferson in early January, and Robert S. Pugliese, director of Jefferson’s Health Design Lab, got to work. Assisted by medical students, he converted the scans into computer files that could be interpreted by the lab’s printers. Then he kept watch for days as the printer nozzles glided back and forth, depositing layer after layer of plastic

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in the shape of the patients’ jaws and other facial bones.

Though invented decades ago, 3D printers have only recently begun to transform medicine in various ways, as the cost of the boxy machines has declined. Some physicians use printed models of body parts as a visual aid, planning the best approach for surgery when a patient’s anatomy is especially complex. Others use printers to fashion actual devices to be implanted in a patient.

Those typically are made from plastic and other inert materials, though increasingly, researchers are experimenting with devices that can “print” cartilage and other living tissue.

A printed model of a jawbone lies somewhere in between. It can help in visualizing the best strategy for a surgery, and it also serves as a template for bending the titanium plate that is screwed into what remains of a jaw eroded by a tumor.

Dominick Gadaleta, Jefferson’s chief resident for ear, nose, and throat/head and neck surgery, demonstrated the process last month, shaping a narrow strip of metal with a device that looked like a heavy-duty pair of pliers. He matched the metal’s curvature precisely to the contours of a jawbone model made from one of the Haitian patient’s scans.

Eight patients underwent tumor removal and facial reconstruction surgery. The surgeons had 3D-printed models in only two of the cases, as the necessary CT scans cost more than 300$ — out of reach for many people in the impoverished country, Jean-Gilles said.

“It’s a much better anatomical fit” than what can be achieved in the operating room, Gadaleta said.

Jefferson surgeons have used this technique on two dozen U.S. patients so far, and they say it is especially useful for patients in Haiti, some of whose tumors are so large that the bone beneath has been destroyed. In the case of a -26year-old Haitian woman whose right jaw was completely gone, physicians planned to bend the metal in a mirror image of her left jaw, said Joseph M. Curry, a Jefferson head and neck surgeon who is a co-leader of the Haiti project.

The various benign tumors of the jaw are no more common in Haiti than in the U.S., but here they typically are removed while still small. In Haiti, where such surgeries were not readily available until recently, some patients’ tumors have grown to half the size of their faces. They need both a delicate tumor removal and also a complex reconstructive procedure that is not yet performed

by Haitian physicians.

The growths are generally not painful, but patients can suffer from stigma, isolation, and difficulty eating and finding a job, Curry said.

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A benign tumor grew on the right jaw of this -26year-old Haitian woman for most of her life. Using a 3D-printed model of her facial bones, surgeons from Jefferson University Hospital and the University of Miami fashioned a metal plate to rebuild her jaw. Her repaired jaw remained swollen one day after surgery, right, but soon will match the other half of her face. (Project chance/Jefferson University)

counterparts.

Curry flew to Miami the night of Jan. 15, then caught an early morning flight to Haiti the next day, the first of four days he would spend in the operating room at St. Luke’s Hospital in Port-auPrince. He was one of a team of 20, including Jefferson surgeon David Cognetti, two surgeons from the University of Miami, and nurses, residents, and students from both institutions. Two of the group were there on a different mission: discussing a potential “telehealth” program through which Haitian physicians could consult their U.S.

Eight patients underwent tumor removal and facial reconstruction surgery. The surgeons had 3D-printed models in only two of the cases, as the necessary CT scans cost more than 300$ — out of reach for many people in the impoverished country, Jean-Gilles said. A third 3D-printed model had been made for a ninth patient, but the physicians were concerned she might have cancer, and elected to postpone the surgery pending the results of a biopsy.

attached those to the metal plates. (People can still walk with most of that bone removed.) With painstaking care, they attached the blood vessels in the implanted bones to veins and arteries in the patients’ necks. In the two cases where models were printed in advance, the time saved during surgery meant less time for the pieces of leg bone to go without oxygen, in addition to the other advantages. Each case took all day.

The team worked with limited resources. Unlike in the U.S., the patients did not undergo scans of their legs to ascertain the health of blood vessels before the surgeons removed the fibula. Because the patients were fairly young, the team decided it could omit that step, Curry said.

Also unlike in the U.S., the patients recovered with non-opioid pain medications. Opioids can suppress the respiratory system, and the Haitian hospital had limited technology to monitor the patients’ breathing rate. But the non-opioid alternative, though safer, provided less pain relief.

“They do remarkably well,” Curry said. “They’re not comfortable, but they’re OK.” While all eight surgeries were successful, the surgeons achieved a better fit for the two patients whose jaw models had been printed in advance, Curry said.

“It’s giving them basically their old jawline back,” he said.

A week later, Jean-Gilles said all eight were recovering well.

“They are all so satisfied,” the Haitian surgeon said.

The surgeons occupied two operating rooms at St. Luke’s, tackling one case per day in each room. Some of the clinicians were tasked with cutting away the tumors while others handled the reconstruction. Jean-Gilles took part as well.

On each patient’s jawbone, the surgeons screwed in a sterilized metal plate. In the two cases with the printed models, the plates had been custombent in advance.

And with the knowledge gained from working alongside the Jefferson and Miami surgeons, JeanGilles plans eventually to undertake the complex reconstructive surgeries himself.

Then the surgeons cut pieces from each patient’s fibula, the smaller of the two lower-leg bones, and

Originally published in The Philadelphia Inquirer. *Tom Avril is a reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer

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But at Jefferson, lab director Pugliese said that because the printers have already saved so much time in the operating room, they already have paid for themselves.