Egypt Wants its Treasures Back

EU Works to Save Unraveling Nuclear Deal with Iran Amid Tensions in the Gulf

Archaeologist Zahi Hawass: The Sale of King Tut Sculpture Could Impact the Egyptian-British Cultural Relationship

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A Weekly Political News Magazine

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Egypt Wants its Treasures Back www.majalla.com

Editorial A Weekly Political News Magazine

Egypt’s menagerie of antiquities has long been the target of smugglers from all around the world. Since as early as the 1113 B.C. Egypt has struggled to maintain its treasures and this struggle remains to this day as recently a bust of the famous boy-king Tutankhamun was sold at an auction at Christie's in London. While both Egyptian domestic law and UN legislation have laws which are meant to facilitate the reparation of such national artifacts, the Egyptian state is still in an ongoing battle to take back its ancient belongings that have been smuggled abroad. This week’s cover story by Yasmine El Geressi focuses on the history of the smuggling of Egyptian artifacts and how Egypt is currently trying to get back its lost treasures, where ever they may be. The writer also did an interview with famous Egyptian archeologist Zahi Hawas who spoke of the recent King Tut bust incident and his campaigns to repatriate Egyptian artefacts, such as the Rosetta Stone which has been in the British museum for over 200 years. He has also argued that Egypt now has the means to protect these artefacts; as such it is high time that Europe returns the antiquities.

Joseph Braude writes on the recent meeting between EU foreign ministers, on which they agreed that Iran’s recent JCPOA violations were not enough to warrant more EU and UN sanctions which would effectively collapse the deal.

Meanwhile, the UK has started to lose hope that the deal can be salvaged as recent escalations between London and Tehran has made relations more difficult.

Ali El Shamy writes on Kurdish mathematician and Fields Medal laureate, Caucher Birkar, who recently won the Kurdish People’s award. The writer gives an overview of Birkar’s life, his journey from asylum seeker to Cambridge professor and how his Kurdish heritage impacted his life. The writer also presents a summary of the newly founded Kurdish People’s Award which recognizes Kurds who have made creative contributions in the arts or sciences, or non-Kurds how have contributed something to the Kurdish cause.

Ali El Shamy writes on the recent African Cup of Nations third-place play-off between Tunisia and Nigeria, which the latter won. The writer also summarizes both teams’ journeys to the tournament’s semi-finals and briefly analyzes their respective playing styles throughout the competition.

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A Weekly Political News Magazine

30 Europe Alone

Issue 1757- july - 19/07/2019

22 The Right Way to Deal With Huawei

26 Mexico’s Migration Dilemmas

36 Caucher Birkar: A Personification of Kurdish Resilience

54 Tunisia and Nigeria’s Clash for the Bronze

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52 Bust Your Belly for a Healthier Heart

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A bride rides a horse during a wedding procession in the western Macedonian village Galicnik, 150km southwest of Skopje, during the Galicnik Wedding Festival on July 2019 ,13. (Getty)

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A farmer wearing a traditional rain protection ‘ghoom’ walks in a paddy field during the monsoon in the village of Nuwakot. Plantations in Nepal have been severely affected across the country this year by a lack of adequate rainfall. (EPA)

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eekly news both men agreed that Theresa May’s deal was “dead”. Johnson stated that the deal was "effectively defunct" and was highly critical of the Northern Ireland backstop which in his opinion would unacceptably divide the United Kingdom from Northern Ireland. While Hunt has defended the deal in the past, he also said that he believed that the deal is dead “as it is now”. However, he was less hostile towards the deal as he denounced the notion that he would get rid of the deal entirely but agreed that the backstop an intolerable portion of the document and that it had to go. Other topics such as Trump’s tweets came up, and both men stated that his language was “unacceptable” but both refused to condemn the remarks as racist.

Trump’s Tweets Cause a Stir among Democrats

added more fuel to the racism accusations.

The President brushed off such accusations as he later tweeted: "I don't have a Ursula von der Leyen voted as New Last Sunday, US President Trump posted Racist bone in my body!" Nevertheless, European Commission President a series of tweets in which he attacked a on July 17 the Democratic-controlled number of Democratic congresswomen. House of Representatives voted on a While he did not mention any names in symbolic resolution which condemned the the tweet, it is heavily implied that he President’s tweets as racist. The Resolution was targeting House Representatives passed by 240 votes to 187, with four Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Republicans and one Independent joining Rashida Tlaib and Ayanna Pressley who the Democrats to approve the non-legally are part of the progressive camp of the binding resolution.

Democratic Party and have been dubbed as “the Squad” by mainstream media outlets. Johnson and Hunt Participate in In the tweet, Trump said that “Progressive” Final Hustings Debate Democrat Congresswomen, who originally came from countries whose governments The final hustings debate between the are a complete and total catastrophe…. Conservative leadership candidates took Ursula von der Leyen, German Defense now loudly and viciously telling the people place in the London Excel Centre. As Minister and close ally to Angela Merkel, of the United States, the greatest and expected, Brexit dominated the debate as won the European parliamentary vote to become the next president of the European most powerful Nation on earth, how our Commission, succeeding Jean-Claude government is to be run. Why don’t they Juncker. Before the vote, many outlets go back and help fix the totally broken reported that she would be facing a tough and crime infested places from which they parliament with populist and Green MEPs came.” The controversy centers on the fact opposing her, and they weren’t wrong that all women in question are American as Italian publication La Repubblica citizens and three out of four of them were reports that she only won %51.27 of the born in the US. Moreover, the fact that all parliamentary vote, meaning that she had of the congresswomen are not white only

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change in Iran and that a lot of progress has been made to ease the rising tensions in the Arabian Gulf. However, Trump did also indicate that Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon and it can’t test ballistic missiles.

less support than her predecessors. This division reflects the wider discord within the EU which von der Leyen will need to overcome during her tenure. Meanwhile, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, the new leader of Christian Democratic Union was formally appointed Wednesday to succeed von der Leyen as German Defense Minister.

The report did not state the origin of the tanker, or the nationalities of the crew members, however, a UAE based tanker drifted to Iranian waters earlier this week and subsequently stopped transmitting its signal.

Man in Japan Sets Fire to Animation Studio Killing 33 People An alleged arson attack occurred in Kyoto, Japan as a man sets Kyoto Animation Studio on fire. Kyoto prefectural police and fire department officials said that the man had sprayed an unidentified liquid

Trump Denies Seeking Regime Change in Iran

Iran Seizes Oil Tanker

Iran’s Foreign Minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, suggested this week that Iranian state TV reports that the regime’s his government might be open to Revolutionary Guard forces seized a negotiating its ballistic missile program. foreign oil tanker with 12 crew accused This comes after the regime started to of smuggling oil. The report states that increase its enriched uranium beyond the tanker smuggled oil from Iranian the limits agreed in the JCPOA nuclear smugglers to sell to foreign customers deal. Following Zarif’s statement, US and was intercepted south of Iran’s Larak President Trump reiterated that his Island in the strategic Strait of Hormuz. administration is not seeking regime on the three-story building before setting it ablaze and Japanese media reports said that the fire likely started near the studio’s front door thus forcing victims to search for alternatives routes for escape. The suspect allegedly shouted “You die!” before the attack, and a witness told public TV channel NHK television that the suspect was shouting about something that was “stolen” from him, possibly by the company. It is currently confirmed that 33 people have been killed in the fire, and Kyoto fire department official Kazuhiro Hayashi says 36 others have been injured, 10 of them critically. This incident is the deadliest fire in Japan since a 2001 fire that killed 44 in Tokyo's Kabukicho entertainment district.

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Egypt Wants its Treasures Back Demands for Repatriation of Plundered Artefacts are Becoming Hard to Ignore

by Yasmine El-Geressi The trade of stolen treasures is booming around the world. Although like with most illegal activities, looting is hard to quantify; satellite imagery, police seizures, and witness reports from the field all indicate that the looting of priceless and irreplaceable cultural artefacts is generating big

business. Today, the majority of cases of artefact trafficking investigated by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations unit (HSI) involve objects from the Middle East, where wars and general unrest have fueled the chaos that enables looters and smugglers to plunder an increasing number of documented and undocumented archaeological sites. It is estimated

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that that artefacts smuggled out from war zones around the world account for 2.2$ billion a year in illicit global trading. The existence of a robust, and largely unregulated, international market for art and antiquities dominated by Western nations provides ample opportunities to launder movable cultural artefacts into the global marketplace.

In Egypt, home to some of the most impressive artefacts of early human history, the looting and smuggling of antiquities is a trade as old as the artefacts themselves. The ancient Egyptians even designed their tombs to thwart looters.

A CENTURIES-OLD PRACTICE

The bust Queen Nefertiti of Egypt at the city's Old Museum in Berlin, Germany. (Getty)

The earliest known trial of looters in Egypt took place in Thebes in 1113 B.C. A gang of looters led by an enterprising quarryman named Amenpanefer pillaged rock-cut tombs. Invading armies also have carried off Egypt’s antiquities. Roman conquerors transported entire obelisks back home in purposebuilt ships, serving as symbols of Augustus’ conquest in Egypt. From the 16th through the mid20-th centuries, when Egypt was dominated by foreign powers, countless pieces of its past were sent to cultural centers abroad by means of gift, trade, and coercion. The late nineteenth and twentieth centuries witnessed large-scale European explorations of the archaeology of ancient Egypt, which increased in intensity after the 1882 British occupation of Egypt. Foreign archaeologists received a portion of the artefacts found in their excavations through an official arrangement with Egyptian authorities known as partage, from the French for “sharing.” At the time, tourists and visitors bought antiquities and artefacts from licensed dealers in Egypt and because such items were considered personal possessions, these transactions often went undocumented. And although laws were already in place to protect the country’s ancient history, the modern concepts of cultural property and looting were still evolving.

In Egypt, home to some of the most impressive artefacts of early human history, the looting and smuggling of antiquities is a trade as old as the artefacts themselves.

Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property, which to date 131 countries have signed. According to the agreement, artefacts are the property of their country of origin and pieces smuggled out must be returned. In 1983, Egypt outlawed the private sale of antiquities and declared that all items of cultural significance and over a century old belonged to the state.

The illicit trade escalated after the police state crumbled following the social upheaval of the Arab uprisings of 2011 which unseated president Hosni Mubarak after 30 year in power, creating a vacuum that has had a devastating effect on Egypt’s antiquities. Sites from the Pharaonic, Coptic and Islamic eras and museums were left unguarded, and raiders swooped in to loot them and the treasures were passed to the lucrative international antiquities black market. In 2013, America imported more than 10$ million worth of Egyptian antiquities — a 105 percent increase from 2012. Although this pattern has decreased, particularly since September 2013 when the police and the army became reengaged, it has resulted in a dramatic loss of sites and artefacts.

For the tomb robbers, theft takes a variety of forms.

Individuals may dig several holes in sites hoping to find objects that they can sell. In some places, more Things began to change in Egypt during the 1950s organised gangs of looters have used dynamite and with the dissolution of colonial empires which bulldozers to uncover and steal antiquities under inspired a new sense of national identity, leading the protection of guards armed with automatic many countries to strengthen existing laws or weapons. The holes left behind are so numerous enacted new ones to protect their past, which that they are clearly visible on satellite images. This included still buried artefacts. In 1970, UNESCO unsupervised digging contributes to the destruction adopted the Convention on the Means of Prohibiting of sites, not only because objects are stolen, but also and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export, and because sites’ context and history are compromised - rendering them almost useless to an archaeologist.

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EGYPT FIGHTS TO GET ITS HERITAGE BACK Egypt has drastically stepped up efforts in recent years to stop the trafficking of its antiquities. Over the past two years, it has recovered 1,000 illegally trafficked objects from abroad, including 586 in 2017, and has warned foreign museums that it will not help them mount exhibits on ancient Egyptian sites unless smuggled artefacts are returned. In fact, they have returned so many over the last few years that in 2015, the Egyptian Museum hosted an entire exhibition dedicated to repatriated artefacts - the first of its kind in the country.

Cairo has managed to regain the looted and stolen artefacts by working with both auction houses and international cultural groups. The nation has also received help from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. In 2016, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations unit repatriated five illegally smuggled artefacts to Egypt as part of an ongoing investigation called “Operation Mummy’s Curse,” an ongoing multi-year investigation targeting an international criminal network that illegally smuggled cultural items around the world and “Operation Mummy’s Hand,” an HSI operation that seized a genuine artefact misrepresented as a science fiction movie prop.

Egypt’s collection of artefacts that have made their way home continues to grow. For example,

Egypt has drastically stepped up efforts in recent years to stop the trafficking of its antiquities. Over the past two years, it has recovered 1,000 illegally trafficked objects from abroad, including 586 in 2017.

in January of this year, an Egyptian stone tablet of King Amenhotep that had been smuggled out of Luxor, Egypt, was rescued from a London auction house after the Egyptian antiquities ministry scored auction websites across the world. With the help of Egypt's embassy in London and British authorities, the sale was halted and the artefact was returned to the Egyptian embassy in London in September.

Earlier this month, Egypt found itself involved in one of the most controversial auctions in years when it asked Interpol to help track down a 3,000 sculpture of the famed boy Pharaoh Tutankhamun after it was sold in Christie’s in London for almost 5£ million to an anonymous buyer, despite Egypt warning it was probably stolen in the 1970s. Christie’s has strongly denied any wrongdoing, insisting that all necessary checks were made over the bust's provenance and

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The Rosetta Stone is displayed at The British Museum on November 2018 ,22 in London, England.

(Getty)

that its sale was legal and valid.

The Archaeological Institute of America, a nonprofit group representing archaeologists in the US, estimates that as many of 90-85 percent of "classical and certain other types of artefacts on the market do not have a documented provenance."

This makes it difficult to pinpoint the true origins of artefacts or the validity of claims to ownership.

But many argue that there is little scrutiny or regulation on antiquities dealers, auction houses, and buyers, who are accused of turning a blind eye toward the provenance of artefacts. In his lecture on the market, demand, and neutralisation, Greek forensic archaeologist Dr Christos Tsirogiannis put it simply: “There is no black market for antiquities and no white market for antiquities. There is simply one market for antiquities.”

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Egypt’s fight to protect its heritage and bring home its priceless treasures is not one that is only fought on the ground at archaeological sites or in auction houses, but also with some of the biggest museums and institutions dedicated to human history, art and culture. This past February, the Metropolitan Museum of Art ended an exhibition earlier than expected when the centerpiece of “Nedjemankh and His Gilded Coffin”—after seven months on view with robust attendance figures nearing 450,000—was found to have been looted from Egypt. The museum had acquired the ornate golden coffin from the first century B.C. two years ago for 3.5€ million (around 3.9$ million) from Christophe Kunicki, a Parisian art dealer who supplied fake provenance records including a forged Egyptian export license dated

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1971. According to an investigation by the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, however, it appeared that the coffin had been stolen from its homeland in 2011. In response to the finding, the Met agreed to turn the artefact over to the Egyptian government.

But for some of Egypt’s most precious artefacts, finding their way back home hasn’t been as easy.

One of the items on Egypt’s repatriation wish-list is the 725kg Rosetta Stone which has been displayed at the British Museum in London for more than 200 years. The ancient slab, which is engraved with three languages and unlocked the secret of Egypt’s hieroglyphs, has been a long-running sure of tension between Cairo and London. British soldiers captured the stone in 1801 after defeating Napoleon’s army in Egypt and transferred it to the British museum where it has long been the mostvisited object. Egyptian officials have demanded the return of the Rosetta Stone for decades but have never succeeded in convincing the British museum to hand it over. Requests have also been made for other ancient artefacts spirited out of the country during colonial times like the 3,300 year old bust of Queen Nefertiti that has been in a Berlin museum for decades. Germany has continually declined these requests, saying it was in Germany legally and taken out with fraudulent documents in 1913. is too fragile to move. But Egypt contents it was Western institutions in countries with imperial legacies are increasingly facing scrutiny over the provenance of the antiquities on display and for sale.

England, France, Germany and, to a lesser extent, the United States remain at the center of conversations about the surrender of sensitive objects. Museums in particular are being criticised for perpetuating a colonialist paradigm by frequently refusing to return artefacts that were stolen or otherwise acquired in an illegal or illegitimate fashion during periods of occupation, colonialism and war. Critics also argue that maintaining control over these objects causes museums to perpetuate white fantasies about conquest that no longer hold up to scrutiny.

As Procter writes in an op-ed for The Guardian that explains her tours, which focus on slavery and colonialism throughout Britain's imperial rule: "Museums are institutions of memory — they must stop pretending there's only one version of events

Egypt’s fight to protect its heritage and bring home its priceless treasures is not one that is only fought on the ground at archaeological sites or in auction houses, but also with some of the biggest museums and institutions dedicated to human history, art and culture.

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Gilded Coffin Lid for the Priest Nedjemankh.

(Image source: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York)

Western institutions in countries with imperial legacies are increasingly facing scrutiny over the provenance of the antiquities on display and for sale. long-standing policy is not to cease ownership over its looted treasures. As then-Prime Minister David Cameron said of Greece’s Elgin Marbles and India’s Koh-i-Noor diamond: “No, I certainly don’t believe in “returnism”, as it were. I don’t think that is sensible.” The British museum, which is currently facing repatriation demands from Italy, Greece, the Easter Island and Egypt, recently told the Guardian why it believed it was import to maintain the status quo, explaining that the strength of the collection “is its breadth and depth, which allows millions of visitors an understanding of the cultures of the world and how they interconnect—whether through trade, conflict, migration, conquest, or peaceful exchange.” and be willing to own up to their role in shaping the way we see the past.”

One of the counterarguments museum directors make to defend their ownership of artefacts plundered addresses how expensive and potentially risky it could be to transport some of these priceless objects. The Neues Museum in Berlin, for example, once claimed that Nefertiti's bust was too delicate to transport back to Egypt. They also point to issues of safe-keeping and what happens when they get to their destination - especially if that’s in a country that may be experiencing instability and warfare.

This may seem like a valiant cause, but it essentially means that countries like Egypt cannot be trusted to preserve their own cultural heritage. This notion angers many and the calls for repatriation are growing every day.

Some museums have started to try and acknowledge that their collections have uncomfortable histories tied to colonial violence. Nevertheless, Britain’s

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The murky issue of artefact ownership and repatriation remains a hot topic among historians, curators, archaeologists, and politicians. This applies to both objects taken today, which are in clear violation of the law, but also the ethics of objects removed from their homes before such definite laws existed. There is also no clear legal framework accepted by both sides that determines which works will be subject to a repatriation claim, and which works will be left alone in museums or private collections. Although the UN made some progress by establishing a 1970 convention designed to curb the export of stolen artefacts and allow countries to issue repatriation claims, then pay to have the objects returned, many museums around the world have interpreted this convention to mean that if they can prove an object left its country of origin before 1970, they’re in the clear.

The pressure on museums to grapple with the provenance of their collections and to return them, however, will likely continue.

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Archaeologist Zahi Hawass: The Sale of King Tut Sculpture Could Impact the Egyptian-British Cultural Relationship Egypt’s world-renowned archaeologist and former Minister of Antiquities speaks to Majalla about the contested Christie’s auction and the clamour to repatriate the country’s stolen colonial treasures

by Yasmine El-Geressi Described as Egypt’s Indiana Jones, world-famous archaeologist Zahi Hawass has held the keys to the Egyptian Antiquities for 30 years. Throughout his illustrious career Dr Hawass has made a number of major discoveries, including the Tombs of the Pyramid Builders at Giza and the Valley of the Golden Mummies at Bahariya Oasis. The former Minister of Antiquities and Director of Excavations at Giza, Saqqara, Bahariya Oasis, and the Valley of the Kings received his PhD in 1987 from the University of Pennsylvania, where he studied as a Fulbright Fellow. He has written over 40 popular and academic books and more than 150 scholarly articles on his excavations. Known for his charisma, dynamism and ability to reach out to the public, he has sparked global interest in ancient Egypt, tirelessly advocating for archaeological exploration and the preservation of Egypt’s precious and extraordinary ancient heritage.

Earlier this month, Egypt found itself involved in one of the most controversial auctions in years when it asked Interpol to help track down a 3,000 sculpture of the famed boy Pharaoh Tutankhamun after it was sold in Christie’s in London for almost 5£ million to an anonymous buyer, despite Egypt warning it was probably stolen in the 1970s. A veteran of repatriation campaigns, Dr

Hawass at the forefront of the debate. In his interview Majalla, he passionately discussed Egypt’s right to demand the return of the artefact and why he continues to campaign for the retrieval of Egypt’s stolen treasures, including some of the country’s most prized antiquities such as the iconic Rosetta Stone, longdisplayed in the British museum in London.

Many Egyptian artefacts have been sold at auction houses such as Christie’s and Sotheby’s in recent years. Why have the Egyptian authorities decided to take action over this sale?

When I was the Minister of Antiquities, I returned six thousand artefacts. But seeing Egypt’s most famous pharaoh, the “boy king” Tutankhamun on sale is something that deeply upsets us all - including government officials and the public. Christie’s lacks ethics - the auction house asked us to provide evidence that this item had been stolen, but why did they not provide the documents to prove that it was exported from Egypt legally? It is clear that they do not have such documents.

Christie’s have told many lies. They claimed that the sculpture was owned by Prinz (Prince) Willhelm von Thurn und Taxis, but when Live Science asked his family, they said they Wilhelm

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Dr. Zahi Hawass in front of the Sphinx and Pyramids of Giza on September 2016 ,20 in Cairo, Egypt. (Getty)

never owned the sculpture. I believe that this Egyptian head of the god Amun with features of the Pharaoh Tutankhamen was looted from [Luxor’s] Karnak temple. We are now investigating the sculpture’s provenance by looking through all the archives of photographs taken in the temple.

What bothers us the most is how the British government can allow this piece to leave the country without evidence of its legal export from Egypt. The UK has very close relations with Egypt.

There are British archaeological expedition teams working in Egypt. In a case like this we could stop their work and this would be bad for them. We need the help of the British authorities.

We need them to cooperate with us. I am a member of Egypt’s National Committee for Antiquities Repatriation (NCAR) and when met on July 8 in Egypt we gave the authority to the Egyptian ambassador in London to instruct a law firm in the UK to prohibit the export of the artefact before the Egyptian authorities have investigated how it left Egypt. It is very bad there there is no law in place that says that Christie’s must provide proof that the artefacts left Egypt in a legitimate manner.

So is there evidence that the numerous artefacts sold in recent years in Christie’s, Sotehby’s and other auction houses were legally exported from Egypt?

Before 1983, if you had a statue that you wanted to export out of Egypt, you could do so legally. If you could prove that the artefact was not stolen, you would go to the Cairo museum and

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I am not optimistic that King Tut will return to Egypt and the day the sculpture was sold was a black day in the history of Egyptian archeology. they would grant you authorisation with an official stamp. Also at the time, foreign archaeologists received 50 percent of the artefacts found in their excavations through an official agreement.

Therefore, not everything that is on sale is illegal. Antiquities were on sale in Egypt until 1983 when Cairo passed the Law on the Protection of Antiquities which prevented any artefacts from leaving the country. You have to look only at specific artefacts like the head of Tutakhamun which I am certain left Karnak in 1970 and this is why it has to be returned to Egypt.

You have said that Egypt will fight for the return of the head of King Tut. What real power do you have? You’ve mentioned that the Egyptian government could ban British excavations to Egypt, what other actions can be taken?

This is the most important thing. When we met last week, the committee said we can stop their work but we are not going to do

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that if the British government show goodwill and try to cooperate with us. We don’t even know who bought the piece.

Are you optimistic that King Tut will return home?

No, I am not optimistic at all because Christie’s always behaves badly and the day the sculpture of King Tut - the famous pharaoh who captured the hearts of people all over the world - was sold was a black day in the history of Egyptian archeology and Christie’s name will be written in history in black.

Do you think that this issue could have an impact on the cultural relationship between Egypt and the UK? Yes - if they allow a piece like this to leave the country without proof that the artefact left Egypt in a legitimate manner. We have asked them for the evidence. That is what we need from them.

If they do not answer us or cooperate with us, this will affect the archaeological relationship between us for certain.

Have the British government responded?

No. Not yet.

How has this news been received by the Egyptian public and to what extent do Egyptians give serious thought to the issue of artefacts and national treasures nowadays?

The public are very upset and this is the first time that I have seen all the Egyptian people supporting the Ministry of Antiquities, They are unhappy with Christie’s for selling this precious artefact for 6 million dollars within 10 minutes. That is a shame on them.

Egypt has stepped up its fight against the sale of looted antiquities worldwide. You've personally repatriated thousands of artefacts in your career. Can you tell us about some of the important artefacts that you've returned to Egypt?

I have recovered many important artefacts but the three most important artefacts that I am after are the Nefertiti Bust at the

Our museums are more secure than any museum in the world so to say that they could guard them better than us is just not true.

Neues Museum in Berlin, the Dendera Zodiac at the Louvre Museum in Paris and the Rosetta Stone at the British Museum in London - all of which left Egypt illegally. When I asked the three museums to loan these artefacts for three months for the opening of the Grand Museum, they all refused. As a result, we started a committee and we discovered that the bust of Nefertiti left Egypt illegally. We then sent a letter to the Neues Museum requesting that they return Nefertiti to Egypt. They told us that the letter needed to be signed by the minister but when I became the Minister of Antiquities minister in 2011, the revolution started shortly after and everything stopped.

But I will tell you a story about four of the stolen artefacts that I returned. Four reliefs were stolen from a tomb in the west bank in Luxor. I began to search for them and discovered that the Louvre in Paris had bought them. I wrote a letter to the Louvre requesting that they return them and they agreed, but nine months later they still hadn’t given them back. Later, when the Louvre applied to work at Saqqara in Giza, I stopped their expedition. The French President at the time, Nicolas Sarkozy, called the former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to complain about what I did, but when I explained to Mubarak why I took the decision, he agreed that I did the right thing. The Louvre later returned the pieces to Egypt.

We have to be strong. Each of the six thousand artefacts that I returned to Egypt have their own story.

Do you think that some of Egypt’s most precious artefacts such

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Dr. Zahi Hawass supervises the removal of King Tutankhamun from his stone sarcophagus in his underground tomb in the famed Valley of the Kings in Luxor, 04 November 2007.

(Getty)

Now it is time for us to demand the return of the Rosetta Stone, the Nefertiti Bust and the Dendera Zodiac. Their home land should be Egypt not a foreign country. during the revolution could happen in London or New York, or in any place in the world. I took part in a debate at the Oxford Union and the side arguing against me made this same point. But after hearing my argument, all of the students voted for my side because it is fair.

The looting of artefacts escalated following the upheaval of the revolution in 2011. Are you able to estimate the scale of stolen antiquities?

as the Rosetta Stone and the Nefertiti Bust will ever return to Egypt?

Yes, I think they will because of the developments happening all over the world. France’s President Emmanuel Macron said that it is time for the return of looted African artefacts acquired as a result of colonialism. The Dutch returned 33 status to Nigeria.

The Greek government are asking the British museum to return their Elgin Marbles. Now it is time for us to demand the return of the Rosetta Stone, the Nefertiti Bust and the Dendera Zodiac.

We have strong scientific relations with these museums. We are not asking for every artefact to come back, we’re only asking for artefacts that have been stolen recently and these unique artefacts.

The Rosetta Stone is the icon of the Egyptian identity. Their home land should be Egypt not a foreign country.

One of the counterarguments made against repatriation is the issue of safe-keeping as some question whether artefacts will be secure and preserved in the countries they are returned to. What do you say to that argument?

This is absolute rubbish. Our museums today are better than any museum in England. The Grand Museum which is due to open next year will be the best museum in the world. Our museums are more secure than any museum in the world and our antiquities are completely secure. To say that they could guard them better than us is just not true. Egypt is a very stable country. What happened

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No, we can’t know, people were digging everywhere. All the artefacts that were exported out of Egypt during the revolution were excavated illegally. Modern Egypt is built on top of ancient Egypt so people could dig in the courtyard of their homes and find antiquities. Therefore most of what you see on sale now were likely unearthed through illegal excavations. This is why I am asking UNESCO to consider passing a the law that compels every auction house to verify the provenance of every item they sell. We need to change the law.

Is tomb-raiding still a problem today?

No. After President Abdelfattah el-Sisi came into power, Egypt became stable and safe and the country’s antiquities are protected and preserved by the Egyptian police and the Ministry of Antiquities.

What excavation projects are you currently working on that we could look forward to hearing about in the near future?

I am excavating in the Valley of the King. I stopped for the summer but I will start on again September 1. I cannot talk about this at the moment as I have not officially announced any discoveries yet.

Also in September, I am starting the second part of the Egyptian Mummy Project where we are scanning 20 royal mummies using CT imaging and DNA testing.

When will tourism return to normal in Egypt?

Tourism is back is back with power. 9000 Americans came to visit me in the last five years. I believe that this year tourism will be back to 2010 peak levels.

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EU Works to Save Unraveling Nuclear Deal with Iran Amid Tensions in the Gulf

Prospects for Their Efforts Appear Dim as Parallel Crises Brew Between London and Tehran 20

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by Joseph Braude The European Union’s Foreign Ministers are making a last ditch push to save the JCPOA, battered by the US withdrawal last year and Iran’s escalating violations of the limits on its nuclear program in the last two weeks. Prospects for their efforts appear dim, further aggravated by a standoff between Iran and the UK over a tanker impounded for violating EU sanctions on the Syrian regime.

EU BELIEVE ‘SMALL WINDOW’ LEFT TO SAVE IRAN On July 15, the foreign ministers of EU nations said that Iranian violations of the 2015 nuclear deal were not yet serious enough to trigger the reimposition of European and UN sanctions that would likely precipitate a final collapse of the accord.

After the foreign ministers meeting in Brussels, Federica Mogherini, the European Union’s top foreign policy official, told reporters that “none of [the foreign ministers], for the moment, for the time being, with the current data we have had” believe that there has been “significant noncompliance” from Iran’s part with the JCPOA. And so, Mogherini added, “for the time being, none of the parties to the agreement has signaled their intention to invoke this article,” referring to the reimposition of all sanctions.

European Union High Representative for Foreign Affairs Federica Mogherini and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, from left, wait for the start of prior to a bilateral meeting as part of the closed-door nuclear talks with Iran at a hotel in Vienna, Austria, on July ,6 2018. (AP)

Two days earlier, Mogherini voiced support for an Iraqi proposal to host a regional conference aimed at soothing rising tensions between the United States and Iran, announcing the EU was ready to support the regional conference idea "in all ways that could be useful." She stressed that Europe’s priority was “to avoid escalation, avoid any miscalculation, that could lead to very dangerous consequences,” and that "the European experience” cautions against exploring “avenues of the unknown that can be dangerous for everybody."

Nevertheless, the accord’s prospects do not appear to be bright. Although the UK is officially committed to salvaging the JCPOA, Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt said as recently as July 15 that "we think there is a closing but a small window" to save the nuclear deal.

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The European Union’s Foreign Ministers are making a last ditch push to save the JCPOA, battered by the US withdrawal last year and Iran’s escalating violations of the limits on its nuclear program in the last two weeks.

UK-IRANIAN STANDOFF IN THE GULF Alongside the U.S.-EU-Iranian imbroglio over the JCPOA, a parallel crisis has been brewing between London and Tehran. On July 4, British Royal Marines took control of the Grace 1, a fully laden tanker suspected of carrying crude oil from Iran to the Banyas refinery in Syria in violation of EU sanctions against the Assad regime. Senior Iranian officials denounced the measure as an “act of piracy.” according to Defense Minister Amir Hatami. Both president Rouhani and Supreme Leader Khamene’i threatened retaliation. The former spoke vaguely about “consequences” while Khamene’i blasted “the vicious British” and threatened that Iran “will not leave these vicious acts unanswered.”

Iran made good on these threats on July 10, when five IRGC speedboats attempted to harass the tanker British Heritage as it approached the Strait of Hormuz. The effort was thwarted by a shadowing British warship operating out of Bahrain, although concerns remain about other ships at anchor in the Strait.

In a bid to defuse the tensions, Britain offered on Saturday to release the seized Iranian tanker. Foreign Minister Hunt tweeted about a “constructive call” he had had with his Iranian counterpart Foreign Minister Zarif. “I reassured him our concern was destination, not origin, of the oil” on the seized ship, Hunt said. He added that he had also said Britain would “facilitate release” of the impounded ship “if we received guarantees that it would not be going to Syria, following due process” in the Gibraltar courts.

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The Right Way to Deal With Huawei The United States Needs to Compete With Chinese Firms, Not Just Ban Them 22

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For many countries, the benefits of fast, cheap 5G outweigh the security risk that Huawei poses.

A Huawei logo and 5G sign at the Huawei stand on day one of the Mobile World Congress (MWC) Shanghai 2019 at the Shanghai New International Expo Center on June 2019 ,26 in Shanghai, China. (Getty)

by Adam Segal Over the past year and a half, the Trump administration has waged an extraordinary campaign against Huawei, the Chinese telecommunications giant, involving criminal indictments, trade sanctions, and diplomatic pressure on U.S. friends and allies. In May, the administration raised the stakes even further.

President Donald Trump signed an executive order blocking U.S. businesses from using equipment and services made by companies controlled by “adversary governments.” Although the order did not name Huawei or China, it was clearly aimed straight at them.

The same day that Trump signed the order, the Commerce Department placed Huawei and 68 of its affiliates on a list of

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firms to which U.S. companies may not sell components without government approval. Huawei will suffer even more serious consequences from its inclusion on this list than it will from the executive order. Four major U.S. technology companies— Broadcom, Intel, Qualcomm, and Xilinx—almost immediately stopped working with Huawei, and Google announced that it would no longer provide the Android mobile operating system to Huawei smartphones. Although the Commerce Department later suspended the ban for 90 days, Huawei’s future remains uncertain. At an event at the company’s headquarters in Shenzhen, Huawei’s founder, Ren Zhengfei, said he expected revenues to decline by 30$ billion over the next two years because of U.S. actions, down from an annual 107$ billion in 2018.

Huawei does pose a threat to U.S. security, but that is not the only reason for Washington’s assault on the company. Rather, the moves are a gambit in a larger battle over the future of the digital world. U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said as much in a May 2019 speech in London, where he warned his hosts that using Huawei technology in British 5G networks could allow China not only to access valuable data but also “to control the Internet of the future” and possibly “to divide Western alliances through bits and bytes.”

The White House is right to focus on technological competition with Beijing. As I wrote in this magazine last year, China has been hard at work trying to remake cyberspace in its own image, using domestic regulation, technological innovation, world-class companies, and foreign diplomacy. If it succeeds, the Internet will be less global and less open, and Beijing will secure the economic, diplomatic, national security, and intelligence benefits that once flowed to Washington. But the Trump administration’s approach to this problem is not as effective as it could be.

Much of the world has still to be convinced that the security hazards of using Huawei equipment outweigh the economic benefits. And the administration’s emphasis on decoupling the U.S. and Chinese scientific and technological ecosystems risks slowing American innovation and accelerating China’s plans for technological independence.

There are better ways to slow China’s technological rise, and they tend to involve expanding U.S. influence and fostering innovation at home. Rather than attempting to strong-arm other countries into abandoning Huawei, the United States should offer them alternatives that can compete on price and efficiency.

Washington should work with allied governments to improve their cybersecurity. And it should invest in research in order to master both 5G technologies and the ones that will come after that.

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NETWORKS OF THE FUTURE Fifth generation networks have the potential to be a big deal. Under specifications set out by the International Telecommunication Union, they will deliver up to 20 gigabits of data per second with response times of under one millisecond. Users will be able to download movies in a few seconds, self-driving cars will be able to make artificial intelligence–powered decisions through near constant communication with cloud servers, and famers will use drones, weather satellites, and sensors on the ground, crops, livestock, and machinery to water, feed, and fertilize more efficiently and sustainably. The countries that deploy 5G first will reap major economic and security benefits.

But the technology will also bring new threats. The U.S. government argues that the nature of 5G networks is such that there is no way to make Huawei’s involvement in them safe, given the company’s close ties to the Chinese government. So much data is transmitted over 5G networks that the security practices used in third- and fourth-generation networks—such as separating the core from the periphery, which keeps unreliable providers away from critical networks—will not work. And unlike in past networks, the manufacturer will push out a stream of software updates faster than inspectors can verify them.

The architecture of the 5G system thus requires users to trust the provider. U.S. officials argue that such trust is impossible when the Chinese Communist Party can demand access to data from Huawei or order it to disrupt service. As Pompeo told his London audience, “As a matter of Chinese law, the Chinese Government can rightfully demand access to data flowing through Huawei . . . systems.” Washington points to indictments alleging that Huawei’s chief financial officer committed accounting fraud and violated sanctions on Iran, and that the company stole trade secrets, as further evidence of Huawei’s untrustworthiness. (The United States has, however, never provided any public evidence that Huawei has intentionally placed backdoors or vulnerabilities in its equipment.)

China has been hard at work trying to remake cyberspace in its own image, using domestic regulation, technological innovation, world-class companies, and foreign diplomacy. If it succeeds, the Internet will be less global and less open.

Huawei officials strenuously deny that they are beholden to the Chinese government. Asked whether the company had ever given data to the Chinese authorities, Ren told CBS News, “For the past 30 years, we have never done that, and the next 30 years to come, we will never do that.” Given the Communist Party’s unfettered power in China, such assurances are hard to credit.

Still, the United States has had limited success in convincing even its allies of the dangers Huawei poses. Australia and Japan have banned the company, but many other countries in Europe, Latin America, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia have said they will carry on using it.

The biggest blow to U.S. efforts comes from France, Germany, and the United Kingdom, which appear to have concluded that they can mitigate the risks of using Huawei products by using different vendors alongside Huawei equipment, keeping Huawei out of more sensitive networks, continuously monitoring the networks, and designing redundant and resilient networks so that if Huawei equipment is compromised, the entire system does not fail. Other countries are likely to use these decisions as cover to defy Washington, even though the Trump administration has threatened to curtail intelligence sharing if Paris, Berlin, and London move ahead.

The reluctance to abandon Huawei largely comes down to economics. With the help of government subsidies, a history of innovation, and a guaranteed majority share of the Chinese domestic market, Huawei is able to offer its services and products at significantly lower prices than its European competitors, Ericsson and Nokia, can muster. (There are no U.S. companies that manufacture the equipment to transfer signals between mobile phones and the towers or the sites that make up the 5G network.) On top of that, many countries do not entirely trust the United States. Trump imposed similar sanctions on ZTE in April last year, only to abandon them three months later, and at the June

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U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo arrives at 10 Downing Street for talks with British Prime Minister Theresa May and Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt on 08 May, 2019 in London, England. (Getty)

2019 G20- summit meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping, Trump announced that U.S. companies would be able to sell to Huawei as long as the transactions did not create a “great, national emergency problem.” This week, the Commerce Department announced it will issue licenses to companies to sell goods to Huawei when there is no threat to national security. Foreign governments have concluded that the Trump administration is exaggerating the risks of doing business with Huawei in order to win trade concessions, and they fear banning the company only to be exposed to retaliation from Beijing after Washington reaches a final deal.

Washington’s warnings of Chinese spying also look cynical in the wake of the 2013 revelations from former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden that the NSA exploited U.S. technology companies to snoop on foreign citizens and governments. Many governments expect Beijing and Washington to spy on them; the thinking goes, so they might as well benefit from cheap Chinese technology along the way. Or as Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad put it in May, when he announced that his country would use as much Huawei equipment as possible, “Yes, there may be some spying, but what is there to spy in Malaysia? We are an open book.”

The decision to put Huawei on the Commerce Department’s entity list is an attempt to work around foreign governments and go straight to the customers. Even if officials decide the security risks can be managed, telecommunications carriers are unlikely to use Huawei equipment as long as the company’s access to crucial U.S. components remains in doubt.

HUAWEI OR THE HIGHWAY One result of the Huawei ban is already clear: China will double down on its drive for technological autonomy. “Only if we own

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our own intellectual property and core technologies,” warned Xi in a speech following Trump’s executive order, “then can we produce products with core competitiveness and [we] won’t be beaten in intensifying competition.” Huawei is opening a science and technology research institute, in which it will invest 300$ million for each of the next five to ten years, and the Chinese Ministry of Finance recently announced new tax breaks to support the semiconductor and software industries.

In the long run, the Huawei ban could disrupt telecommunications in Africa, Latin America, Europe, and Southeast Asia and delay the global rollout of 5G by several years. U.S. companies are sure to suffer. Huawei has said that some 1,200 U.S. firms play a role in its supply chain; the ban will prove especially painful for companies that produce semiconductors and the tools needed to design integrated circuits. An even larger swath of companies may fall victim if Beijing decides to retaliate. At the end of May, the Chinese government announced that it was putting together an “unreliable entities list” of foreign companies and individuals and would announce specific measures against them in the future.

Such penalties on U.S. companies could spur other countries to build up their own industries in areas, such as semiconductors, where the United States currently leads.

The United States is rightly worried about China’s technological ambitions. But in order to successfully counter them, Washington must recognize that by adopting Huawei telecommunications technology, policymakers in Africa, Europe, and Latin America are making a reasonable calculation. For many countries, the benefits of fast, cheap 5G outweigh the security risk that Huawei poses. If Washington wants to change that calculus, it should provide friends and allies with a financially viable alternative, perhaps by using the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation to provide loans to finance Ericsson or Nokia equipment. And under the assumption that networks dominated

by Chinese suppliers are vulnerable to cyberattacks, the United States should work with allies to strengthen their networks against cyberattacks from China and other countries and to develop shared standards for the inspection and deployment of 5G equipment similar to the joint statement issued by 30 countries in Prague in May 2019.

To complement its efforts abroad, the United States should invest in research and development at home. Congress should fund new 5G research and development centers at universities to focus on security, storage, and computation, areas where the United States has a competitive advantage. And it should encourage those centers to begin research into the 6G technologies that are likely supersede 5G some 15 years from now.

The Trump administration has chosen to counter China’s growing digital influence by swiftly disentangling the U.S. and Chinese economies. This decoupling may slow China’s progress in the short term, but ultimately it will likely strengthen Beijing’s hand.

In a few years, Washington may look back and realize that its policies have not suppressed Chinese technological development but accelerated it.

This article was originally published on ForeignAffairs.com.

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Mexico’s Migration Dilemmas The Border Crisis South of the Border

by Andrew Selee In late May, after issuing public comments and tweets criticizing the Mexican government, U.S. President Donald Trump threatened to impose a five percent tariff on imports from Mexico if the country did not step up its efforts to prevent illegal migration to the United States. Mexico, fearing the economic impact of a tariff, immediately moved to address Trump’s concerns. On June 7, the two countries released a joint statement in which Mexico

promised to “take unprecedented steps to increase enforcement to curb irregular migration.” The United States, in turn, dropped the threat of tariffs and promised to accelerate its processing of asylum claims while stepping up its development efforts in Mexico and Central America.

Critics lambasted Trump for threatening tariffs against the United States’ southern neighbor—Senator John Cornyn of Texas, normally a supporter of the administration, claimed that “We’re holding a gun to our own heads” because of the impact that the tariffs would have on the U.S. economy. Yet there was a kernel of

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Members of Mexican National Guard detain Central American migrants trying to cross the Rio Bravo, in Ciudad Juarez, State of Chihuahua, on June ,21 2019. (Getty)

truth in Trump’s exaggerated assertion that Mexico was doing “NOTHING” on migration policy. Mexican governments have rarely spent much time thinking about migration, much less developing a coherent policy to manage it. After all, Mexico has historically been a country of out-migration—a country that people wanted to leave, not to journey to or even through.

But as Mexicans have stopped leaving their country over the past decade, migrants from elsewhere—particularly Central Americans attempting to reach the United States—have flowed through and to Mexico in ever greater numbers. So far in the first nine months of this fiscal year (between October 2018 and May 444,309 ,)2019 Central Americans have been apprehended at the U.S.-Mexican border, almost double the 223,564 apprehended in all 12 months of fiscal year 2018, according to Customs and Border Protection data. Over 80 percent of those apprehended are families with children or minors traveling alone.

As it happens, the administration of Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who took office in December, may be the first in recent years to have tried to seriously grapple with migration. During his campaign, López Obrador called for a policy based on respect for the rights of migrants that would help create legal pathways for them to stay in Mexico while also investing in Central America to address the root causes of migration.

The Mexican government, however, has now largely shelved these plans, as negotiations with the United States over Central American migration have changed political realities. The López Obrador administration has adopted an enforcement-first approach to migration, just as previous Mexican administrations have done when faced with pressure from Washington. It’s a radical shift for a government that once wanted greater openness to Central American migrants.

Yet in the long run, López Obrador will likely find that he had the right initial idea. The enforcement-only measures that Trump is pushing offer a partial and temporary solution to the building pressure of Central American migration; sustained relief will come only through a comprehensive approach much like the one López Obrador had once imagined. The trick will be to make such an approach compatible with reality by modernizing Mexico’s immigration agencies and recognizing that legal pathways and development efforts cannot succeed without a serious commitment to border control, something missing from his initial plan.

MIXED MESSAGES For all his campaign talk of treating migrants differently than his predecessors did, López Obrador has become almost solely focused on enforcing Mexico’s borders. Since the beginning of 2019, Mexico has detained and deported historically high numbers of people. In May alone, more than 23,000 migrants were apprehended and more than 15,000 deported, roughly twice the 10,350 apprehended and 8,697 deported in May 2018.

Mexico has also sent 6,000 National Guard members, along with elements of its army and navy, to the southern border to

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Yet there was a kernel of truth in Trump’s exaggerated assertion that Mexico was doing “NOTHING” on migration policy. Mexican governments have rarely spent much time thinking about migration, much less developing a coherent policy to manage it. back up its woefully underfunded migration authorities. Perhaps most notably, as part of a program dubiously called the Migrant Protection Protocol (MPP), the Mexican government has been readmitting Central Americans to wait in Mexico for their asylum hearings in the United States. The program began in December and is now being ramped up significantly.

The Mexican government agreed to these measures, on June 7, as a way of avoiding the tariffs that Trump had threatened. The two governments further agreed that if unauthorized migration does not drop in the first 45 days after the agreement was signed, they would start negotiations on a Safe Third Country Agreement, which would require asylum seekers to request asylum in the first country they cross into. This would make Mexico responsible for handling asylum applications from nationals of other countries that pass through their territory, although it is possible that Guatemala and other countries might join such an agreement as well.

After having initially promised a less heavy-handed approach, the López Obrador administration now struggles to explain its emphasis on enforcement to a public that was expecting a softer treatment of migrants. There is, of course, no inherent contradiction between creating legal pathways for migration and controlling the border. In fact, any serious attempt to liberalize immigration policy will require clear rules and enforcement, and any modern enforcement strategy must take pressure off the border by creating legal opportunities for entry. Yet Mexican authorities have had trouble reconciling their rhetoric with reality and explaining how the various elements of their policy add up to a single, coherent whole. In their public statements they have zigzagged from one extreme to the other, often sounding like any migrant is welcome and later sounding like they are closing the border for good. On June 20, for instance, López Obrador said, “We need to see the migrant as someone seeking to improve his well-being ... who is risking everything to reduce his hunger and poverty, and we have to be in solidarity.” This came only a day after his new migration commissioner, the former head of prisons, criticized the “permeability” of Mexico’s border and pledged to close it down.

These mixed messages to some extent reflect Mexico’s difficult

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position on migration, since the country is subject to forces it doesn’t fully control and can at best hope to manage. Mexico is caught, on one side, between Guatemala and Honduras— countries that people are anxious to leave because of chronic violence, poverty, and political unrest, which have only worsened as the political climate in both countries has deteriorated—and on the other, the United States, the country that most Central Americans want to reach. To make matters worse, the Trump administration’s highly publicized and largely failed attempts to secure the U.S.-Mexican border, including its now-abandoned policy of separating migrant children from their parents, have actually had the unintended effect of spurring further migration by showing how easy it is for Central American families to stay in the United States by making a claim for asylum and then staying in the country for years while their claim is processed.

Human smugglers have exploited this information, and offered new routes, tiers of service, and even credit plans to would-be migrants, making their journey to the United States more feasible than ever before.

The agreement to throw more resources at enforcement in Mexico will probably slow unauthorized migration for a few months, and it certainly defused a crisis that could have damaged both the U.S. and Mexican economies. But the agreement hardly offers a permanent solution. That is because an approach based on enforcement will only ever be partly effective in preventing migration if it does not address the root causes of migration and offer some ways for migrants to enter the country legally.

THE TROUBLE WITH ASYLUM A comprehensive response to the migration crisis could begin with the reform of the asylum systems in both the United States and Mexico. Both countries are overwhelmed by the recent surge in cases. The Mexican government could take some of the pressure off of the U.S. border by granting asylum to Central

The June agreement between the United States and Mexico is a stopgap.

Actually reducing the flow of Central American migrants north will require a much more sophisticated and comprehensive approach.

Americans who need protection from violence, a small but important percentage of those crossing through Mexico. Last year alone, Mexico received almost 30,000 applications for asylum, roughly ten times more than in 2015, and this year it is on track to receive over 60,000. Yet Mexico’s asylum agency, COMAR, which has an annual budget of 1.3$ million, no longer has the capacity to adjudicate these cases in a reasonable period of time. Although Mexico is hardly a safe country for all migrants fleeing violence, it is safe enough for many who would be happy to stay in the first country they reach if they could get their cases heard in a timely manner.

The U.S. asylum system is even more swamped. In 2018, more than 92,000 people applied for asylum at the U.S.-Mexican border, and that number is set to increase significantly this year.

Immigration courts generally take two to three years to rule on these cases, leading some people to apply for asylum whether or not they have strong cases and then disappear into the general population while they wait on a hearing. The Trump administration could streamline this system by allowing asylum officers to make decisions on asylum cases instead of sending these cases to the asylum courts, a measure that is permitted under U.S. law and that would allow for a decision to be made in a few weeks instead

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Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador listens as Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard (out of frame) speaks during a press conference at the National Palace in Mexico City, on June ,10 2019. (Getty)

migrant smugglers must be laid off. López Obrador should also follow through on his earlier proposal to create employment-based visas for Central Americans, which would allow them to come work in parts of Mexico with labor shortages as an alternative to migrating to the United States. Enforcement always works better when people have real alternatives to illegal migration. Only when it provides such alternatives will the Mexican government stand a chance of sustaining its efforts at border control.

For now, the Mexican government will also need to step up its efforts to help the migrants it currently hosts. The recent agreement between Mexico and the United States to increase the number of Central Americans returned to Mexico via the MPP will leave tens of thousands of migrants living in Mexican border communities while they await their asylum hearings. The Mexican federal government needs to help the border towns provide migrants with housing, health care, and public services, or risk a major backlash from local communities that will end up having to provide these services on their own.

FINDING A BALANCE

of a few years. This simple change, combined with greater access to asylum in Mexico, would allow the United States and Mexico to ensure that those fleeing persecution get the protection they need while quickly returning those who don’t qualify to their countries of origin, thus discouraging future flows.

Fixing the U.S. and Mexican asylum systems would have a far greater deterrent effect than expanding the MPP or signing a Safe Third Country Agreement while also giving a fair hearing to those who genuinely need protection. Indeed, experience from around the world suggests that efforts to use these kinds of international agreements to outsource asylum systems usually fail, since they are politically complicated and labor-intensive to implement. Individual countries, on the other hand, can quickly and easily make changes to their own asylum processes.

López Obrador, for his part, has a real opportunity to reshape Mexico’s immigration policy in a manner faithful to his original principles yet responsive to realities on the ground. He should start by modernizing Mexico’s immigration infrastructure and policy. The country’s current immigration agency, the National Immigration Institute, is woefully underfunded and riddled with corruption. Agents must be paid better and provided with new equipment and technology, while those who are in the pocket of

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López Obrador has emphasized, rightly, that migration from Central America will continue unless the international community invests in the region’s public security and development. He has even proposed a 30$ billion aid package for Central American countries to help stem migration. Having tried—and largely failed—to convince the Trump administration to take this need more seriously, López Obrador should now to appeal to Canada, the European Union, and other international donors. It is unclear if they will be as interested in the fate of Central America as the United States and Mexico should be, but López Obrador has already announced his intention to meet with representatives of 19 countries to discuss his development plan.

Of course, outside actors can only do so much to guarantee security and economic growth in countries whose governments have failed to do so. Much of what the U.S., Mexican, and other governments can do is what citizens in those countries haven’t been able to: hold national governments accountable for fighting corruption, ensuring public security, and investing in local development.

The June agreement between the United States and Mexico is a stopgap. Actually reducing the flow of Central American migrants north will require a much more sophisticated and comprehensive approach. The Trump administration, which has privileged enforcement over other tactics, is unlikely to develop such an approach, although there is a chance it may recognize the need to fix the U.S.asylum system. The López Obrador administration may have a better chance, but it will need to find a coherent balance among its competing priorities of border control, legal migration, asylum protections, and investment in Central American development. Only then will it be able to reconcile its migration principles with reality.

This article was originally published on ForeignAffairs.com.

Europe Alone What Comes After the Transatlantic Alliance

By Alina Polyakova and Benjamin Haddad Speaking at the Munich Security Conference in early 2019, former Vice President Joe Biden had a reassuring message for European politicians, diplomats, and military leaders worried about American disengagement: “We will be back.” Biden’s speech was met with applause and relief. Wait out the tenure of U.S. President Donald Trump, he seemed to be saying, and sooner or later, leaders can return to the transatlantic consensus that defined the post–World War II era. Patience is the name of the game.

Biden was feeding a common but delusional hope. A new U.S.

administration could assuage some of the current transatlantic tensions by, say, removing tariffs on European steel and aluminum or rejoining the Paris climate agreement. But these fixes would not deal with the problem at its root. The rift between the United States and Europe did not begin with Trump, nor will it end with him. Rather than giving in to nostalgia, U.S. and European leaders should start with an honest assessment of the path that led them to the current crisis—the first step to building a more mature and forward-looking transatlantic partnership.

The main threat to the transatlantic relationship is not a hostile White House or a decoupling of interests. Today’s crisis is first and foremost a result of the power asymmetry between the

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German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Belgium's Prime Minister Charles Michel, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, US President Donald Trump (3R) and Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May and other NATO heads of state watch a helicopter flyover after a family photo for the NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) summit, at the NATO headquarters in Brussels, on July 2018 ,11. (Getty)

United States and Europe. For a long time, both sides accepted this imbalance, even cultivated it. Europe remained submissive in exchange for a spot underneath the U.S. defense umbrella.

For all their current hectoring about “burden sharing,” American leaders have long preferred European free-riding to European chaos. But the end of the Cold War, 11/9, and the rise of China eventually shifted Washington’s security priorities elsewhere, leaving Europe alone and mortal. Today, the continent is “a vegetarian in a world of carnivores,” as Sigmar Gabriel, then Germany’s foreign minister, put it.

For now, European visions of “strategic autonomy” from the United States, often invoked by the European Commission’s president, Jean-Claude Juncker, and French President Emmanuel Macron, remain just that—visions. So far, a European army exists only in white papers. But even such tentative proposals fuel skepticism, if not outright opposition, in Washington.

The fear, it seems, is that Europe’s desire to go its own way in security matters will put the continent in direct competition with the United States. U.S. policymakers would prefer Europeans to spend more on military power within the confines of NATO, an idea that is based on the assumption that a more capable Europe would still follow the United States’ lead. Yet the hope that Europe can be pushed to invest in its defense without developing more autonomous security interests is fanciful. U.S. policymakers have to make a choice. Do they prefer to maintain a weak and divided European continent that is aligned with their interests and dependent on U.S. power? Or are they ready to deal with a more forceful and autonomous partner that will sometimes go against their favored policies? Europe, for its part, has a similar choice to make. It cannot claim the mantle of independent global leadership and continue to rely on the United States for its security, including in its immediate neighborhood.

Reversing the trend toward European irrelevance and disunity is the responsibility of European policymakers. But the United States should not oppose these efforts, even if they end up making Europe a more difficult partner. In the long run, a strong continent that is able to defend its interests and fight its own battles will benefit Washington more than a divided and weak one. The transatlantic alliance can and should remain the bedrock of the Western model of liberal democratic values and principles.

But it will have to transform to meet the growing economic, security, and political challenges from China and Russia. Rather than pining for the return of a transatlantic partnership that will surely continue to fray, the United States and Europe must now invest in and accept the consequences of autonomy.

SLOW BURN Tales of a golden age of transatlantic unity are written with the benefit of hindsight. In truth, the relationship has always been tumultuous. France and the United Kingdom developed their own nuclear strike capabilities in the 1950s and 1960s, against the initial objections of U.S. leaders. France even left NATO’s integrated military command in 1966, returning only in 2009.

West Germany sought a détente with East Germany in the 1970s,

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The rift between the United States and Europe did not begin with Trump, nor will it end with him. Rather than giving in to nostalgia, U.S. and European leaders should start with an honest assessment of the path that led them to the current crisis. leading others to fear that the transatlantic ties uniting the West against the Eastern bloc were eroding. Events in the Middle East, above all, have sparked disagreements between the United States and Europe for decades, long before the U.S. withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal.

Nor did U.S. disengagement from Europe start with Trump’s inauguration. Since the end of the Cold War, the United States has shown itself willing to dismiss Europeans’ concerns and reticent to dispense blood and treasure on European soil. In 2001, President George W. Bush withdrew the United States from the 1997 Kyoto Protocol despite hard lobbying by Gerhard Schröder, the German chancellor. France and Germany refused to join the Bush administration’s “coalition of the willing” in the Iraq war, a split that seemed to mark a new low in transatlantic relations.

President Barack Obama poured salt on the wounds. His administration “pivoted” to Asia and pursued a “reset” with Russia. At the same time, it canceled plans to build a U.S. missile defense system in Poland with radar stations in the Czech Republic and later withdrew two U.S. Army brigades from Europe. It was only after Russia annexed Crimea in 2014 that the Obama administration reversed course, eventually reinstating one of the brigades and setting up the European Reassurance Initiative (now known as the European Deterrence Initiative), a Pentagon fund for operations to defend European allies. But even then, Obama had harsh words for Europe, calling France and the United Kingdom “free riders” in an interview with The Atlantic.

Put in perspective, today’s troubles are not so unusual. The current differences between the United States and Europe over the Iran nuclear deal pale in comparison to the split that arose when Washington opposed the British and French invasion of Egypt during the 1956 Suez crisis, the breakdown over Iraq in 2003, and the recurring disagreements over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. And yet today’s Zeitgeist of crisis and disintegration feels appropriate, likely because the Trump administration makes for a convenient scapegoat. As the journalist James Kirchik put it, “blaming Trump for their problems is the one thing Europeans can agree on.”

European leaders, of course, could have read the writing on the wall long before the Trump presidency and come up with

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a strategy for keeping the United States engaged. Instead, they have remained complacent in their own weakness and complicit in the deterioration of the relationship, to the point where each policy disagreement—compounded by Trump’s undiplomatic rhetoric—now feels existential. Rather than lamenting the causes of an early death, both sides would be better off accepting that the alliance must change, working toward the goal of a more balanced relationship, and mitigating the inevitable fallout.

AN END TO COMPLACENCY? Europe’s predicament is clear. Without a common vision for defense, and with destabilizing pressures on its periphery, the continent will soon serve as a theater, rather than a participant, in a great-power competition. Russia actively supports European far-right parties and regularly interferes in European elections.

In Ukraine, Russia has illegally annexed Crimea and fomented a slow-burning war that has killed 13,000 Ukrainians and displaced 1.5 million. Farther south, the Syrian civil war has driven millions of refugees to Europe’s shores, causing a split over immigration policy and fueling the rise of populist parties. China, for its part, has invested heavily in Europe’s ports and technology infrastructure, in part because it hopes to drive a wedge between the United States and Europe. The more internally divided Europe is, the more it will find itself at the mercy of these opportunistic great powers. This is a recipe for a Europe once again roiled by nationalism, an EU that is irrelevant, and a transatlantic alliance in which Europe has little influence and the United States lacks a strong partner.

The only prudent way to avoid this nightmare scenario is for Europe to shed its culture of complacency in favor of autonomy.

It must develop the ability to better defend itself and pursue common European interests. The EU’s foreign service outlined this goal in its 2016 Global Strategy, and leaders have echoed the same sentiment in speeches all over the continent. But that doesn’t mean getting there will be easy.

Europe’s predicament is clear. Without a common vision for defense, and with destabilizing pressures on its periphery, the continent will soon serve as a theater, rather than a participant, in a great-power competition.

For one, Europe will have to do more to secure neighboring regions. As the Syrian civil war has demonstrated, many European countries lack the military capacity and political will to do so. Take German Chancellor Angela Merkel, whose rebuke of Trumpism led many observers to christen her “the new leader of the free world.” At this year’s Munich Security Conference, Merkel, usually cautious, criticized Trump’s announcement that the United States would pull out of Syria (a decision that his administration later walked back). “Is it a good thing to immediately remove American troops from Syria,” Merkel asked, “or will it not strengthen Russia and Iran’s hands?” The chancellor had a point: sudden U.S. disengagement from Syria might create a dangerous power vacuum, much as it did in Iraq in 2011. But Merkel’s critique rang hollow: as she took the stage to attack U.S. policy in Syria, not a single German soldier was fighting on the ground there.

For a more assertive European security strategy, look instead to Paris. France not only committed its air force to the fight against IS in Syria; it also pushed the United States for more joint action there. French strategists still fume over the “redline” episode in the summer of 2013, when the Obama administration ignored its own warning that chemical warfare in Syria would trigger U.S. military action. French President François Hollande, who had all but sent orders to French jets to start flying toward Syria, felt

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France's president Emmanuel Macron (L) and Chad's president Idriss Deby shake hands as they hold a press conference at the presidential palace in N'Djamena, on December 2018 ,23. (Getty)

betrayed when Washington did not follow through. Looking back on the incident in 2016, Hollande’s foreign minister, Laurent Fabius, called the United States’ backtracking “a turning point, not only for the crisis in the Middle East, but also for Ukraine, Crimea, and the world.” Yet France, with its limited military capacity and growing domestic woes, cannot act on its own without more backing from its European neighbors.

The Europeans will also have to overcome their internal foreign policy divisions. Concerns about Chinese spying, technology theft, and hidden subsidies have led the European Commission to call China “a systemic rival” and introduce a system that screens foreign investment in infrastructure, energy, defense, and the media for potential threats to European security—an initiative supported by France and Germany. Yet the screening system still lacks teeth, as it issues only recommendations and gives EU member states, many of which lack comparable nationallevel protections, the final say. Furthermore, Brussels’ newfound tough stance papers over divisions among member states. Italy’s populist government, for instance, is going down a different path, having recently become the first major European economy to join Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative. And the United Kingdom has reportedly decided to allow the Chinese technology company Huawei to participate in building the British 5G network, despite pressure by the United States not to use any equipment

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manufactured by the Chinese telecommunications giant.

Similar divisions plague the continent’s energy policy. Austria and Germany are moving toward completing the controversial Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which would deliver Russian gas to Germany via the Baltic Sea. If completed, Nord Stream 2 would exacerbate Europe’s dependence on Russian gas by doubling Russia’s export capacity. Crucially, it would allow Moscow to circumvent Ukraine entirely, thus depriving Ukraine of billions in revenues from gas transit fees. The project has exposed deep divisions between the economic ambitions of individual member states and the interests of the bloc as a whole.

For all these obstacles, there is still a great deal more consensus on the EU’s foreign policy than analysts usually acknowledge.

Despite pushback from incipient populist movements and domestic business interests, the EU has stayed firm on its sanctions on Russia. Following Russian interference in U.S. and European elections, the EU has also taken the lead in proposing and coordinating policy to counter disinformation, putting Europe ahead of the United States in addressing this problem.

In particular, EU states have begun sharing more intelligence and have expanded a task force that monitors and exposes Russian disinformation. The EU has also remained steadfast in its attempts to keep the Iran nuclear deal alive, against U.S. objections. To convince Tehran to stay in compliance with the deal and to protect European companies doing business with Iran, the EU has even pursued the establishment of a special-purpose financial vehicle to circumvent U.S. extraterritorial sanctions against European companies continuing to trade with Iran. Even if Tehran revamps its nuclear program, as Iranian President Hassan Rouhani threatened in May, the European effort to save the nuclear deal shows that the continent is able to pursue a foreign policy independent from the United States.

After a rude awakening to growing security issues, from the war in Ukraine to terrorist attacks and unsecured borders at the onset of the refugee crisis, European states have also begun increasing their defense investments, putting an end to the continuous decrease that had taken place since the 1990s. Although some countries, most notably Germany, still lag behind, recent trends point in the right direction. In 22 ,2016 out of 28 EU member states increased their defense spending, and the continent’s combined defense spending increased again the following year.

Lithuania and Sweden even reinstated compulsory military service.

In addition to greater spending at the national level, European governments are working together to build a common and efficient defense industry. Europe’s defense spending is second only to that of the United States, but it is beset by redundancies and inefficiencies. To address this matter, in 2017, the bloc established the Permanent Structured Cooperation, or PESCO, a series of projects designed to avoid inefficient or overlapping military investments and coordinate efforts on cyberwarfare and energy security. That same year, European governments created the European Defence Fund, which helps finance transnational defense projects.

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These defense investments won’t come without hurdles. As the creation of the European Defence Fund has signaled, the continent is seeking to develop its own defense industry.

Yet national interests in military strategy often still diverge.

Moreover, a growing European defense industry would compete with U.S. businesses, adding another point of tension to the transatlantic relationship. Already, Washington has come under fire for pressuring European countries to purchase U.S.-made military equipment. In March, the French defense minister, Florence Parly, made the point that the mutual-defense provision of the NATO treaty does not require European countries to buy American fighter jets. “It’s called Article 5, not Article F35-,” she quipped.

Still, U.S. fears that Europe’s homegrown defense push is incompatible with NATO are overblown. Europe’s efforts aim to address shortcomings in areas left vulnerable by the United States’ withdrawal from the region since the end of the Cold War. European leaders have gone out of their way to emphasize that attempts to integrate European defense will strengthen, rather than compete with, NATO. Indeed, the alliance has been reenergized since Russia’s aggression against Ukraine. It has carried out operations to signal its commitment to protect eastern Europe and has prepared rapid-response troops to shore up NATO’s eastern flank. NATO has also refocused on its core mission: collective territorial deterrence. And despite Trump’s public dismissals of the alliance, his administration raised spending on the European Deterrence Initiative, which clearly serves a purpose similar to NATO’s, to 6.5$ billion in fiscal year 2019—an increase of more than 3$ billion in two years.

POWER POLITICS On defense, Europe should continue to invest in NATO and develop a foreign policy that puts security interests above the continent’s aversion to foreign military engagements. More and more, Europe will need to send troops abroad to secure itself by

Observers should neither lament this state of affairs nor yearn for what used to be. If Europe can choose its own path, the transatlantic relationship will mature into a more balanced alliance.

stabilizing its periphery and neighboring regions. The Balkans, for example, remain a tinderbox, especially as some states— most recently North Macedonia—join NATO, whereas others, such as Serbia, seek favor with Russia. The situation in Syria remains fragile, and if the war there heats up, Europe may have to consider military intervention to avoid another wave of refugees.

European autonomy, however, is not measured in defense and security terms alone. Europe should not get bogged down in the technicalities of defense procurement policies or seek to create a counter-weight to U.S. military power. Instead, a new European strategy should maximize those areas where the EU already has a comparative global advantage: its economic weight, its unified currency, and its political and soft power.

To use these advantages to their fullest extent, however, Europeans will need to intellectually reconcile themselves to power, a difficult proposition for a continent where several generations of policymakers, protected by the United States’ security umbrella, have come to define themselves by the notion that technical cooperation could simply replace relations of force on the international stage. The EU likes to think of itself as a normative power, leveraging its regulatory expertise and vast,

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100 Pro-European demonstrators gather at Schuman Roundabout to protest against Brexit on July 2019 ,9 in Brussels, Belgium. (Getty)

integrated single market to shape global norms and rules on everything from environmental protection to data privacy.

That U.S. companies have adopted the terms of the General Data Protection Regulation, the EU’s ambitious data privacy law, shows how effective the bloc is at exporting its norms.

Yet the EU has at times underestimated the importance of hard power in supporting soft power. When Brusselswas negotiating a free-trade agreement with Ukraine in 2014, it in essence sent well-meaning economists to a deeply geopolitical fight. EU leaders thought of the European Neighborhood Policy, with its comprehensive package of reforms, as a simple tool to promote good governance in EU border states. What they failed to appreciate was that its significance was more geopolitical than anything else. Most Ukrainians saw the agreement not as a collection of technocratic tweaks but as an opportunity to anchor their country more fully in Europe and thus challenge Russia. And indeed, when Ukrainians overthrew their president after he refused to sign an association agreement with the EU, Russian President Vladimir Putin reacted by invading eastern Ukraine and seizing Crimea. Ironically, for all the talk of Putin’s anachronistic, Machiavellian understanding of power, the Russian president was much more attuned than Brussels to the real significance of the EU’s technocratic instruments.

Europe’s timid support for Ukraine, even after Ukrainians protested—and in some cases died—while brandishing the EU flag, likely emboldened Moscow to invade Ukraine, intervene in Syria, and meddle in several Western elections. Instead of mostly standing by, Europe should have seen the Euromaidan revolution as an opportunity to take a principled stance against a revisionist Russia.

Europe’s efforts to reconcile itself to power will have to include an understanding of the geopolitical role its single market can play in ensuring European sovereignty. From breaking Russian gas monopolies to blocking Chinese investments, the European Commission can use its regulatory bureaucratic instruments to ensure that Europe is not a theater for the actions of predatory great powers. To do so, lawmakers will have to overcome their dogmatic attachment to openness and put a more realistic defense of European citizens at the core of the EU’s economic policies.

The same applies to immigration and asylum laws. More robust border controls, a basic pillar of sovereignty, would help bridge the gap between Brussels and citizens all over the continent, many of whom are concerned that EU institutions have not been able to protect them against what they see as unruly migrants.

NO MORE NOSTALGIA As far as Washington is concerned, a more autonomous Europe will inevitably mean more headaches and disagreements.

Consider the European efforts to circumvent U.S. sanctions on Iran. Although such endeavors are largely symbolic at this stage, they could lead to a more ambitious attempt to promote the euro as an alternative reserve currency, reducing Europeans’ dependence on the U.S. dollar and the U.S. financial system. This would compel the United States to rely less on the brute force of

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its financial dominance and more on diplomacy and persuasion— an impulse that is anathema in U.S. diplomatic culture. Yet that is the price one pays for having serious, reliable allies. It is unrealistic to imagine that after asking a partner to take on a larger portion of its own security, your interests will magically align. U.S. policymakers simply cannot expect Europe to both increase its defense spending and remain politically passive.

The good news is that Europe’s willingness to pull its own weight will, paradoxically, go a long way toward ensuring a new transatlantic relationship. It will alleviate the frustrations and resentment that free-riding has fueled on the American side and remedy the weakness and dependence on the European side. In many cases, the United States will greatly benefit from European actors defending their security on their own in areas that are only peripheral to U.S. interests. U.S. support for Frenchled operations against al Qaeda–linked groups in the Sahel, for instance, is proof that European leadership can serve the United States well. And given that the American public has shown little appetite for getting more involved in Middle Eastern conflicts, a greater European capacity to promote stability in a region whose problems often affect Europe directly would allow Washington to lead from behind.

Above all, policymakers on both sides of the Atlantic should adjust their expectations downward. Europe will never be as central to the United States as it once was and will have to focus on ensuring the survival of its own model before claiming global ambitions. The United States should help the Europeans in this undertaking as best it can. By forgoing its role as a trust builder among Europeans and, with the United Kingdom’s decision to leave the EU, losing its historic ally within the community, the United States has seen most of its ability to shape positive outcomes in Europe evaporate. Instead, it has focused on building strong bilateral ties with individual countries, such as Germany under Obama and Poland under Trump.

Observers should neither lament this state of affairs nor yearn for what used to be. If Europe can choose its own path, the transatlantic relationship will mature into a more balanced alliance. By 2030, NATO could be stronger and more capable than it is today. The EU could take military action to end future wars on its periphery. It could invest in Belarus, Moldova, Ukraine, and the Balkans, thus pushing back against Chinese and Russian influence there.

From developing best practices for the use of artificial intelligence to responding to unfair Chinese trade practices to fighting climate change, the United States and Europe together are still indispensable when it comes to shaping the norms and rules of tomorrow. The transatlantic alliance is unlikely to look like it once did. There may be more distance and distrust. Siblings often grow apart when they come of age; they make choices, choose partners, and embrace careers that the other doesn’t necessarily approve of. But in the end, the ties that bind are stronger than the individual choices that divide.

This article was originally published in the July/August 2019 issue of Foreign Affairs Magazine and on ForeignAffairs.com.

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Caucher Birkar: A Personification of Kurdish Resilience Kurdish Fields Medal Laureate Adds “People’s Award” to Collection

by Ali El Shamy STRUGGLE AND FORTITUDE The eight-year-long Iran-Iraq War was one of the most devastating conflicts that inflicted the modern Middle East. While casualty estimates are disputed, most sources indicate that the war caused at least one million people to lose their lives, Kurds living in Iraq are among the many victims of the war as Saddam Hussein’s genocide campaign known as “Anfal” resulted in the murders of 182,000 Kurds.

Caucher Birkar was born in the Mariwan County of Iranian Kurdistan, which lies right between the border separating Iraq and Iran. As he was only two years old when the war started he spent his formative years caught between the aerial strikes both militaries. But as history has proven time and time again, early trials and tribulations are often the components of character building, and it is these unique troubles that give individuals an unrelenting fortitude to face all of life’s future endeavors.

Living in the midst of a conflict zone affected Birkar’s childhood in more ways than one, for instance, his school days were not

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just a struggle for academic growth they were also a struggle for survival: “We didn’t know when the war would end. It was difficult to make any plan for the future.” Caucher said during an exclusive interview with Majalla. “We (he and his childhood friends) would often be sitting in the classroom and then suddenly airplanes would come to bomb the area and we would run out of the class to escape to the mountains.”

Birkar noted how the positive nature of Kurdish culture helped him through his tough times, “Kurdish culture has an optimistic outlook to life”. He also noted how Kurdish sense of humor would help those who suffered during the devastating war.

Birkar would go on to state that he always remembers seeing people laughing and joking, even when they were facing aerial bombardments and displacement.

Regular life comes to a standstill during times of elongated conflicts; however, Birkar never let his external factors come between him and his passions. During his childhood, his elder brother, Haidar introduced him to the world of calculus and instilled within him a deep love for mathematics which remains to this day. “In the beginning of my education, I think my brother had the biggest influence, he in a way determined my educational path. He was very creative, always creating, inventing and building things.” Birkar states that he tries to channel his brother’s creativity when he’s working on his academic tasks and mathematical theorems.

NEW LIFE (AND NAME) IN THE UK Caucher Birkar with Ata Mufty, the organizer of the Kurdish People’s Award.

Upon graduating from the University of Tehran, Birkar moved to the UK as a political asylum seeker. Like many before him, he made the bold decision to make Britain his new home and birthplace of his new life. Naturally, he faced many of the struggles many migrants have to overcome, such as learning a new language. But the boy who grew up escaping the prospect of early death would not grow up into a man who is overwhelmed by such burdens. After he arrived in the UK, the man born Fereydoun Derakhshani would eventually have his name changed to Caucher Birkar. When asked about his name change, he said that his name can be translated from Kurdish as “Explorer” (Caucher) and “Mathematician” (Birkar); as such he chose this name because it reflected his identity as someone who explores the world of mathematics. While his name is often translated as “Migrant” rather than explorer, he told us that he had the explorer definition in mind when choosing his new moniker. One year after his asylum period, Birkar enrolled as a Ph.D. student at the University of Nottingham, where he spent three years. Even though he was based in Nottingham, he would still travel both locally and internationally during these three years. For example, during his Ph.D. journey, he went spent some time in Cambridge, he would also travel to New York and even went to do research work at John Hopkins University in Baltimore. After finishing his Ph.D., he went to Warwick University for a year, before finally going to Cambridge University in 2006. His hard work and perseverance were evident in Cambridge where he journeyed from Research Fellow to Reader to Full Professor. His crowning

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Like many members of the Kurdish diaspora, Birkar has shown the tenacity and perseverance to accomplish great things and make his community proud. moment came in 2018 when he was awarded the Fields Medal, the most prestigious award in the field of mathematics which is only given every four years to at most only four individuals.

KURDISH PEOPLE’S AWARD: HONORING CREATIVITY Just one year on from winning the Fields Medal, Birkar added another award to his collection. On June 2019 ,29, Birkar received the Kurdish People’s Award at the Kensington Town Hall in London. Famous Kurdish sculptor Zirak Mira was the first person to think of the concept of the People’s Award as he wanted to honor Kurds who came up with new innovative ideas in the arts. Eventually a small group of influential Kurds came together to form the People’s Award Committee, this group consisted of Shirazad Hassan, Samin Giagy, Shaheen Saber, Dr. Gia Zankana, Zirak Mira, Iako Karim and Mamtaz El Heedery and together they founded the People’s Award which was first awarded on September 2018 ,11. While it started out as a cultural award, it eventually branched into other fields as it has now been used to credit a mathematician. Furthermore, the award can also be given to non-Kurdish person who made a significant contribution to the Kurdish cause.

It should not come as a surprise that someone who learned the importance of creativity from such a young age would receive an award that emphasis creativity. Anwar Sultani, one of the speakers at the award ceremony, noted how Birkar’s innovative spirit has led him to present work that benefits both the Kurdish nation and all of humanity. Shaheen Saber, an esteemed guest of honor who came all the way from South Kurdistan, Iraq and is a member of the Founding Committee of the Award, said that Birkar will surely inspire more young Kurds to go into scientific fields, particularly mathematics. She would also state that Birkar has already become a Kurdish icon of persistence and innovation.

Karwan Jamal Tahir, who serves as the Kurdistan Regional Government’s (KRG) High Representative to the UK, was also present at the award ceremony. Mr. Tahir said that he was proud to be in the presence of an accomplished individual such as Birkar and was honored to be one of the individuals to present him with the medal. Moreover, he praised Birkar and his accomplishments as he showed that in spite of all the struggles and injustices the Kurds have had to endure, they are able to defy the odds and

advance beyond their imaginations simply by utilizing every opportunity that comes their way.

The man of the hour himself gave his own speech, which did not focus on mathematics or his academic work rather it centered on the state of the Kurdish nation and the importance of national unity and pride, showcasing the respect he had for his Kurdish heritage. Birkar was proud to receive the award, simply because of the fact that it bears the name of his nation. He expressed the desire for the introduction of more national awards such as these since Kurdish people have perpetually faced injustices and external forces that seek only to silence them. He also spoke of the importance of national groups and organizations as they help solidify national unity and pride. He cited the example of the charity group that helped the Kurdish community shortly after the Kermanshah earthquake. The preservation of Kurdish culture

Shaheen Saber, an esteemed guest of honor who came all the way from South Kurdistan and is a member of the Founding Committee of the Award, said that Birkar will surely inspire more young Kurds to go into scientific fields, particularly mathematics.

was also a part of his speech; this is because he thinks that it is losing some of its authenticity. For instance, some Kurds have started inserting English words and phrases in spoken Kurdish and some Kurdish musicians have adopted Arabic, Persian or Turkish melodies. He ended his speech by stating that he and his colleagues are going to establish an academic organization for scientific research and education, an endeavor that the KRG promised to help out with.

KURDISH RESILIENCE PERSONIFIED Kurdish people have had a long history of suffering and agonizing tragedy. To this day, they are caught between state actors which only seek to crush their spirits and obliterate any hope they have toward statehood. Nevertheless, time and time again Kurdish people have shown robustness that enables them to overcome times of grave anguish and come out even stronger than before. Likewise, Birkar’s early childhood trials have given him immeasurable valor to stand up against any hardship that might confront him. Furthermore, like many members of the Kurdish diaspora, Birkar has shown the tenacity and perseverance to accomplish great things and make his community proud. In the words of Ata Mufty, the organizer of the Kurdish People’s Award, Birkar has brought great joy to the hearts of around 45 million Kurds both in Kurdistan and all around the world. Finally, Birkar has displayed pride and admiration for his culture and aims to do his part to help his nation in any way he can. In more ways than one, Caucher Birkar has truly personified Kurdish national spirit and resilience.

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Shahen Sabir (center) presenting Caucher Birkar with the Kurdish People›s Award Medal. (Photo

by Hiwa Ahmad exclusively for Majalla)

A Weekly Political News Magazine

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The future ain’t what it used to be www.majalla.com

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Ivanka Trump: First Daughter and Advisor to the President of the United States

by Majalla Early Life and Education Ivanka was born on October 30, 1991, in Manhattan, New York to mother Ivana Marie Trump and father Donald Trump.

She was named Ivana after her mother, but soon adopted her nickname “Ivanka” as her moniker. She spent most of her childhood in New York but then moved to Connecticut when she was 15 where she attended a boarding school called Choate Rosemary Hall. Afterward, she spent two years in Georgetown University and another two years at the University of Pennsylvania where she obtained a bachelor’s degree in Economics in 2004.

Business and Entrepreneurship Three years after graduating, she partnered with Dynamic Diamond Corp to create her own jewelry line called “Ivanka Trump Fine Jewelry”. Her first flagship store was

moved from Madison Avenue to Mercer Street in Manhattan. A boutique selling her jewelry was also opened in the Trump Tower and her brand also made it to the international scene, as shops in Canada, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain, Kuwait, and Qatar stocked her products. In addition to her jewelry line, Trump also had a fashion line that produced clothes, shoes, and accessories, which were sold in retail stores in the US and Canada. She left the fashion industry in 2018 to focus on her career in politics.

Love, Conversion, and Marriage She met real estate developer Jared Kushner in 2005 through mutual friends and they soon started dating. In 2009, she started learning more about her boyfriend’s religion and eventually converted to Orthodox Judaism and adopted the Hebrew name “Yael”. Her father did not object to her daughter’s decision and supported her “from day one”. She and Jared got married

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that same year in a Jewish ceremony and they have three children together.

Working in Her Father’s Cabinet Ivanka’s life would take a different turn in 2015 when her father decided to run for the presidency of the United States.

She endorsed her father and joined him in the campaign trail, often giving opening speeches at venues. After he was inaugurated on January 2017, Donald appointed his daughter as Advisor to the President of the United States. As advisor, she represented the US in a number of panels such as the 2017 W20 Summit (a precursor to the G20 Summit) in Berlin where she spoke with a number of influential women such as Angela Merkel and Christine Lagarde. She eventually played more active roles in American foreign policy as she accompanied her father in the 2019 G20 Summit and even participated in her father’s 2019 meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un.

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Part Two

The future ain’t what it used to be

What Orwell and Huxley Got Right Bryn Haworth A LETTER FROM AN OLD AQUAINTANCE Late autumn in 1949. A letter arrives on George Orwell’s doormat all the way from California. He might also feel it has come from a long time ago: the writer was one of Orwell’s tutors while he was at Eton College, the famous public school in England that is currently supplying us with prime ministers of an ever-declining standard.

Orwell remembers Eton very well. He has even written about it.

Unlike its more contemporary products, he emerged from Eton’s ancient walls with a very unconventional, downright left-wing view of the world. The same might be said, guardedly, about his ex-tutor. At the very least, the older man has an open mind. Still, there is something didactic in the tone of his letter. It is by turns congratulatory and critical, like an end of term report: Dear Mr. Orwell, This must have felt rather an odd way to be addressing the former pupil. Orwell would have appeared as ‘Eric Blair’ in his tutor’s class register.

It was very kind of you to tell your publishers to send me a copy of your book. It arrived as I was in the midst of a piece of work that required much reading and consulting of references; and since poor sight makes it necessary for me to ration my reading, I had to wait a long time before being able to embark on Nineteen Eighty-Four.

Ah yes, poor eyesight; Orwell would have remembered this about his tutor. When the older man had himself been a pupil at Eton, he’d contracted an eye disease which left him ‘practically blind for two to three years.’ The symptoms would have included constant pain, impaired eyesight and photophobia or light sensitivity. Half-blind in one eye, he would later be rejected by the British Army when he volunteered in 1916. Later still, his brother wrote: I believe his blindness was a blessing in disguise. For one thing, it put paid to his idea of taking up medicine as a career ... His uniqueness lay in his universalism. He was able to take all knowledge for his province.

Maybe it also had something to do with his prophetic powers.

Tiresias had been blind. By the time Milton went blind, he was no longer honoured in his own country.

The writer of the letter, having praised the book he has been sent, moves swiftly onto the substance of the novel:

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Arguably, there are many features of Orwell’s dystopia that did come true.

One need only think of the reality TV series named after his Big Brother, or the growing suspicion that we are being watched and listened to by our own televisions.

The philosophy of the ruling minority in Nineteen Eighty-Four is a sadism which has been carried to its logical conclusion by going beyond sex and denying it. Whether in actual fact the policy of the boot-on-the-face can go on indefinitely seems doubtful. My own belief is that the ruling oligarchy will find less arduous and wasteful ways of governing and of satisfying its lust for power, and these ways will resemble those which I described...

‘I’ve gotta get a typewriter that’s sexier’ - George Orwell at the coal face

May I speak of the thing with which the book deals — the ultimate revolution?

Orwell might have been slightly mystified; the concept of the ‘ultimate revolution’ was by no means explicit in his book.

Nonetheless, the letter was insistent: The first hints of a philosophy of the ultimate revolution — the revolution which lies beyond politics and economics, and which aims at total subversion of the individual's psychology and physiology — are to be found in the Marquis de Sade, who regarded himself as the continuator, the consummator, of Robespierre and Babeuf.

This is the mad Marquis in his role as political philosopher; not, perhaps, the role which is most familiar to us now…

As a previous Etonian prime minister might have put it, nowadays we tend to associate de Sade with ‘maso-sadism’. He is just half of a comedy duo, forever playing straight man to SacherMasoch’s dumb ass. They’re like the Morecombe and Wise of sexual perversion: Bring me sunshine with your rictus of pain.

But in a dystopia, sadomasochism is no longer for the purposes of harmless entertainment:

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It’s an odd kind of letter to be sending. Did Orwell sense the strangeness of the situation? Here was the greatest of his prophetic competitors writing to question his own vision of the future. If there had never been any anxiety of influence on Orwell’s part before this moment, he must have been experiencing high anxiety by now. Perhaps he resented the tutorial. He surely would have been uncomfortable with the idea of being indebted to de Sade.

The boot stamping on a human face – forever – had more to do with the totalitarian systems he had encountered than anything he could have learnt from a degenerate French aristo.

The point, however, is that the letter writer disagreed about the practicality of revolutionary cruelty. In the same pedagogical tone, he proceeded to put his old pupil right about hypnotism, possibly with reference to the famous scene where Winston Smith is coerced into believing that two and two make five, though the letter writer makes no specific mention of this: Partly because of the prevailing materialism and partly because of prevailing respectability, nineteenth-century philosophers and men of science were not willing to investigate the odder facts of psychology for practical men, such as politicians, soldiers and policemen, to apply in the field of government. Thanks to the voluntary ignorance of our fathers, the advent of the ultimate revolution was delayed for five or six generations. Another lucky accident was Freud's inability to hypnotize successfully and his consequent disparagement of hypnotism. This delayed the general application of hypnotism to psychiatry for at least forty years.

But now psycho-analysis is being combined with hypnosis; and hypnosis has been made easy and indefinitely extensible through

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the use of barbiturates, which induce a hypnoid and suggestible state in even the most recalcitrant subjects.

This sounds like ‘hypnopedia’ and the use of a happy drug, soma (always italicised), to control people’s natural urge to rebel. The recipient of the letter might have been wondering by this time what any of this had to do with his own book. He would soon be enlightened: Within the next generation I believe that the world's rulers will discover that infant conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of government, than clubs and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging and kicking them into obedience. In other words, I feel that the nightmare of Nineteen Eighty-Four is destined to modulate into the nightmare of a world having more resemblance to that which I imagined in Brave New World. The change will be brought about as a result of a felt need for increased efficiency.

The writer of the letter was no less a literary star than Aldous Huxley. Here, as one Etonian to another – and, more to the point, one visionary to another visionary – he was saying: ‘This is all fine, up to a point. But it’s far too crude, old chap. You may have seen one possible future, but it’s not a sustainable one. My vision is better than yours for a simple reason – it’s further off. I may not be able to see enough to read these days, but I can foresee things better than you ever could.’

Search as I might, I have been unable to track down Orwell’s reply to Huxley. Perhaps he was not minded to get back to him.

Could it be he was too dignified to rise to the challenge? After all, as far as Huxley was concerned, the younger man’s short-sighted nightmare was destined to modulate into his own, far more farsighted nightmare. They could both be right, but one would turn out more right than the other.

Ultimately, it would take an optician of the distant future to decide the issue. For the purposes of these articles, and with no training or phoropter at my disposal, I shall endeavour to be that optician.

FORD, THE ANCESTRAL INFLUENCER It is true, of course, that the year 1984 (which Orwell arrived at by reversing the last two digits of 1948, the year he was writing) came and went without Britain becoming a dystopia, at least not of the kind Orwell had predicted. Yet, arguably, there are many features of his dystopia that did come true. One need only think of the reality TV series named after his Big Brother, or the growing suspicion that we are being watched and listened to by our own televisions.

On those same televisions, a light-hearted show appears,

named after his infamous Room 101, the place where people encounter their worst nightmare. In his hero’s case, that is a facechewing rat. The modern version of the show merely allows guest celebrities to dispose of annoying aspects of modern life, after first convincing the host of the programme that said annoyances deserve to be ‘banished.’ Here is a sample of the kinds of things that have been successfully reviled: Acceptance speeches at award ceremonies People who misuse the word ‘literally’ People who recline seats on aeroplanes Food that doesn’t taste as good as you remember Predictive text Cyclists in Lycra German pop music Actors Which brings us full-circle to acceptance speeches at award ceremonies. Nothing controversial here, you might say.

Strangely, no one has ever mentioned deliberately starved rats on the programme. Perhaps Orwell has the copyright on that particular annoyance.

These annoying aspects are then binned. It’s all a bit tame, admittedly, but nevertheless it’s interesting that Orwell has such

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The Marquis at nineteen, looking as if the butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth

prominence on the television, almost as if the medium has a guilty conscience. Beyond trivia like this, however, the way that Orwell shows up in modern life is more subtle. In other words, he hardly shows up at all.

Nor, frankly, does Huxley in the obvious, quotidian reality we are living through, but given that his dystopia was more of a satire than a nightmare, it was a satire on what he observed in the America of the Thirties, which was symbolised by the advances of Ford’s mass production. It is essentially a capitalist dystopia, producing endless items for consumption. Ford has replaced the deity and, instead of being in his heaven, he is in his Flivver (the little plane he designed), an immortal forefather figure buzzing overhead and invoked whenever characters refer to God, as in “Thank Ford for that!”

What Orwell dreaded, in contrast, was a kind of totalitarian Bolshevism where techniques of mind control were practised by a police state on steroids. As we saw in Part One, the cops in the brave new world have no need of truncheons or rubber bullets, let alone gulags. All they need do is douse the flames of insurrection with soma. They spray it about the place as soon as trouble arises, in a manner reminiscent of the foam in an Ibiza night club.

The way to keep people docile and compliant is not to beat them up, but to butter them up. Give them plenty of what they want.

And make sure they want what you want them to want. Make them consume your stuff.

This was Huxley’s genius – he projected American consumer culture into the distant future, creating a Prozac nation where the will to rebel or to express one’s individuality has been schmoozed out of the populace by a process of suggestion and perpetual love-bombing. How could anyone rise up against such a state? How could anyone seriously object to being this happy?

Life in this future would be one massive orgy. Everyone would be productive. There would be no unproductive nature worship, for example. The music would be synthetic. People would do sports that encouraged consumption of the equipment to do them.

Games like the ludicrously named Centrifugal Bumble-puppy, the rules of which Huxley never bothers to explain. People would be reared to like their inescapable social destiny. It’s their duty to be infantile because ‘Our Ford loved infants.’ The passage describing a Solidarity Service in Chapter Five, which Bernard Marx attends with some reluctance, is pure Ibiza.

But before that, Bernard heads for the centre of London with Lenina, to the newly-opened Westminster Abbey Cabaret.

Electric sky-signs announce LONDON’S FINEST SCENT AND COLOUR ORGAN. ALL THE LATEST SYNTHETIC MUSIC. Sixteen ‘sexophonists’ (sic) play as they enter a hall scented with ambergris and sandalwood. Huxley, who was an occasional music critic, has great fun with the suggestive innuendo in his description: The sexophones wailed like melodious cats under the moon, moaned in the alto and tenor registers as though the little death were upon them. Rich with a wealth of harmonics, their tremulous

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chorus mounted towards a climax, louder and ever louder – until at last, with a wave of his hand, the conductor let loose the final shattering note of ether-music… (ether-music is one of those uncanny moments of prescience) …and blew the sixteen merely human blowers clean out of existence. Thunder in A flat major. And then, in all but silence, in all but darkness, there followed a gradual deturgescence, a diminuendo sliding gradually, through quarter tones, down, down to a faintly whispered dominant chord that lingered on (while the five-four rhythms still pulsed below) charging the darkened seconds with an intense expectancy. And at last expectancy was fulfilled. There was a sudden explosive sunrise, and simultaneously, the Sixteen burst into song: Bottle of mine, it’s you I’ve always wanted!

Bottle of mine, why was I ever decanted (i.e. born)?

Skies are blue inside of you, The weather’s always fine; For There ain’t no Bottle in all the world Like that dear little Bottle of mine.

I shall return to the question of synthetic music below. For the moment, I should explain that the ‘bottle’ in the song is the one all inhabitants of the brave new world are blissfully trapped inside. It’s probably the same bottle as described by Mustapha Mond, Resident World Controller of Western Europe, in Chapter 16 as ‘an invisible bottle of infantile and embryonic fixations.’

It’s the bottle of soma-holiday. It’s what would happen if you could take happiness and, well, bottle it. As the sexophones fall silent, their ecstatic tones are replaced by ‘the very latest in slow Malthusian Blues’ and the couple ‘might have been twin embryos gently rocking together on the waves of a bottled ocean of blood surrogate.’ To understand this image, one has to refer back to Chapter One and the process by which humans are created in this ‘brave future where you can forget your past’ (Bob Marley sung ‘bright future’ and ‘you can’t forget your past’, but then he may not have been thinking dystopian thoughts when he wrote that song). The message in Huxley’s bottle is clear: a promise of no messages and no thoughts, just a gentle oceanic feeling of harmony summed up in the words Community, Identity, Stability.

This harmony is not always as complete as it seems. When Herbert goes alone to a Solidarity Service we see how, even in the midst of Ibiza, a malcontent wallflower can lurk unseen, simply by dancing.

Bernard arrives at the sky-scraping ‘Singery’ as it is called on Ludgate Hill. Having made his way in a lift to the appointed room, he enters. Thank Ford, he is not the last! In his rush, however, he sits next to the wrong woman. Her name is Morgana Rothschild: Morgana! Ford! Those black eyebrows of hers – that eyebrow, rather – for they met above the nose. Ford! And on his right was

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Clara Deterding. True, Clara’s eyebrows didn’t meet. But she was really too pneumatic.’

One instantly feels for Bernard in this age of the on fleek eyebrow and the enhanced bosom. These are details, but as usual the book effortlessly anticipates the conditions which prevail almost a century after it was written. The terror of eyebrows is an authentic prophecy, but why is Bernard so terrified? The answer is that when the President of this gathering has made the sign of the T (no crucifixes here) and switched on the synthetic music, a spiritual orgy is due to begin. He will be expected to become intimate with whomsoever is closest to hand, one eyebrow or two. This act of union is heralded by the First Solidarity Hymn.

‘Dedicated soma tablets’ are placed in the centre of the table around which the twelve celebrants sit and more soma is passed around. They drink to their annihilation, as you do, and then sing: For we are twelve, oh, make us one, Like drops within the Social River; Oh, make us now together run As swiftly as thy shining Flivver.

Bernard starts to feel the love, but still Morgana’s monobrow holds him back. The soma cup returns and this time they drink to ‘the imminence of His Coming’, but the eyebrow ‘continued to haunt him’ – he is unable to believe in the imminent coming.

He expects failure and smiles broadly regardless. By this time they are openly welcoming the death of their separate egos and the music is replaced by a Voice somewhere above their heads saying very slowly “Oh Ford, Ford, Ford.” A sensation of warmth ‘radiated thrillingly out from the solar plexus to every extremity of the bodies of those who listened; tears came to their eyes; their hearts, their bowels seemed to move within them.’

This is surely intended as a comic swipe at his friend D. H. Lawrence’s fixation with the solar plexus, quasi-mystical centre of the human frame. The movement of the bowels seems to portend a more obvious and scatological outcome. Thankfully, no such accident occurs. Instead, the footsteps of the Greater Being are now heard by the celebrants.

There is a heavy hint of Blakean mysticism in all this and the words of what many consider the alternative national anthem, ‘And did those feet in ancient time’ or Jerusalem. Even George V preferred it to the rather dreary God Save the King. Blake’s poem draws on the description of the Second Coming in Revelations and what must have seemed a far-fetched account of the Messiah visiting Glastonbury, though this would finally come to pass in 2017.

Suddenly, Morgana springs to her feet. “I hear him, I hear him,” she cries. Others follow with the same affirmation until Bernard feels compelled to stand up too. Though he hears nothing, he replicates the enthusiasm of the others, even shuffling and jigging up and down like them. Everyone then goes round in circular

procession, ‘stamping to the rhythm of the music, beating it out with hands on the buttocks in front; twelve pairs of hands beating as one; as one, twelve buttocks slabbily resounding.’

I think it’s fair to say that Huxley was somewhat ahead of our time here, let alone his own, unless I have been sadly misinformed about the newest dance crazes sweeping the clubs.

The climax of all this shuffling and bottom slapping comes with the boom of a great synthetic bass as the Twelve-in-One arrives, the incarnation of the Greater Being, and sings over feverish tom-toms: Orgy-porgy, Ford and fun, Kiss the girls and make them One. Boys at one with girls at peace; Orgy-porgy gives release.

What a song for our #MeToo times, bedevilled as they are by atrocious relations between the sexes and a fear of intimacy, though who, in this inhibited era, would dare sing it? The innocence of the original playground song – “Georgy Porgy pudding and pie / Kissed the girls and made them cry” – gives the whole scene an air of juvenile gaiety, utterly appropriate to the future Huxley has seen. No woman will have to cry in this dystopia, unless it’s with joy. The identity of Georgy will be obliterated in Orgy and with the disappearance of the ego they ‘wavered, broke, fell in partial disintegration on the ring of couches which surrounded – circle enclosing circle – the table and its planetary chairs.’ Everything turns red as if they are back in the womb. In the red twilight ‘it was as though some enormous negro dove were hovering benevolently over the now prone or supine dancers.’

I suppose the less said about that dove the better; even prophetic writers must sometimes betray the prejudices of their own lifetime. It is not clear what, if anything, the supine dancers get up to on the couches. A discreet veil is quickly drawn, some would say not quickly enough.

On the roof of the building afterwards, to the sound of Big Henry (the renamed Big Ben), Bernard and one of the women compare notes. She is in the appropriate raptures, though in a satiated, calm way; to be excited would show a lack of

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Ford happily seated in his Flivver

satisfaction. “Didn’t you think it was wonderful?” she asks him.

“Yes, I thought it was wonderful,” he lies. It is a moment of profound loneliness and failure: Separate and unatoned, while the others were being fused into the Greater Being; alone even in Morgana’s embrace…

Clearly, he has persevered in the attempt to overcome his repulsion. …much more alone, indeed, more hopelessly himself than he had ever been in his life before. He had emerged from that crimson twilight into the common electric glare with a self-consciousness intensified to the pitch of agony. He was utterly miserable, and perhaps […] it was his own fault. ‘Quite wonderful,’ he repeated; but the only thing he could think of was Morgana’s eyebrow.

Is it any wonder, given his antagonistic attitude and his dark moods, that Lenina finds Bernard odd? He is a lone malcontent in the midst of unanimous ecstasy, the kind of queer fish who, in the unlikely event of fetching up in an Ibiza night club, would slope off to bed early complaining of a headache, then be up before everyone else the next day, combing the island for authenticity. His friends would eventually track him down in a remote cove somewhere, attempting to read Don Quixote in the original Spanish. Fanny (Lenina’s best mate) offers the only plausible explanation: too much alcohol in his blood-surrogate.

THE UNINSPIRED WRITER A typical example of dystopian crowd control

‘Interzone trippin’ and I’m off to Annexia.

I gotta get a typewriter that’s sexier.’

From ‘Bug Powder Dust’ by Bomb the Bass, featuring Justin Warfield

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There is no song in this world denser in its references than ‘Bug Powder Dust’. It is beyond doubt a rap lyric, but it’s also a literary tour of Sixties hip mythology and a tribute to the work of William S. Burroughs, which is why I always assumed the line about getting ‘a typewriter that’s sexier’ came from Naked Lunch, just like the bug powder itself, the Interzone and the dystopian Annexia. But it turns out these were massive assumptions. I am not in the mood to reread Naked Lunch for the first time in over forty years, so I may never learn if the words are indeed from there. The author’s grandfather made adding machines; Burroughs typewriters were made by a separate branch of the family. Did Burroughs express the desire for a typewriter with more pneumatic qualities? I guess certain things are supposed to remain a mystery, and it’s probably better that way.

When George Orwell received that letter from his old teacher, he might have experienced a twinge of regret that his own typewriter was not sexier. The older writer was certainly wittier than the younger one. He was so suave, and his dystopia was such good fun, one struggled to think of it as dystopian at all. Nothing quite like Orgy-Porgy appears in Orwell’s work. From a spirit of hedonistic experiment that Huxley might well have picked up during the Twenties, we move instead into an Orwellian world of grim austerity.

There is a love affair at the centre of the narrative, but as we shall see it carries little of the sexual charge that animates the older book.

Harmless fun it is not.

Actually, the idea is ridiculous. Orwell would not have had any reason to feel a twinge, knowing as he did that his enterprise was entirely different. While Huxley was an experimenter and a little bit of a thrill seeker, it is hard to see Orwell’s spell as a defender of the Spanish Republic or as a ‘down and out’ as bouts of hedonism. His muse was far more sombre than Huxley’s, as was his prose. While both the old Etonians drifted as far away as possible from the playing fields and cloisters they had known, their paths could hardly have been more different.

Still, in his wittier, more satirical book, Huxley gives us one figure who suggests the problem of happiness for a writer. While Orwell could dwell on the misery of his dystopian vision and frighten us with its horrors, Huxley had to work harder at giving us some kind of handle on the soma pleasures of his future, just because happiness is not so interesting.

Helmholtz Watson is the writer in this happy society. A close friend of Bernard, he is an Alpha-Plus, which in the categories of the novel defines him as intelligent and a man of some stature.

Women find him irresistibly attractive. He lectures at the College of Emotional Engineering and, in the intervals between lectures, is a ‘working Engineer.’ He writes regularly for The Hourly Radio and has ‘the happiest knack for slogans and hypnopaedic rhymes.’

Helmholtz is very able, maybe too able; he suffers from an excess of thinking, a feeling of apartness like his less successful friend, which leads to disenchantment with the pleasures of the flesh and disappointment with his own jingles. He intimates his concerns to Bernard in a disarming way, as if he has only the faintest intimations of the problem himself:

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I’m thinking of a queer feeling I sometimes get, a feeling that I’ve got something important to say and the power to say it – only I don’t know what it is, and I can’t make any use of the power. If there was some different way of writing… Or else something else to write about […] I’m pretty good at inventing phrases – you know, the sort of words that suddenly make you jump, almost as though you’d sat on a pin, they seem so new and exciting even though they’re about something hypnopaedically obvious. But that doesn’t seem enough’ (Chapter Four).

Helmholtz is similar to Orwell’s Winston Smith in his line of work, which amounts to dumbing down the English language.

Yet, in Helmholtz there remains an obscure conviction that he is better than this. Eventually, he gets himself into trouble for handing out one of his own poems to his students – on being alone. Solitude is definitely not the kind of topic any brave new writer should be attempting. Nor has he had sufficient practice to pull it off, so the result is strangely flat and prosaic, despite its erratic rhymes, and he is still unable to transcend the level of erotic routine: Absence, say, of Susan’s, Absence of Egeria’s Arms and respective bosoms, Lips and, ah, posteriors, Slowly form a presence; Whose? And I ask, of what So absurd an essence, That something, which is not, Nevertheless should populate Empty night more solidly Than that with which we copulate, Why should it seem so squalidly?

The inarticulacy is painful. It is the garbled sound of emotional unintelligence even as it struggles to feel. It is bad art and bad feeling. Yet, there is a kind of pathos here, owing to the way

The enforced familiarity of modern music’s tunes is used to get past people’s shorter attention spans and assure them that everything is fine – a very Huxlean concept.

he gropes for something less squalid, which we might call love.

Bernard is not surprised by the scandalised reaction of the students and the Principal. After all, they have (in their sleep) received ‘at least a quarter of a million warnings against solitude.’

The result of all this inarticulacy is that Helmholtz only senses that he is a writer. When the Savage recites the story of Romeo and Juliet to him, he fails to grasp the tragedy of the situation, so amused is he by the incongruous idea that Juliet has a mother, for instance, or that people get buried in tombs rather than having their phosphorous recycled. Helmholtz laughs at the idea of ‘getting into a state about having a girl.’ The entire emotional structure is incomprehensible. ‘And yet,’ he tells the Savage, ‘I know quite well that one needs ridiculous, mad situations like that; one can’t write really well about anything else. Why was that old fellow [i.e. Shakespeare] such a marvellous propaganda technician? Because he had so many insane, excruciating things to get excited about. You’ve got to be hurt and upset; otherwise you can’t think of the really good, penetrating, X-rayish phrases.

But fathers and mothers!’ He shook his head. ‘You can’t expect me to keep a straight face about fathers and mothers. And who’s going to get excited about a boy having a girl or not having her? […] No,’ he concluded, with a sigh, ‘it won’t do. We need some other kind of madness and violence. But what? What? Where can one find it […] I don’t know,’ he said at last, ‘I don’t know’ (Chapter Twelve).

It is Helmholtz’s fate to fall foul of the rules and be banished to an island, but this actually excites him. The Controller offers him the chance of living in a tropical paradise. Helmholtz opts for the rigours of the Falklands. ‘I believe,’ he says, ‘one would write better if the climate were bad. If there were a lot of wind and storms, for example…’ It’s hard to imagine that he will ever

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Burroughs at his typewriter. He really did need a sexier one.

be little in the way of hedonistic pleasures to relieve the bleakness of his future.

A FOOTNOTE ON SYNTHETIC MUSIC The nature of the soundtrack to the lives of people in Huxley’s dystopia is difficult to imagine. Quite possibly it is a species of jazz, hence the colour of the eucharistic dove at the climax of the orgy. It might equally well resemble muzak of the kind played in lifts and airport lounges. Ease of listening would definitely be a necessary attribute.

But, just possibly, it is neither of these things. It is simply modern pop, since music ain’t what it used to be either. Thoughty2 has a YouTube video entitled The TRUTH Why Modern Music Is Awful. It’s over twenty minutes long, and yet anyone who has managed to read this far cannot be suffering from too short an attention span and I recommend they watch it. be a good writer, even among the icy winds and the penguins, but Helmholtz is at least aware enough to know what he lacks.

Friction, essentially.

Likewise, Orwell was to head for a cold, windy island to write his great dystopia. Far from the metropolis, it was called Jura and situated in the remote Scottish Hebrides.

Barnhill on the Isle of Jura, Scotland Burroughs at his typewriter. He really did need a sexier one.

This was hardly a surprising choice. Orwell had always been familiar with the stimulating qualities of adversity. There would

In essence, and according to the Spanish National Research Council (2012), the argument goes that modern music has been impoverished along three metrics: harmonic complexity, timbral diversity and loudness. The often bewildering number of instruments in the old pop songs (notably in the Beatles’ ‘A Day in the Life’) has been reduced down to keyboard, drum machine, sampler and computer software, which tends to ‘suck the creativity out of music.’ Melodies, rhythms and even vocals are increasingly similar. The ‘millennial whoop’ has become omnipresent, though it’s difficult to reproduce here.

As for marketing, the enforced familiarity of tunes is used to get past people’s shorter attention spans and assure them that everything is fine – a very Huxlean concept.

Lyrics have measurably declined in complexity. A vast amount of material is written by Max Martin and Lukasz Gottwald, whoever they are.

The hook, which gets people interested in a song, occurs sooner and happens more often.

Through ‘dynamic range compression,’ the loudness of the song is more uniform, at the cost of muddying the sound and breaking down its nuances.

And, because of the huge expense of promoting music nowadays, the industry has rejected the model of trying new bands or acts out on the public, instead telling the public what it should like and limiting the risk. Through a process of relentlessly plugging a tune, the ‘mere-exposure effect’ kicks in.

After initial indifference to, or even repulsion from, a tune, the release of dopamine that occurs when something familiar is heard takes over, and before long you like it enough to keep playing it, repeatedly.

Thus, ‘music as an art form is dying.’ Or, to put it another way, it is becoming ether-music.

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Bust Your Belly for a Healthier Heart Health Hazards Associated with Growing Waists

by Harvard Men's Health Watch If your abdomen looks like an apple (or a beach ball), it’s a sign that something hazardous lies beneath.

What’s a telltale sign of potential health problems? Look down.

Whether you call it a potbelly or spare tire, this noticeable bulge can be more dangerous than you realize.

“It’s common for men to put on a few extra pounds every year as they age, but they really should pay attention to increasing waist size,” says Dr. Jody Dushay, an endocrinologist with Harvardaffiliated Beth Israel Lahey Health. “Any extra weight around the waist can be especially detrimental to your health.”

NATURAL CHANGES Why do men get these bellies? As you age, your metabolism naturally slows and you burn calories at a slower rate. But many men continue to eat like they did in their 30s and 40s — and are less active as well. “When you consume extra calories and don’t burn them off, they get stored as fat,” says Dr. Dushay.

Testosterone levels also drop as men age, which leads to less muscle mass and therefore a higher percent of body fat.

But it’s where you accumulate this fat that is the real problem.

There are two kinds of fat: subcutaneous and visceral.

Subcutaneous fat is located just under the skin, most obviously around the belly, thighs, and buttocks. This is the visible kind you

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can feel with a pinch.

In comparison, you cannot see or feel visceral fat, as it lies deep within the abdominal cavity and pads the spaces between your abdominal organs.

About %90 of body fat is subcutaneous, while visceral fat makes up the remaining %10. Even though visceral constitutes a smaller percentage, it has the biggest impact on your health.

How can you tell if you have too much visceral fat? Your waist size offers a clue. “The fat that you can see and feel around your waist is also a sign that you have higher amounts of visceral fat that surrounds and even infiltrates your organs,” says Dr. Dushay.

As you age, your metabolism naturally slows and you burn calories at a slower rate. But many men continue to eat like they did in their 30s and 40s - and are less active as well.

GUT CHECK

training (HIIT). With HIIT, you exercise at a higher intensity for a brief time followed by a period to catch your breath, and then you repeat the cycle for the entire workout. For example, instead of walking at a normal pace on the treadmill, do a few minutes at a greater speed or incline (or both) followed by a period of similar or longer duration at your regular pace.

If you walk outside, pick a landmark like a mailbox or telephone pole and walk to it as fast as you can. Then walk normally for a few minutes, pick another landmark, and repeat for the duration of your walk.

Your fat-burning workouts should be 20 to 30 minutes, at least three days a week. You can gradually build up to an hour.

However, always check with your doctor before adopting any new workout. You may also want to enlist a personal trainer to help design a personalized HIIT program. Many gyms and fitness centers offer specific HIIT classes, too.

Even if you don’t have a belly yet, you should keep an eye out for its appearance. “Your waist size can be a good indicator of your current and future health,” says Dr. Dushay. “It is an important sign, just like blood pressure. Monitor it and focus on keeping it around the same size.”

A tape measure is a simple way to keep tabs on visceral fat. Place the bottom of the tape at the top of your right hipbone, then pull the tape around at navel level (not the narrowest part of your torso). Do not suck in your gut or pull the tape tight enough to compress the area. For men, a waist circumference of 40 inches or more is considered a sign of excess visceral fat. But you don’t have to focus only on numbers. Monitor whether your pants get snug. This also can be a sign you are gaining visceral fat.

THE HEART OF FAT

A man sleeps on the couch, with a TV remote control balancing on his protruding stomach.

(Getty)

This hidden fat can mean trouble for your heart. For instance, an analysis in the September 2016Journal of the American College of Cardiology found that people with higher amounts of visceral fat have a greater heart disease risk.

Scientists looked at studies that used CT scans to assess how much subcutaneous and visceral fat had accumulated in 1,106 participants from the Framingham Heart Study. The people’s average age was 45, and %56 were men.

Over the six-year follow-up period, participants had an average increase of %22 in subcutaneous fat and a %45 increase in visceral fat. While both were linked to a greater overall cardiovascular disease risk, people with the greatest increase in visceral fat had the most adverse changes in metabolic risk factors, such as high blood sugar and high triglycerides (a type of fat found in blood).

They also had lower levels of HDL (good) cholesterol.

FOCUS ON INTENSITY What is the best way to fight the fat you cannot see? It is the same for fat you can see — intense aerobic exercise.

“Following a high-quality diet is necessary if you want to lose belly fat, but physical activity may do even more to reduce visceral fat,” says Dr. Dushay.

The kind of aerobic exercise doesn’t matter — for instance, brisk walking, running, swimming, cycling — as long as the intensity raises your heart rate enough that it is uncomfortable to maintain a conversation, says Dr. Dushay.

Some workouts also should include high-intensity interval

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A close-up midsection of an overweight, middle age man's torso exercising outdoors trying to lose weight. (Getty)

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Tunisia and Nigeria’s Clash for the Bronze Underwhelming Third Place Play-off Ends with a Nigerian Victory 54

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Tunisia started to press more effectively during the second half, as substitute Firas Chaouat side netted one shot.

During the first half, André Ayew scored for Ghana but his goal was disallowed for an alleged handball.

Because VAR would not be used until the quarter-finals, the Ghanaians couldn’t appeal the referee to review his decision. The game remained relatively quiet until Taha Yassine Khenissi scored for Tunisia at the 73rd minute.

For all intents and purposes, the game should have ended 0-1, but Tunisia made their jobs harder for themselves after substitute Rami Bedoui scored an own goal during injury time while trying to defend a free-kick. Both teams came close to scoring during extra time, but both goalkeepers made sure to keep their nations’ tournament dreams alive.

Tunisia coach Alain Giresse subbed on goalkeeper Farouk Ben Mustapha for the penalty shootout, which turned out to be a smart decision considering he made the crucial save that saw his team win 4-5.

Tunisia’s quarter-final performance against Madagascar was much more straightforward as three second-half goals from Ferjani Sassi, Youssef Msakni and Naïm Sliti ended the tournament underdog’s run. Tunisia dominated throughout the game, as they had 18 shots with 8 of them being on target.

Nigerian players celebrate after winning the 2019 Africa Cup of Nations (CAN) Third place play-off football match between Tunisia and Nigeria at the Al Salam stadium in Cairo on July 2019 ,17. (AFP)

by Ali El Shamy TUNISIA’S CAF JOURNEY Tunisia’s performance in the group stages left a lot to be desired. The North African team only managed to secure three points from three back to back draws; however, that was enough to see them through to the last 16 since Angola and Mauritania only managed to gain two points each.

Tunisia would face Ghana in the next round, a game that was slated to be a thriller between two tournament favorites, unfortunately, it ended up being quite underwhelming.

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Their semi-final against Senegal was drama-filled, as both teams were rewarded with a penalty during extra time, both of which were saved. Tunisia then treaded on familiar territory as they headed into their second extra time of the tournament, and in another repeated scenario Tunisian defender Dylan Bronn headed the ball into his own goal to give Senegal a 0-1 lead. With seven minutes remaining on the clock, the referee awarded Tunisia with a penalty for handball, but he then reversed his decision after consulting VAR causing heartbreak for the North Africans as they bowed out of the tournament through their own blunder.

NIGERIA’S CAF JOURNEY Nigeria performed relatively well in the group stage, having won two games and lost one against Madagascar.

Their last 16 game against Cameroon was a thrilling 2-3 win. Odion Ighalo put Nigeria’s Super Eagles in front at the 16th minute of the first half, but goals from Stéphane Bahoken and Clinton N'Jie, respectively put Cameroon

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1-2 in front at half time. Nigeria went into the second half showing great teamwork, Ighalo scored his second goal of the game leveling the score 2-2. Then Arsenal winger Alex Iwobi scored at the 66th minute to make the score 2-3 in favor of Nigeria. The comeback instilled within the Nigerian team and the fans the belief that they can go far in the tournament, perhaps even win it.

Nigeria then faced South Africa in the quarter-finals.

Having already knocked out hosts Egypt, South Africa were ready to do another tournament upset. South Africa’s poor defending saw Samuel Chukwueze score during the first half. Then South African midfielder Bongani Zungu scored a header from a free-kick during the last 20 minutes of the game. The match seemed destined to go into extra time, but an 89th-minute corner goal from William TroostEkong was enough to make Nigeria qualify for the semifinal.

Then came the big game against Algeria, as both teams were arguably the best in the tournament and many thought that the match would have been better suited as the final rather than the semi-final. As expected, both team’s put on a superb performance, as Algeria’s high pressing game caused Troost-Ekong, Nigeria’s hero from the last game, to accidentally put the goal into his own net, thus putting Algeria 0-1 in front. Both teams kept attacking, Algeria in search for the second goal that would put them in a comfortable position and Nigeria looking for that equalizing goal. Nigeria would eventually get a penalty during the second half after a VAR review confirmed Aissa Mandi handled the ball inside the penalty box. Odion Ighalo subsequently equalized for Nigeria, raising hopes that they can still make it to the final. The game went into injury time and seemed that it would slip into extra time, but Algeria

The game eventually ended 0-1 in Nigeria's favor, whose players went home with bronze medals, while Tunisia’s players will have to go back to their country emptyhanded.

were awarded a free-kick and Manchester City’s Riyad Mahrez scored a beautiful goal that volleyed past both the wall and the goalkeeper, ending the game 1-2 for his team.

TUNISIA VS NIGERIA: A FORGETTABLE GAME It is often said that the third-place playoff is the one game no international footballer wants to be a part of. The bronze medal game is often the target of jokes, as fans slate it as a competition for the losers’ medal, nevertheless

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Tunisia's midfielder Ferjani Sassi (C) heads the ball during the 2019 Africa Cup of Nations (CAN) Third place play-off football match between Tunisia and Nigeria at the Al Salam stadium in Cairo on July 2019 ,17. (AFP)

it is still part of many international tournaments and losing semi-finalists have to take part in it, rather they like it or not.

Nigeria made an early impact as Ighalo scored at the third minute, which put his tournament total to five goals making him the top scorer as of the writing of this article. Tunisia tried to respond throughout the game incorporating their favored strategy of shooting from outside the box, hoping that one shot will end up in goal. Tunisia started to press more effectively during the second half, as substitute Firas Chaouat side netted one

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shot. As the game went on, Tunisia grew more desperate for their first goal, while Nigeria wanted another goal to put the game to rest. Samuel Chukwueze came close to scoring from a shot outside the six-yard box, and substitute Samuel Kalu almost scored a thrilling freekick during the dying minutes of the game, but Tunisian goalkeeper Moez Ben Cherifia was able to save both shots. The game eventually ended 0-1 in Nigeria's favor, whose players went home with bronze medals, while Tunisia’s players will have to go back to their country emptyhanded.