Young Diplomats

Ethiopia may be one step closer to realizing its dream of finishing construction on the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam. On Dec. 29, Ethiopia, Egypt and Sudan signed the “Khartoum document,” an agreement on the terms of moving forward with the problematic venture. While the agreement is by no means a final resolution, it is notable that Ethiopia has shown more willingness to compromise by signing it, thereby agreeing to technical negotiations that could lead to a consensus with countries further downstream on the Nile River. By cooperating in negotiations and holding back on diverting Nile River water into a planned reservoir, Ethiopia will also have an easier time finding foreign investment to complete the dam, which has Egypt concerned about the safety of its water supply.

Analysis

Still, it is notable that Ethiopia has agreed not to divert any water from the Nile River into the reservoir until the studies are complete and there is a consensus on managing dam operations. Currently the Nile River is diverted around the construction site, but it is the removal of volume from this stream into the reservoir — which could take up to six years — that could greatly reduce water supplies into Egypt. Eventually, the static water in the reservoir will also lead to a reduction in volume because of evaporation, which could deteriorate water quality. Holding back on filling the reservoir is something that Egypt has requested for quite some time, but until now, Ethiopia had been hesitant to commit. That Addis Ababa has finally agreed to proceed with negotiations, risking slowing construction, is a clear sign of its desire to reach a regional consensus. This is further proved by allowing Egypt a voice in logistical discussions and the consideration given to adding more gates to the dam to ensure sufficient throughput.

Despite Ethiopia’s willingness to give negotiations a chance, there is no notable indication that Cairo and Addis Ababa are any closer to achieving a consensus. Egypt has a critical interest in securing its historical water rights and is insistent that Ethiopia sign a legally binding deal with enforcement guarantees, which Ethiopia has been unwilling to do. Egypt also wants to be part of the dam administration, but Ethiopia has so far only allowed it an investment role. These issues are incredibly important to Egypt, as well as to Ethiopia as it tries to leverage the gigantic hydropower potential of the dam for greater economic progress, and this will make it difficult for the two to come to agreement. That is why the independent technical studies are so important. They will prove or disprove whether the dam threatens Egypt’s water supply. They will also reassure investors.

If Egypt and Ethiopia fail to reach a consensus, Egypt plans to take the issue to the U.N. Security council under the pretext of a national security threat, although any potential U.N. response would likely hinge on actual water flows into Egypt. Even at that point, however, disputes over the methods used to measure the depth of the Nile River could lead to arguments over the actual impact of the dam. Egyptian politicians and the public have pushed for a military strike against the dam, but given the complexities of such an operation this is extremely unlikely. Ethiopia had been delaying negotiations since the start of this dispute in 2010, but now it looks as if Addis Ababa finally feels it is in a position to comfortably push for consensus. If it were not hopeful or willing to further accommodate the Egyptian concerns, Ethiopia would not be willing to hold back on any construction in favor of these negotiations.

As long as the region remains divided on the dam, actual construction could be disrupted at any time. The dam is reported to be about 50 percent complete right now, and water is being diverted around the construction site. Still, even though construction is far along, Ethiopia has been unable to secure foreign investment for the project, and less than 30 percent of the total $4.8 billion price tag to complete the dam has been secured. Unless Ethiopia manages to secure the required funding, completion of the dam could easily be delayed by several years. This is precisely why negotiations are so important: The better negotiations go, the better Ethiopia’s chances for obtaining funding.

After three years of negotiations, a peace deal between the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the government is within reach, and final negotiations to demobilize the militant group are set to begin in earnest in 2016. However, the fate of the second-largest leftist rebel movement in Colombia, the National Liberation Army (ELN), has not been decided. While not a part of the government’s negotiations with the FARC, the ELN has been both helped and hurt by the talks in 2015. The agreements, specifically the transitional justice mechanisms that were created to facilitate the peace process, have likely made the ELN more willing to negotiate its own deal. At the same time, peace with the FARC will undoubtedly make the ELN an easier target for the government until it agrees to talks.

Therefore, peace talks between the ELN and the Colombian government are likely on the horizon for 2016. If successful, the aftermath of an ELN demobilization will resemble that of the FARC: Peace will spread, though some of the insurgency’s members will likely continue criminal activities after it disbands.

The Smaller Counterpart

Founded in 1964, the ELN has long been the FARC’s smaller counterpart in Colombia’s insurgency. The group’s power spiked in the 1990s and early 2000s, when cocaine revenue filled its coffers and enabled it to mount increasingly frequent attacks. However, as the government’s military capabilities steadily improved in the 2000s, the threat posed by the ELN waned. The group was steadily beaten back into several enclaves — the northeastern departments of Norte de Santander, Boyaca, Arauca and Casanare; the northwestern department of Choco; and the southwestern departments of Cauca and Putumayo — where it retains influence to this day.

With the FARC moving toward a peace deal in 2016, it is quite plausible that the ELN will open formal negotiations with the state this year as well. A successful negotiation would practically eliminate politically motivated insurgent attacks in Colombia in a matter of years, opening up previously threatened areas of the interior to energy exploration, mining and agriculture. But like the FARC negotiation, an ELN peace deal will likely leave splinter groups active in criminal activities, including extortion, kidnapping and cocaine trafficking. Such groups will be weaker and easier for security forces to isolate and target. Still, certain areas will likely continue to see relatively high levels of violence because of these activities.

And while the ELN has been involved in preliminary talks with the government since January 2014, it was the guarantees given to the FARC through transitional justice mechanisms in September 2015 that likely influenced the ELN talks. The government and the FARC agreed to create an alternative tribunal separate from the criminal justice system to hear and deliver punishment for crimes committed during the insurgency. The development made it more likely that FARC leaders and other commanders would demobilize without fear of receiving criminal penalties. The Colombian government also decided not to extradite high-ranking FARC members to move the talks forward. Having seen these concessions benefit the FARC, the ELN will likely demand similar ones in any negotiation with the government.

Opportunities and Risks

If negotiations begin, they would bring violence in the country down to historic lows: There have been only five FARC attacks against security forces since the cease-fire was implemented in July 2015. Of course, the cease-fire did not include the ELN, and its attacks have continued, but the group is smaller and lacks the nationwide reach of the FARC. The real risk in the coming years will come from the ELN’s capacity for criminal activity. Remnants of the group are likely to stay involved in extortion, kidnapping and the production and transport of cocaine. Thus some areas, such as Arauca and Norte de Santander, will continue to see criminal activity, albeit on a smaller scale.

Successful talks with the ELN will reduce the threat of militancy by splintering the group, potentially heralding a period of peace and opportunity the likes of which Colombia has not seen since its insurgencies began. But talks will also create pockets of criminal activity that will remain in place for years to come.

The diplomatic crisis that erupted over the weekend between Saudi-Iranians is certainly noisy, but it is merely the manifestation of a deepening geopolitical rift in the region. With the United States attempting to balance the region and Iran being able to shed its pariah status as part of that effort, friction between the region’s prominent Sunni and Shiite players was already escalating and the Saudi-Iranian rivalry is a symbol of this power struggle.

Analysis

The controversy over Shiite cleric Nimr al-Nimr had been simmering for years. He was arrested in July 2012 for inciting Shiite activists in Saudi Arabia’s oil-rich and heavily Shiite Eastern Province. The embers of the Arab Spring were still burning, and Saudi Arabia had already militarily intervened in its tiny Shiite-majority neighbor, Bahrain, to reinforce Sunni rule on the Arabian Peninsula. Riyadh was not about to take any chances with charismatic religious leaders such as al-Nimr, who could create more serious trouble for the House of Saud within the kingdom.

Still, wary of instigating further Shiite unrest, Riyadh took its time with al-Nimr’s sentence. Authorities sentenced him to death in October 2014. The Saudi Supreme Court upheld the death sentence a year later, leaving it up to Saudi King Salman to give the final word on the timing of the execution. In hopes of diluting attention on al-Nimr, Saudi Arabia decided that he would be executed with 46 other convicts, most of whom were Sunnis accused of having ties to al Qaeda. According to the sentence, the Saudi government would not have to give prior notice of the execution. Nonetheless, it did not take long for Shiite activists to express their outrage at the Jan. 2 execution, and there are numerous indications that the Iranian government enabled the attack on the Saudi Embassy in Tehran in the wake of the execution.

Saudi Arabia would not have gone forward with the execution if it did not feel confident that it could manage the backlash — particularly in the Eastern Province, which is vital to the Saudi oil industry. Still, Saudi security concerns are already on the rise, and local jihadists trying to create greater sectarian conflict in the kingdom could exploit the unrest following the execution. Though Saudi security forces have been able to tamp down on low-level attacks by Shiite activists, a more worrying concern has been the growing number of jihadist suicide attacks taking place not only in the Sunni parts of the country but also in Shiite-populated areas. Suicide bombings targeting Shiite mosques are designed to goad Shiites into retaliating, creating an even larger security problem for Saudi leaders — particularly Crown Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, who has long led Saudi Arabia’s counterterrorism efforts as interior minister. Jihadist exploitation of the al-Nimr execution would likely involve attacks on soft sectarian targets and security forces, given the difficulty in targeting and disrupting Saudi oil infrastructure with such attacks.

The execution of al-Nimr will also complicate already difficult negotiations over a political transition in Syria. Saudi Arabia and Iran agreed to sit at the same table when foreign ministers met in December to negotiate over Syria, but the two sides fundamentally disagree over which groups should be party to a post-al Assad political solution — assuming all parties can meet the enormous challenge of creating the necessary conditions on the battlefield to attempt a political transition in Damascus. The proxy battle in Syria between Iran and Saudi Arabia extends to Lebanon, where an agonizingly long-awaited compromise on the presidency is contingent on an understanding between Tehran and Riyadh.

Saudi Arabia is currently at the helm of the Sunni front challenging Iran, but it is not the only Sunni power experiencing tension with Tehran. As Turkey grows more assertive in the region, Iraqi Kurdistan and Syria will be critical arenas for competition between the old adversaries. Saudi Arabia’s severing of diplomatic relations with Tehran is also an important litmus test for the Sunni regional coalition that Riyadh has painstakingly tried to assemble over the past couple of years. So far, the countries that have followed Riyadh’s lead in protesting Iran are Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Sudan. Bahrain, sitting tight in the Saudi camp, had already recalled its ambassador from Iran and expelled the Iranian charge d’affaires in October following the discovery of a weapons cache allegedly tied to Iran. The United Arab Emirates, which has been in close military coordination with Saudi Arabia in Yemen, Libya and Syria, downgraded its diplomatic ties with Iran by recalling its ambassador and ordered a reduction in the number of Iranian diplomats stationed in the Emirates. Sudan, which has seen its alliance with Riyadh strengthen and distance from Iran grow in recent years thanks to Saudi financial assistance, expelled the Iranian ambassador. Kuwait, aware of its own Shiite minority, condemned Iran after the attack on the Saudi Embassy but stopped short of cutting relations.

Egypt also chose to be more cautious, condemning Iran and avoiding any mention of Mohamed Fathi Abdel-Ati, an Egyptian national who was one of the Sunnis executed in the same group as al-Nimr. Saudi Arabia has been trying to foster a tighter relationship with Cairo to underpin its Arab coalition and will be signing loans and grants worth $3 billion for Egypt on Jan. 5 to make clear the priority Saudi Arabia is giving the relationship. Egypt will gladly accept the financial support, but Cairo can be expected to maintain a much more balanced approach when it comes to contentious sectarian disputes in the region.

The al-Nimr execution is one piece of a much larger and intensifying geopolitical competition in the region. Plenty of other events could trigger a similar reaction, including the pending death sentences of al-Nimr’s nephew, Ali al-Nimr, and other Shiite activists. Saudi Arabia will be careful to defend its oil installations while dealing with fresh bouts of Shiite unrest and potential jihadist attacks. While coping with these security distractions at home, Saudi Arabia will look abroad for allies in its time of need. The response will be mixed from its Sunni neighbors, depending on how much they rely on Saudi security and financial assistance. The United States and others in the West will meanwhile do their best to keep their distance from the proxy battles that are part and parcel of the changing regional balance of power between Iran and its Sunni adversaries.

As the Russians and Iranians ramped up their support for the Syrian government over the last three months of 2015, they focused on counterattacking the largely Islamist rebel forces in northern Syria. However, during the past week the Syrian loyalist forces, with significant aid from their allies, have begun major operations in southern Syria, particularly in Daraa and Quneitra provinces.

The new loyalist offensives in the south focus on Sheikh Miskin, a strategically located crossroads town located just west of the M5 highway. Rebels successfully seized the town in January 2015 and from there have continued to seriously threaten the loyalists’ narrow logistical corridor that runs from Damascus to the their embattled forces in Daraa city.

The initial loyalist offensive managed to retake the northern parts of the town and its outlying bases, but a rebel counterattack led to difficult urban fighting and continuous back-and-forth advances by both sides. The loyalists have lost a considerable number of tanks and vehicles in the town but have also inflicted heavy casualties on the rebels with their heavy artillery and airstrikes. There is also a loyalist effort to reach the town of Nawa, located west of Sheikh Miskin.

The battle also involves an expanded Russian air campaign that is targeting the Free Syrian Army Southern Front. This breaks the alleged accord, which has largely held until now, between the Russians and the Jordanians to avoid increasing attacks on their preferred proxies. With loyalist offensives currently taking place in both northern and southern Syria, the Syrian government is rallying once again after its recent losses. However, the intensification in fighting is undermining the international effort to push through the cease-fire that was originally planned for this month.

China’s massive economic expansion since the end of the Cold War has transformed it from an isolated and impoverished country to a major actor on the world stage. But growth has introduced vulnerabilities, and Chinese economic security interests are now scattered far and wide. At the same time, China has come to see itself as a great power — and one that deserves a military commensurate with this status. Protecting its interests abroad and supplementing economic influence with military influence, however, will require massive changes to the current system.

Beijing’s 2008 defense white paper set the tone for these changes, and each subsequent year has brought further refinement. In 2016, a new counterterrorism law lays the legal groundwork to conduct security operations overseas. Beijing has also continued its restructuring of the People’s Liberation Army. Whereas before, the navy and air force were both under the command of the ground forces, now there will be joint command of combat operations. These changes pave the way for China’s military to become more active abroad. China’s capabilities are not yet mature, but they are developing. However, growing international economic and security challenges mean that China may find itself being called on to test its overseas capabilities in 2016.

Turning Outward

On Dec. 27, the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress passed the nation’s first counterterrorism law. Much attention has been focused on the law’s domestic ramifications, especially in the western region of Xinjiang and on issues of media freedom and cybersecurity. But the law also sets the stage for Beijing to become involved in overseas counterterrorism operations. Article VII stipulates that, with the approval of relevant countries, state security or military personnel may be sent abroad on counterterrorism missions. Though China may not be engaged in direct counterterrorism operations abroad anytime soon, Beijing will now need only to seek the approval by the State Council or the Central Military Commission.

Initially, China will probably send additional investigators, intelligence collectors and security liaisons abroad as it expands domestic collections and responds to individual incidents against Chinese personnel, businesses or activities. But these initial operations will be significant. As with earlier anti-piracy operations in the Gulf of Aden, China will use its overseas deployments to gather intelligence, learn best practices from others and gain valuable experience.

The recent changes to the structure of the Chinese military also provide a foundation for expanded operations abroad. The People’s Liberation Army ground forces will now have a separate service headquarters, putting an end to the outdated structure in which the navy and air force were merely adjuncts to the army in its operations. Now, the ground, air, and naval branches as well as strategic weapons will each have their own equal service headquarters, paving the way for a unified command in military regions or combat zones. Giving the army a singular, separate command will allow it to focus on its evolving mission, both with the restructuring of the old army-dominated military area command system and with its expanding mandate to focus on cross border and overseas operations, rather than primarily on domestic security and defense.

Although Beijing only formally unveiled these changes recently, these adjustments have been underway for some time. In China’s 2008 defense white paper, which sets the tone for future military adjustments, there was a heavy focus on what is referred to as “military operations other than war.” These operations include disaster response, search and rescue, anti-piracy operations, medical operations and even infrastructure development. These are the military’s “green diplomacy” tools, which China has watched the United States effectively deploy around the globe to demonstrate its strength and involvement. China has already begun steps toward establishing such a presence. In 2007, the naval branch of the People’s Liberation Army launched the purpose-built Type 920 Hospital Ship well before it considered sending its own armed forces overseas. This allowed Beijing to begin to build up its skills in expeditionary operations while gaining goodwill abroad. It also set a precedent for local populations to see uniformed Chinese soldiers without noting it as odd.

The greater vision laid out in China’s 2015 defense white paper makes it clear that the goal is to fully transform the role of the military, reorienting each branch toward overseas operations and expanding the military’s role to include the protection of Chinese interests abroad. The paper defined these interests in part as “energy and resources, strategic sea lines of communication, as well as institutions, personnel and assets abroad.” This will mean a dramatic shift from China’s internally focused model, which fit with China’s stated policy of noninterference, toward one in line with that of the global powers, which use their military influence abroad as an active tool of national power. This change has become necessary as international instability and the expansion of terrorism and piracy now threaten China’s significantly expanded economic and political connections around the world. This represents an explicit shift in China’s rhetoric, away from simply being one of many responsible stakeholders in the international system to being a great power with a military commensurate with its role.

New Urgency

The challenge for China is that it may have to test these changes sooner than expected. Iran has already suggested China take a more active role in resolving security issues in the Middle East. Russia, too, has welcomed China’s new counterterrorism law and suggested it provides a foundation for more active international cooperation between the two countries. Beijing also recently launched its massive Belt and Road Initiative and has struggled to find sufficient security arrangements for land routes through known trouble spots such as Afghanistan and western Pakistan. It has also dedicated aircraft carriers to a future role of securing key maritime routes that fall under Belt and Road. In short, as China adjusts its legal structure to allow overseas actions and restructures its forces to be able to carry out such actions, it will be called upon to use them — perhaps unexpectedly. Already Chinese forces have increased joint training exercises with countries around the world and have been gaining experience as part of U.N. peacekeeping operations, even if rarely in direct combat operations.

This poses a challenge. Creating the legal framework for overseas military activities is much simpler than actually carrying out such operations. Concretely, these will require Beijing to build upon the military’s basic skill sets, transport capacity and logistical structures. More complex, however, are the political considerations of overseas involvement. China’s slow movement on military reform has been due more to the fear of global perceptions than to real legal restraints. Beijing has managed to depict China’s emergence economically, politically and militarily as something peaceful, or at least as non-threatening to its neighbors. Following the guidance of Deng Xiaoping, China has largely pursued a noninterference policy with the idea of not showing its overseas military strength until its economic and political strengths were solidified. Instead, China has used economic and political tools to fulfill its interests abroad but largely refrained from direct military intervention, although it has been an avid arms seller and supplier. This taboo has steadily eroded, with China first participating in U.N. and anti-piracy operations and by taking a more assertive role in the South and East China seas. These regional interventions, in turn, have provided an incentive for neighboring powers, such as Japan, to actively counterbalance China.

Even if Beijing decides to make a decisive break with the vision of Deng, active intervention brings its own risks. First is the question of whether Chinese troops are prepared to carry out actions abroad. A significant failure in an operation would prove politically damaging both at home and among China’s peers and partners. Once China takes its first steps into the arena of international intervention, it will be nearly impossible to step back without being perceived as weak or ineffective. This could embolden those opposed to expanded Chinese interests abroad to move politically or physically against Chinese assets or personnel. Involvement overseas, particularly in counterterrorism operations, also places China squarely among the list of potential terrorist targets.

Beijing is aware of these risks, however, and sees itself as already in the sights of groups such as the Islamic State, which it fears has direct links with ethnic Uighurs in western China. Finally, by taking a more active role, the international perceptions of Beijing may shift, with China coming to be seen as just another emerging imperial power, eroding the credibility of its offers of purportedly disinterested assistance. This, too, can cause new problems with China’s economic activities in Africa, Latin America, and Central and South Asia where such sentiments can prove strong, leading to grassroots violence against Chinese workers or the derailing of larger deals.

First forays are fraught with risk, but despite the dilemmas of emerging as a world military player, China must do so if it wants to preserve its economic interests abroad and not be seen as an international laggard. This may begin in places such as Pakistan and Afghanistan, where China has a significant economic interest in pipelines and transportation corridors and sees a direct tie to its Uighur militant issues. China will likely seek to shape any intervention as within the framework of international cooperation as opposed to being the protection of Chinese national interests. But as the United Kingdom, France, Russia and the United States have seen time and again, once intervention begins, it is a hard habit to break.

By Jasmin Mahmoud, a prominent expert of Palestinian Society and the Israeli Palestinian conflict.

In early October, 19-year-old Palestinian Mohannad Shafiq al-Halabi stabbed four Israelis in Jerusalem’s Old City before police shot him dead. This set off a by now familiar chain of events in Israel and the West Bank as Palestinians clashed with Israeli soldiers and settlers. The view from Gaza, separated from the West Bank by less than 40 kilometers (25 miles) and an even narrower political gulf, remains as complicated and delicate as ever.

Initially, the events took Hamas by surprise, and the Gaza-based group was nervous about supporting the uprising brewing among Palestinians. Hamas had to act carefully: If it denounced the violence, Palestinians would accuse it of losing its will to fight for them and of pursuing negotiations with the enemy. But if attacks on Israelis continued unabated, and if the Israeli government perceived Hamas as helping fuel the violence, it might use the unrest as an excuse to launch another offensive in Gaza. Therefore, Hamas decided to focus on keeping the violence contained to the West Bank and not allow it to spread to the Gaza Strip. Hamas leaders urged the group’s militant wing, the al-Qassam Brigades, to refrain from launching rockets into Israel — the main trigger of the 2014 Israel-Gaza war.

But with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas largely declining to back an armed resistance against the Israelis, it created an opportunity for Hamas leaders to further erode the standing of Abbas, their longtime rival, in the minds of his supporters. Hamas sources told me that the group has the arms and the power to transform the popular clashes into an armed resistance. However, according to one source, Hamas does not want such an escalation at the moment, in large part because it would undermine the group’s public diplomacy efforts and weaken the international pressure on Israel to allow an independent Palestinian state.

At the same time, Hamas and the Palestine Islamic Jihad have been working periodically with other parties to find ways to keep the clashes in the West Bank going. According to another Hamas source: “This Intifada will be how Hamas returns to power in the West Bank, because security coordination between the Palestinian Authority and Israel will collapse. It is Hamas’ best opportunity to ensure that Abbas loses the support of the Palestinian street.”

So Hamas has tried to walk a fine line, publicly supporting the Palestinian backlash without creating problems for itself at home. In a speech during Friday prayers on Oct. 9, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh proclaimed: “This is the best time to announce the armed resistance in the West Bank — the ‘Third Intifada’ against the Israeli occupation. We are ready to face Israel, and we are supporting our brothers in the West Bank. We will not leave them alone to face the Israeli military attack.”

Haniyeh’s intent was to validate the unrest in the West Bank, not encourage its spread to the Gaza Strip. But youth of Gaza took his words as an invitation to escalate the situation on the eastern edge of Gaza. The ensuing rock-throwing offensive on Israeli soldiers sparked clashes that killed 17 Palestinians and injured more than 170 others in the Gaza Strip. The high number of casualties once again put Hamas in a corner, because there is no easy way to discourage young Gazans from heading to the borders and continuing the clashes. If Hamas overtly blocked such activity, it would be deemed by the Gazan public of being in league with the Palestinian authority. Nonetheless, Hamas felt it imperative to keep the ceasefire in Gaza Strip, while continuing to support an uprising in the West Bank.

Thus, as the number of youth killed along the Gazan borders increased, Hamas was eventually forced to use police to crack down on such activity. To prevent a public backlash, Hamas launched a diplomatic campaign against Abbas in an attempt to win over more supporters among the Fatah youth.

Reading the Media

Al-Aqsa TV, the largest pro-Hamas media outlet, is adept at nimbly adapting its message to recent events. Its success depends on maintaining a stable following in the Gaza Strip while also expanding its reach in the West Bank. The channel’s owner, a Hamas leader named Fathi Hamad, ordered the outlet to focus on winning over supporters to the “Third Intifada” among Fatah youths. This shift was illustrated by several changes in the channel. For example, all Al-Aqsa TV reporters began wearing kaffiyehs — the checkered black and white scarfs worn often as a nationalist symbol of Palestinian solidarity. The kaffiyeh was made particularly famous by former Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, a Hamas rival who wore the scarf at all of his public appearances and, notably, had a wide base of support in both Gaza and the West Bank. Thus, when pro-Hamas journalists wear kaffiyehs, it can be seen as an invitation for unity with Fateh supporters against the Israelis.

Al-Aqsa also changed its studio designs, with the sets of both news programs and talk shows adopting battleground themes. In addition to sporting kaffiyehs, broadcasters abandoned their formal attire in favor of the casual attire worn by the youths participating in the clashes. Al-Aqsa also broadcast live call-in shows allowing viewers to publicly voice support for the Palestinian rebels and push them to continue the clashes. There have even been shows instructing youths on how to make and target Israeli soldiers with Molotov cocktails.

Still, as the “Third Intifada” enters yet another month, Hamas continues to walk a fine line. In combination with its overt displays of support for the uprising in the West Bank, Hamas has also continuously issued press releases with statements like, “Gaza is out of the struggle.” Hamas leaders insist that the marches they have led are to lend support only to the West Bank, since, according to Ismail Haniyeh, “Gaza Strip is still injured from the last war.” Haniyeh reiterated: “We will support the clashes in the West Bank but not allow Israel to move the events to Gaza Strip.” Besides, as prominent Hamas leader Khaled Meshal put it: “No one can accuse the resistance of negligence in Gaza Strip, because Gaza was the fire that pushed the youths in the West Bank against the occupation.”

In the days ahead, the Greek government will begin another round of complex negotiations with its creditors and political parties on a new phase of economic reform. At the center of the talks will be a plan to restructure the country’s pension system, a particularly sensitive issue given that pensions form one of the last social safety nets left standing in a country where at least a quarter of the active population is unemployed. Though the risk of a Greek default or exit from the eurozone will be lower in 2016 than it was in 2015, the threat of social unrest and political volatility will loom large.

The Greek government is preparing for what is likely to be a difficult bargaining process both at home and abroad. Unemployment affects roughly 25 percent of Greece’s active population and over 50 percent of its youth, meaning entire families depend on the pensions that their elderly members receive to survive. As a result, Greek administrations have historically been reluctant to implement structural reforms within the pension system.

But the government may no longer be able to avoid them. Greece’s foreign lenders are pressuring Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras’ administration to tackle the pension system head-on. The country spends roughly 17 percent of its gross domestic product on pensions — the highest rate in the European Union — and with a shrinking workforce, low fertility rates, inefficient tax collection, funding shortfalls and legal loopholes, the system is no longer sustainable.

Athens’ creditors want the government to slash its spending by about 1.8 billion euros ($1.9 billion) this year. To that end, Greece is expected to present a formal plan by late January that details how it will go about meeting this target. At that time, the lenders will assess the status of Greece’s bailout program and decide whether Athens qualifies for the next tranche of financial aid. The Greek government hopes to gain approval for the reforms — and receive its funding — sometime in early February.

However, Athens will encounter several major obstacles in achieving its goals. At home, Tsipras holds a majority in the Greek Parliament by only three seats; even a small rebellion within the ruling coalition could topple the government. Meanwhile, Tsipras must convince creditors abroad that Greece is making enough progress to receive the next injection of cash.

This explains Athens’ latest charm offensive. On Jan. 4, the Greek government sent a draft list of reform proposals to the European Union, hoping to open negotiations as quickly as possible. In the coming days, Greek officials plan to visit Brussels, Berlin and Paris to convince lenders that Athens is committed to reform. The Greek Cabinet also shared its proposals with Parliament in an effort to garner support from as many lawmakers as possible. (In the past, opposition lawmakers have accused Tsipras of keeping Parliament in the dark on his government’s plans.)

Juggling the demands of domestic and international actors will be an extremely complicated endeavor. The Greek government’s proposals include the consolidation of all public pension funds into a single new fund for purposes of efficiency, changes in the way pensions are calculated, and higher social security contributions by companies and workers. Athens is also planning to cut pensions for future retirees, which will likely be the most contentious issue since creditors want Greece to reduce the pensions of current retirees too.

So far, the Greek government’s pitch has gotten a cold reception both at home and abroad. Opposition parties have already refused to support the plan, which will force Tsipras to rely on his own lawmakers to push the reforms through Parliament. Meanwhile, members of the ruling Syriza and Independent Greeks parties have stayed mostly silent on the matter, though dissent could grow in the coming weeks. And from the perspective of Greece’s creditors, raising social security contributions could discourage job creation and undermine the country’s economic recovery.

Social Unrest and Political Fragility Ahead

If 2015 was the year in which Greece’s eurozone membership hung in the balance, 2016 will be the year that Greece feels the full social, political and economic weight of its decision to remain in the bloc. In addition to pension reform, Athens will have to start enforcing a controversial tax hike on farmers and move forward with its privatization program in the months ahead. These measures will test the stability of a ruling coalition comprising left-wing and nationalist parties and the tolerance of the Greek people.

And so, conditions in Greece will be ripe for unrest this year. Farmers have already promised to “go to war” against plans to lift agricultural subsidies. Unions will probably take to the streets to protest pension reform. And a recent measure that reduces protection for mortgage debtors against home evictions could make Greek citizens even more worried about their futures, despite the fact that the measure itself is unlikely to lead to mass home repossessions.

Tsipras’ biggest challenge will be keeping his government together in the face of this discontent. Luckily for him, the Greek opposition is weak and divided. New Democracy, Greece’s main opposition party, is still struggling to find new leadership, and no other party is big enough to challenge Syriza. Thus, the greatest threat to the prime minister’s administration will come from within. Should Tsipras lose the support of his coalition, he will have to seek new partners in Parliament or call for new elections. Most Greek voters still want to remain a part of the eurozone, a fact that forced Tsipras to accept a new bailout program in July 2015. But in the event of new elections, popular support for eurozone membership cannot be taken for granted, especially since Greece’s economic recovery is almost certain to be slow and uneven.

Complicating matters is Athens’ promise to voters that the current reforms will eventually lead to some sort of debt relief, most likely in the form of longer maturities and lower interest rates. But several issues are delaying talks over this relief. For one, Athens does not want the International Monetary Fund to be involved in Greece’s reforms after the country’s current program with the institution comes to an end in March. The IMF is one of the toughest international organizations when it comes to implementing austerity measures, but it is also one of the strongest proponents of debt relief for Greece. Should the IMF be excluded from future negotiations, Athens’ chances at securing debt relief will drop.

Added to the jumble of issues affecting talks is Europe’s refugee crisis, which is straining Greece’s relationships in Northern Europe as some countries argue that Athens should do more to stem the influx of asylum seekers into the European Union. Under pressure from the bloc, Greece has reluctantly accepted assistance from its Frontex agency in increasing controls along the Greece-Macedonia border. However, some politicians in Germany and other EU member states still believe Greece should be suspended from the Schengen Agreement, which eliminates border controls on the Continent. While debt relief and the refugee crisis are supposed to be separate issues, they will continue to be intertwined within the talks as Athens and its creditors use them as bargaining chips.

At this point, the Tsipras government still has a few factors on its side. Support for the far-right Golden Dawn and anti-austerity parties such as Popular Unity remains relatively low. Greece’s 2016 calendar of debt maturities is not as pressing as 2015’s, which at least somewhat reduces the likelihood of a Greek default. Capital controls that were introduced in the middle of last year to protect the banking sector are still in place, and Greek banks are in the process of recapitalizing. Still, the Greek economy is forecast to contract yet again this year, which means that social unrest will remain a threat throughout 2016. If prolonged protests and early elections ultimately take place, it could once again raise questions about the enforceability of Greece’s bailout program and the country’s membership in the eurozone.

• This Article was written by Faisel Pervaiz , a specialist of India’s economy.

Background:

• Economic expansion and industrialization will increase India’s dependence on imported oil in 2017.
• Legislative battles and the conflict inherent in India’s vast democratic system will make it difficult for Prime Minister Narendra Modi to make progress in energy reform.

India’s Runaway Demand for Oil

India is currently the world’s fourth-largest consumer of energy, trailing China, the United States and Russia (with a total energy consumption of 638 million tons of oil equivalent). This figure is nearly double that seen in 2000, and Indian demand has plenty of room to grow considering the country accounts for 18 percent of the global population but just 6 percent of worldwide energy use. Currently, the 753,000 barrels per day that India produces barely make a dent in the 3.7 million bpd it consumes; this gap is projected to widen as India’s daily crude usage swells to 10 million bpd by 2040. (India is expected to see the largest increase in oil demand in the world over the next 25 years.) Meanwhile, surging domestic demand for coal will transform India, the world’s second-largest coal producer, into the biggest coal importer within the next five years.

India’s voracious appetite for energy is being fueled by industrialization, growth and urbanization — all of which are generally good news for the country’s economy, which overtook China’s as the fastest growing after expanding by 7.5 percent in 2015. But 315 million more Indians are expected to move to the cities over the next 25 years as the economy continues to grow, which will lead to greater demand for energy that will have profound implications for the health, vibrancy and scale of India’s economic development. If India hopes to meet the needs of what will become the world’s largest workforce by 2025, it will have to drastically increase the speed and quality of its economic growth, creating as many as 1 million jobs per month.

As economies mature, they typically shift from agriculture toward manufacturing before eventually becoming service-oriented. But in India, nearly seven decades after achieving independence, agriculture still employs 50 percent of the workforce while contributing to only 17 percent of GDP. As agricultural productivity increases in India, the sector will require fewer workers, adding to an already swollen pool of surplus semi-skilled workers who need jobs.

In an attempt to pre-emptively address this problem, Modi launched his “Make in India” campaign in 2014. The goal was to boost manufacturers’ share of Indian GDP to 25 percent by creating 100 million manufacturing jobs over a decade. However, the success of this effort will ultimately depend on India’s access to energy, since industrial growth is an energy-intensive process. In fact, according to a report by the International Energy Agency, industry-led economic growth requires about 10 times more energy per unit of value added than services-led growth.

Many Hurdles to Overcome

In light of these underway and upcoming changes, two things have become clear: First, India is in the midst of a dramatic economic and demographic expansion, and second, India’s ability to secure an accessible and affordable energy supply is becoming critical. However, in trying to tackle these issues Indian policymakers will likely encounter several challenges.

Perhaps the most obvious and immediate problem is that India’s domestic oil production, at least at the moment, is insufficient. As previously mentioned, the country’s daily oil consumption far outweighs its output. While India is estimated to hold about 5.7 billion barrels of oil reserves, some 56 percent of these resources are located offshore, where drilling is more difficult and costly than onshore. New Delhi has sought to solve this issue by inviting international oil companies with substantial financial resources and technical capabilities to bid on development blocks under the country’s New Exploration Licensing Policy. However, with a poorly ranked business environment and a subsidized pricing regime that discourages investment, foreign participation in India’s energy sector seems doomed to remain low. Indian oil output has not grown by more than 2 percent at any point in the past two decades; 2017 is unlikely to be much different, especially as many of India’s major wells reach maturity.

This leads to another problem: import dependence. In the absence of greater domestic efficiency and exploration, India will continue to source most of its petroleum from overseas. In 2014, New Delhi spent $138 billion to import 79 percent of its crude oil. By 2040, this share will likely balloon to 90 percent. More than half of India’s crude imports come from a handful of Middle Eastern producers, including Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran, Kuwait and Oman. Though Saudi Arabia is currently India’s largest supplier, providing about 19 percent of the country’s oil, New Delhi has actively sought to ramp up its intake from Iran, which accounts for only 6 percent of Indian consumption. Over the past year, India has improved its diplomatic ties with Iran in anticipation of new volumes of Iranian oil entering the market in 2017. If successful, the move will likely give India greater leverage in its price negotiations for Saudi oil.

And price is important for tremendous consumers like India. So far, low oil prices have largely benefited the Indian economy by lowering inflation and its current account deficit. But lower prices often lead to higher demand, making India even more reliant on imported oil to meet its needs, putting the Indian economy at risk of collapse if global oil prices suddenly rise. It was this scenario that damaged the Indian economy in 1991, when an unexpected spike in global oil prices after the first Persian Gulf War caused the country’s petroleum bill to skyrocket and its foreign exchange reserves to plummet, forcing New Delhi to seek an emergency loan from the International Monetary Fund.

To hedge against price volatility, New Delhi is buying equity stakes in oil and natural gas fields elsewhere; its rationale is that if oil prices rise, India can offset its higher costs by collecting revenues from the sale of oil and natural gas produced by its overseas assets. Toward this end, the state-owned ONGC Videsh Ltd. has been snatching up equity stakes in numerous foreign fields, including a 40 percent stake in Iran’s Farsi field, a 45 percent stake in Vietnam’s Block 06.1 and a 20 percent stake in Russia’s Sakhalin-I. India will likely continue to follow this strategy in 2017.

In addition to insufficient production and import dependence, India’s unwieldy political system is yet another obstacle the country’s leaders must overcome to improve energy security. India’s fractious, billion-citizen democracy features six national parties and 54 state-level parties, as well as more than 1,600 smaller organizations that are not officially recognized; as a result, policy changes occur at a glacial pace. Modi will therefore have a hard time meeting his ambitious energy goals, which include the construction of a 100-gigawatt solar capacity by 2022 and an increase in coal production to 1.5 billion metric tons by 2019. The Indian prime minister also faces the difficult challenge of having to extend electricity to nearly 300 million people while simultaneously reducing his country’s carbon footprint — no easy task when coal is the most important component of India’s energy mix.

Forming a coherent policy that promotes both of these goals will be made all the more challenging because the national government, which itself has five distinct energy ministries, and the states share responsibility for energy policies. Each of these bureaucracies are staffed by Indian politicians who continue to harbor the socialist mindset of the country’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru — an attitude that some observers have deemed to be “anti-market” and that will likely play a role in stalling the Indian energy sector’s liberalization.

The final problem that Indian policymakers must address is the country’s energy subsidy scheme. In the past, New Delhi imposed the subsidies to guard against global price volatility and provide affordable energy to Indian consumers, particularly to those who are poor. Since a large segment of the Indian population is impoverished, politicians often build support for themselves by promising constituents free or low-priced electricity. The tradition has created a sense of entitlement to electricity among the people that makes the subject of subsidy reform difficult for Indian politicians to broach. However, the subsidy regime harms oil marketing companies, to which the government pays only a partial reimbursement that does not fully cover the difference between their costs and the below-market prices at which they are forced to sell. Because of this setup, oil marketing companies experience net revenue losses, which undermine energy firms’ ability and desire to invest in exploration and development in India.

As India seeks to join the ranks of great powers in the 21st century, energy will play a critical role in its ascent. The country’s fast-growing economy and young, urbanizing population will place tremendous stress on its inadequate energy infrastructure as demand for energy resources continues to rise. Meanwhile, the gridlock in parliament that has so far stifled Modi’s efforts to pass legislation will impede his attempts to reform the energy sector as well. In the end, India’s demographic dividend has the potential to ensure a bright and prosperous future for the world’s largest democracy — but only if the lights stay on.

Lead Analyst: Faisel Pervaiz

On January 7th , it was reported that the Iranian embassy in Sanaa, Yemen, was bombed by a Saudi airstrike. The attacks is probably deliberate after heightened tensions between the two countries these recent details. The details about the incident are still unclear, but for the Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman, Jaber Ansari , it is clear that this airstrike on its embassy is a clear ” violation of all international conventions that protect in general diplomatic missions” all other the world. Iran would hold Saudi Arabia , the leader of the Anti-Houthis coalition , responsible for the injuries and the damages caused to the Iranian diplomatic Staff.

In response, coalition spokesman Brig. Gen. Ahmed Asseri said that personnel would investigate the Iranian claims and confirmed that there had been multiple airstrikes across Sanaa the evening of Jan. 6 targeting missile launchers used by Houthi rebels. Asseri added that the Houthi rebels had been using abandoned embassies to launch rocket attacks and accused Iran of failing to provide the coordinates of the embassy to the coalition following an earlier coalition request. Asseri also dismissed the accusations by Iran as not credible because they are based on information provided by the Houthis.

Stratfor reported information found on social media the evening of Jan. 6 that indicated a Saudi-led coalition airstrike had hit near the Iranian Embassy in Sanaa. Recent eyewitness reports suggest that the embassy building has not been visibly damaged. While it is unclear whether the Saudi airstrike did in fact hit the Iranian site, it is still notable that Iran is accusing the Saudi-led coalition of deliberately targeting its diplomatic mission days after Iranian protesters stormed the Saudi embassy in Tehran in response to the Saudi execution of Shiite cleric Nimr al-Nimr.

The coalition’s allegations that Houthi rebels are using embassies to carry out rocket attacks imply that the Iranian Embassy may still be a viable target for coalition forces. Most foreign embassies in Sanaa were evacuated around February 2015 in response to the Houthi takeover of the Yemeni capital, but there is no evidence that Iran has fully abandoned its embassy yet. In fact, Yemeni Foreign Minister Riad Yassin claimed that four months earlier, the Iranian Embassy in Sanaa had become a “Houthi operations room” and accused Iranian intelligence and military personnel from the embassy of helping the Houthis organize attacks.

Tit-for-tat attacks on diplomatic missions are a highly visible and serious component to the broader confrontation between Iran and Saudi-led Sunni powers in the region. That said, the accusations do not necessarily indicate that the conflict between Saudi Arabia and Iran will escalate. Both sides will use proxy battlespaces to carry out symbolic attacks while fortifying their militant allies. Moreover, Iran has a history of carrying out covert attacks against foreign interests overseas, and it is possible that Iranian militant proxies could target Saudi diplomats or businesses. In each of these cases, both sides will aim to maintain plausible deniability. Neither Iran nor Saudi Arabia is prepared for a direct military confrontation.

The United States is especially keen to avoid involvement in a sectarian battle between the two historical adversaries. To de-escalate the situation, Washington will make clear to Saudi Arabia that there are limits to U.S. military sponsorship of Saudi Arabia and will try to refocus attention on the fight against the Islamic State. Sunni powers, including Bahrain, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, have shown solidarity with Saudi Arabia by downgrading or cutting diplomatic ties with Iran amid the ongoing spat between the two countries. But these Sunni nations will be wary of inviting attacks on themselves during any further escalation, creating the potential for greater divisions within the Saudi-led coalition.