foreignpolicy--2020-11-30--China’s Monster Fishing Fleet

China’s Monster Fishing Fleet

But just a few weeks after the ban came into effect , hundreds of squid-fishing vessels left Chinese waters and rounded the southern tip of South Korea .
They entered North Korea ’ s 200 nautical-mile exclusive economic zone ( EEZ ) , nearly doubling the number of Chinese fishing vessels operating there from 557 to 907 , according a recent Global Fishing Watch report that tracked data from four different satellite systems .
Even as China publicly claimed that is was complying with sanctions , many of the Chinese vessels continued to make trips to North Korea and back @ @ @ @ @ @ @ during both 2018 and 2019 , said Jaeyoon Park , one of the report ’ s lead authors .
The Chinese fleet , made up of squid jiggers and pair trawlers , scooped up a staggering amount of squid—equal to almost as much as the entire squid catch in Japanese and South Korean waters combined over the same period , the report estimated .
The Chinese decimated the squid population off North Korea to such a degree that Japanese and South Korean fishers saw their own take of the usually plentiful , migratory @ @ @ @ @ @ @ clear out the squid undisturbed , the North Korean navy chased away North Korean fishing vessels from their own traditional fishing grounds , said Peter Oh , a defector from North Korea who monitors the country ’ s food situation and reports for Radio Free Asia .
That ’ s because the Chinese were by no means unwelcome interlopers .
In fact , they were fishing at the invitation of the North Korean government , Oh said .
Citing South Korean intelligence sources , he said North Korea sold to China some 3,000 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 2017 , up from around 900 in previous years .
With each costing about half a million yuan ( $ 73,000 ) , the deal allowed Pyongyang to recoup $ 220 million of the estimated $ 1 billion export losses from the 2017 round of U.N. sanctions .
China ’ s great North Korean squid heist deprived some of the world ’ s most malnourished people of one of their few sources of protein .
For three years , ordinary North Koreans had virtually no affordable animal protein in their diet and had @ @ @ @ @ @ @ called man-made meat , according to Oh , who cited sources in Dandong , China , the border city through which 80 percent of the trade between the two countries passes .
Of what little squid the North Koreans themselves were able to catch , much went to the North Korean elite and the military .
“ In the markets , all you can find is stinky , rotten squid or no squid at all , ” Oh said .
Other sources report that it ’ s not just squid the Chinese caught @ @ @ @ @ @ @ have disappeared from North Korean markets as well .
The fishing frenzy only stopped this past summer , when North Korea , fearing a spread of COVID-19 , expelled the Chinese vessels , Oh added .
Though China isn ’ t alone in its destructive fishing practices , it stands apart by virtue of its sheer size and the extent to which it pushes its highly subsidized fleet across the world ’ s oceans .
It ’ s also the only country whose fishing fleet has a geopolitical mission , taking over weaker @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s maritime territorial ambitions .
One of the malicious consequences of all this is that China ’ s monster fishing fleet robs poorer nations—from North Korea to the countries of West Africa—of desperately needed protein .
The North Korean case is especially nefarious , given Pyongyang ’ s long record of trading scarce food for foreign exchange with little care for the health and lives of its own people .
But the real force driving this and other human-rights disasters is China ’ s hunger for seafood .
China ’ s 1.4 billion @ @ @ @ @ @ @ global fish production , but indulge in one of the highest per-capita consumption rates of fish and seafood , both wild and farmed , in the world—37.8 kilograms per person per year , up from only 7 kilograms per person per year in 1985 , according to figures provided by China to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization .
While much has been written about Chinese overfishing , it ’ s only recently become possible to document its vast extent , thanks to new satellite technologies .
While much has been written about @ @ @ @ @ @ @ recently become possible to document its vast extent , thanks to new satellite technologies such as those providing data to Global Fishing Watch .
The same tracking technology that is used to prevent vessels from hiding or circumventing sanctions shows that China ’ s fishing fleet appears engaged , often illegally , in the effort to haul in as much seafood as it can , as fast as it can , in as many places as it can—with little regard for how its practices affect malnourished people or diminish the stocks of their @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the sum of individual decisions made by skippers .
It is government policy , because most vessels are in effect paid to fish by the Chinese government , which covers the fleet ’ s main operating expense : fuel .
According to Rashid Sumaila , a fisheries economist at the University of British Columbia , China ’ s yearly bill for fisheries subsidies—of which 94 percent covers shipping fuel—comes to $ 5.9 billion .
That ’ s about $ 347,000 per vessel per year , far more than any other major fishing country @ @ @ @ @ @ @ highly subsidized , receive only about $ 23,000 a year , Sumaila said .
China ’ s single-minded drive to maximize catch should come as no surprise , because its record contains little in the way of sustainable fishing .
Its own coastline , once among the richest in the world , has been more overfished by its 300,000-strong domestic coastal fleet than the waters of almost any other nation , with less than 15 percent of the original fish biomass remaining .
The majority of the fleet is made up of artisanal @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for short trips near the shore ; the rest are mostly trawlers destroying fish habitat as they rake the seafloor .
China ’ s South Atlantic fishing fleet is based in Montevideo , the capital and main port of Uruguay , Argentina ’ s northern neighbor .
Uruguay seems to have given China and its fishing fleet a free hand .
“ Absolutely no real controls are made of any foreign fishing boat , ” Schvartzman said .
Normally , fishing vessels fly the flag of their home country , which regulates how @ @ @ @ @ @ @ safety and pollution rules , and fish where and when they ’ re supposed to .
To circumvent these rules and avoid compliance , which can increase costs , many shipping companies register their vessels in unregulated jurisdictions—so-called flags of convenience that include Liberia , Panama , and some Pacific and Caribbean island states .
But Chinese authorities don ’ t enforce many rules either , so very few Chinese ships opt to fly flags of convenience .
“ They are their own flag of convenience , ” Schvartzman said .
“ And @ @ @ @ @ @ @ pirate port—in Montevideo.
” There , the Chinese not only make up 40 percent of the foreign fleet , but have also drawn attention with the high number of dead crew members they have been reported to bring in—about one a month .
“ Conditions on their boats are horrible , some of the worst in the world , ” Schvartzman said .
“ Sometimes they dump the bodies at sea , but usually they don ’ t because the crew would rebel.
” In 2018 , the Chinese unveiled plans to build @ @ @ @ @ @ @ massive facilities to process the catch of some 500 fishing ships .
The project secured the support of Uruguay ’ s president but collapsed after drawing strong local opposition .
On the other side of the continent in northwest Africa , the Chinese built around 20 fishmeal plants to process sardinella , a once-abundant and highly nutritious mackerel-sized fish , into feed for aquaculture and poultry .
That industry has created a similar situation as in North Korea : During the winter dry season , smoked sardinella constituted the main source of affordable @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the poorest in the world .
In Gambia , Chinese companies operate three fishmeal plants built five years ago and suck up so much sardinella that the local supply is reduced to a trickle .
“ It ’ s devastating , ” said Mustapha Manneh , a Gambian journalist .
“ Gambians depend on this fish for their daily meal.
” In Kartong , where he lives , he says the price has risen five-fold .
Further inland in Koina , where the country reaches into the arid Sahel region , sardinella prices @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Gambia river instead can ’ t compensate for the loss of sardinella .
“ It is dangerous because there are so many hippos , ” Manneh said .
“ The destruction can not be overemphasized.
” Daniel Pauly , a prominent fisheries scientist at the University of British Columbia , is the co-author of a study that found that 90 percent of fishmeal is made from perfectly edible fish like sardinella .
Its exploitation has created an absurd cycle of destruction pushed by governments : They heavily subsidize unprofitable fisheries chasing diminished fish @ @ @ @ @ @ @ much of it taken from or near the waters of poor countries , is then turned into fishmeal to grow fish like salmon , which are consumed in rich countries .
“ If they ended the subsidies , fishing would be halved , fish stocks would quickly grow back and double in size , ” Pauly explained .
“ You could then sustainably double the original catch , which would be cheaper to fish and not require subsidies , and you wouldn ’ t need to farm so much fish , ” he @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in a vicious circle when a virtual one has always been obvious.
” Besides its gigantic size and extreme level of subsidies , there is a third characteristic that sets the Chinese fishing fleet apart : its use by Beijing as a tool of expansion .
It was Republic of China President Chiang Kai-shek who , in 1947 , laid claim to large swaths of the South China Sea—claims that were adopted by People ’ s Republic of China founder Mao Zedong .
Greg Polis , a China specialist at the Center for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ said that to further some of these claims , China has been paying fishermen to cast their nets around the Paracel Islands since the 1970s and the Spratlys since the 1980s .
The two groups of islands , or parts of them , are also claimed by Brunei , Malaysia , the Philippines , Taiwan , and Vietnam .
China is the only country with a strategic fishing fleet .
Of the crew on the vessels operating in the South China Sea , Polis said “ either they ’ re fishers paid to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s the only reason they do it , or they are officially in the militia , which means they never fish—they just use fishing boats to monitor other fleets , run supplies , or ram other boats.
” Pauly , the fisheries scientist , said that “ no one else does this except in war.
” In the last decade , Polis said , these efforts “ have become much more professional , the tip of the spear for the sovereignty claims in the South China Sea.
” Philip Chou , a senior @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , said that the Chinese aren ’ t only fishing in the EEZs of Indonesia , the Philippines , and Vietnam , “ but they ’ re preventing , sometimes violently , those countries ’ own fishermen from fishing there.
” There is a glimmer of hope .
At the World Trade Organization , talks are underway to reduce fishing subsidies , with an agreement due by the end of the year .
According to Isabel Jarrett , who manages the Pew Charitable Trust ’ s campaign to reduce harmful fisheries , “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” and is considered likely to cut its subsidies if everyone else does .
Until then , however , China ’ s monster fishing fleet will continue to deplete the oceans , and millions of impoverished North Koreans , Africans , and others will go hungry .

On Aug. 5, 2017, China complied with a United Nations decision and formally imposed sanctions on North Korea, including a ban on seafood exports. Seafood, particularly squid, is one of North Korea’s few significant foreign-exchange earners, and the sanctions were expected to increase the pressure on the regime.
On Aug. 5, 2017, China complied with a United Nations decision and formally imposed sanctions on North Korea, including a ban on seafood exports. Seafood, particularly squid, is one of North Korea’s few significant foreign-exchange earners, and the sanctions were expected to increase the pressure on the regime.
But just a few weeks after the ban came into effect, hundreds of squid-fishing vessels left Chinese waters and rounded the southern tip of South Korea. They entered North Korea’s 200 nautical-mile exclusive economic zone (EEZ), nearly doubling the number of Chinese fishing vessels operating there from 557 to 907, according a recent Global Fishing Watch report that tracked data from four different satellite systems. Even as China publicly claimed that is was complying with sanctions, many of the Chinese vessels continued to make trips to North Korea and back, including several round trips each year during both 2018 and 2019, said Jaeyoon Park, one of the report’s lead authors.
The Chinese fleet, made up of squid jiggers and pair trawlers, scooped up a staggering amount of squid—equal to almost as much as the entire squid catch in Japanese and South Korean waters combined over the same period, the report estimated. The Chinese decimated the squid population off North Korea to such a degree that Japanese and South Korean fishers saw their own take of the usually plentiful, migratory species plummet.
So the Chinese could clear out the squid undisturbed, the North Korean navy chased away North Korean fishing vessels from their own traditional fishing grounds, said Peter Oh, a defector from North Korea who monitors the country’s food situation and reports for Radio Free Asia. That’s because the Chinese were by no means unwelcome interlopers. In fact, they were fishing at the invitation of the North Korean government, Oh said. Citing South Korean intelligence sources, he said North Korea sold to China some 3,000 vessel licenses—each valid for one trip—beginning in 2017, up from around 900 in previous years. With each costing about half a million yuan ($73,000), the deal allowed Pyongyang to recoup $220 million of the estimated $1 billion export losses from the 2017 round of U.N. sanctions.
China’s great North Korean squid heist deprived some of the world’s most malnourished people of one of their few sources of protein. For three years, ordinary North Koreans had virtually no affordable animal protein in their diet and had to rely on a low-nutrition soy product called man-made meat, according to Oh, who cited sources in Dandong, China, the border city through which 80 percent of the trade between the two countries passes. Of what little squid the North Koreans themselves were able to catch, much went to the North Korean elite and the military. “In the markets, all you can find is stinky, rotten squid or no squid at all,” Oh said. Other sources report that it’s not just squid the Chinese caught, and that other types of fish have disappeared from North Korean markets as well. The fishing frenzy only stopped this past summer, when North Korea, fearing a spread of COVID-19, expelled the Chinese vessels, Oh added.
While Spanish sailboats started fishing cod off the coast of Newfoundland in the 15th century, the Chinese fishing fleet only ventured further afield in 1985, when 13 trawlers were sent to plough northwest Africa’s fish-rich coastal waters. Today, according to a report by the British Overseas Development Institute, China’s blue-water fishing fleet is by far the world’s largest, and includes 12,490 unique vessels that were observed to have been fishing outside China’s internationally recognized EEZ in 2017 and 2018. That’s many times more than previous estimates, and very different from China’s own claim of having only 3,000 ships fishing international or other countries’ waters—but that’s only because China doesn’t recognize the United Nations Law of the Sea Treaty’s demarcation of maritime borders.
Though China isn’t alone in its destructive fishing practices, it stands apart by virtue of its sheer size and the extent to which it pushes its highly subsidized fleet across the world’s oceans. It’s also the only country whose fishing fleet has a geopolitical mission, taking over weaker countries’ waters and expanding Beijing’s maritime territorial ambitions. One of the malicious consequences of all this is that China’s monster fishing fleet robs poorer nations—from North Korea to the countries of West Africa—of desperately needed protein.
The North Korean case is especially nefarious, given Pyongyang’s long record of trading scarce food for foreign exchange with little care for the health and lives of its own people. But the real force driving this and other human-rights disasters is China’s hunger for seafood. China’s 1.4 billion people not only consume 38 percent of global fish production, but indulge in one of the highest per-capita consumption rates of fish and seafood, both wild and farmed, in the world—37.8 kilograms per person per year, up from only 7 kilograms per person per year in 1985, according to figures provided by China to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization.
While much has been written about Chinese overfishing, it’s only recently become possible to document its vast extent, thanks to new satellite technologies.
While much has been written about Chinese overfishing, it’s only recently become possible to document its vast extent, thanks to new satellite technologies such as those providing data to Global Fishing Watch. The same tracking technology that is used to prevent vessels from hiding or circumventing sanctions shows that China’s fishing fleet appears engaged, often illegally, in the effort to haul in as much seafood as it can, as fast as it can, in as many places as it can—with little regard for how its practices affect malnourished people or diminish the stocks of their fish.
This effort is not simply the sum of individual decisions made by skippers. It is government policy, because most vessels are in effect paid to fish by the Chinese government, which covers the fleet’s main operating expense: fuel. According to Rashid Sumaila, a fisheries economist at the University of British Columbia, China’s yearly bill for fisheries subsidies—of which 94 percent covers shipping fuel—comes to $5.9 billion. That’s about $347,000 per vessel per year, far more than any other major fishing country. European Union vessels, also considered highly subsidized, receive only about $23,000 a year, Sumaila said.
China’s single-minded drive to maximize catch should come as no surprise, because its record contains little in the way of sustainable fishing. Its own coastline, once among the richest in the world, has been more overfished by its 300,000-strong domestic coastal fleet than the waters of almost any other nation, with less than 15 percent of the original fish biomass remaining. The majority of the fleet is made up of artisanal boats with small engines, going out for short trips near the shore; the rest are mostly trawlers destroying fish habitat as they rake the seafloor.
The waters off Argentina are a rare area where seafood is still abundant. Some 250 Chinese vessels fish for squid just outside Argentina’s 200-mile EEZ, sometimes dashing into Argentina’s waters illegally. When a Chinese jigger intruded in 2018, an Argentine warship pursuing it was nearly rammed by three other Chinese jiggers. “It’s literally a war,” said Milko Schvartzman, a former Greenpeace campaign manager and fisheries expert who estimates the illegal Argentinian fishery at $1 billion a year. “I have no doubt this will end in tragedy.”
China’s South Atlantic fishing fleet is based in Montevideo, the capital and main port of Uruguay, Argentina’s northern neighbor. Uruguay seems to have given China and its fishing fleet a free hand. “Absolutely no real controls are made of any foreign fishing boat,” Schvartzman said.
Normally, fishing vessels fly the flag of their home country, which regulates how they pay and treat crew, observe safety and pollution rules, and fish where and when they’re supposed to. To circumvent these rules and avoid compliance, which can increase costs, many shipping companies register their vessels in unregulated jurisdictions—so-called flags of convenience that include Liberia, Panama, and some Pacific and Caribbean island states. But Chinese authorities don’t enforce many rules either, so very few Chinese ships opt to fly flags of convenience. “They are their own flag of convenience,” Schvartzman said. “And they effectively created a port of convenience—a pirate port—in Montevideo.”
There, the Chinese not only make up 40 percent of the foreign fleet, but have also drawn attention with the high number of dead crew members they have been reported to bring in—about one a month. “Conditions on their boats are horrible, some of the worst in the world,” Schvartzman said. “Sometimes they dump the bodies at sea, but usually they don’t because the crew would rebel.”
In 2018, the Chinese unveiled plans to build their own separate port west of Montevideo—including massive facilities to process the catch of some 500 fishing ships. The project secured the support of Uruguay’s president but collapsed after drawing strong local opposition.
In Mozambique, the Chinese were more successful. In 2017, they effectively took over the port of Beira, doubling its capacity so it could accommodate over 100 trawlers, according to Pierre Failler, a fisheries economist who heads the Centre for Blue Governance at the University of Portsmouth. The Mozambican Channel, between Madagascar and Mozambique, had been relatively unfished, and the Chinese fleet has been able to catch over 60,000 tons a year of large, high-quality bottomfish like seabream and groupers, all of which go to China. “They pay the government a pittance for the right to fish,” Failler said. “The locals now complain they aren’t catching anything anymore.”
On the other side of the continent in northwest Africa, the Chinese built around 20 fishmeal plants to process sardinella, a once-abundant and highly nutritious mackerel-sized fish, into feed for aquaculture and poultry. That industry has created a similar situation as in North Korea: During the winter dry season, smoked sardinella constituted the main source of affordable protein for the region, one of the poorest in the world. In Gambia, Chinese companies operate three fishmeal plants built five years ago and suck up so much sardinella that the local supply is reduced to a trickle. “It’s devastating,” said Mustapha Manneh, a Gambian journalist. “Gambians depend on this fish for their daily meal.” In Kartong, where he lives, he says the price has risen five-fold. Further inland in Koina, where the country reaches into the arid Sahel region, sardinella prices have risen tenfold. Fishing in the Gambia river instead can’t compensate for the loss of sardinella. “It is dangerous because there are so many hippos,” Manneh said. “The destruction cannot be overemphasized.”
Daniel Pauly, a prominent fisheries scientist at the University of British Columbia, is the co-author of a study that found that 90 percent of fishmeal is made from perfectly edible fish like sardinella. Its exploitation has created an absurd cycle of destruction pushed by governments: They heavily subsidize unprofitable fisheries chasing diminished fish populations. Half the global catch, much of it taken from or near the waters of poor countries, is then turned into fishmeal to grow fish like salmon, which are consumed in rich countries. “If they ended the subsidies, fishing would be halved, fish stocks would quickly grow back and double in size,” Pauly explained. “You could then sustainably double the original catch, which would be cheaper to fish and not require subsidies, and you wouldn’t need to farm so much fish,” he adds. “We’re stuck in a vicious circle when a virtual one has always been obvious.”
Besides its gigantic size and extreme level of subsidies, there is a third characteristic that sets the Chinese fishing fleet apart: its use by Beijing as a tool of expansion. It was Republic of China President Chiang Kai-shek who, in 1947, laid claim to large swaths of the South China Sea—claims that were adopted by People’s Republic of China founder Mao Zedong. Greg Poling, a China specialist at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said that to further some of these claims, China has been paying fishermen to cast their nets around the Paracel Islands since the 1970s and the Spratlys since the 1980s. The two groups of islands, or parts of them, are also claimed by Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan, and Vietnam. Disputed Claims in the South China Sea China is the only country with a strategic fishing fleet. Of the crew on the vessels operating in the South China Sea, Poling said “either they’re fishers paid to go fish somewhere, and that’s the only reason they do it, or they are officially in the militia, which means they never fish—they just use fishing boats to monitor other fleets, run supplies, or ram other boats.” Pauly, the fisheries scientist, said that “no one else does this except in war.”
In the last decade, Poling said, these efforts “have become much more professional, the tip of the spear for the sovereignty claims in the South China Sea.” Philip Chou, a senior advisor for the Washington-based environmental NGO Oceana, said that the Chinese aren’t only fishing in the EEZs of Indonesia, the Philippines, and Vietnam, “but they’re preventing, sometimes violently, those countries’ own fishermen from fishing there.”
But even if it causes enormous damage worldwide, the Chinese fishing fleet—with the exception of its strategic military wing in the South China Sea—operates within the bounds of what Pauly calls “a corrupt, chaotic international system.” As long as other countries subsidize their fleets, Beijing will as well. If China stopped its subsidies, Pauly said, “they would lose half their catch, and they would be the only ones in the world to do it.” The Europeans, in particular, are also involved in a lot of illegal fishing, said Vanya Vulperhorst, director of Oceana’s campaign against illegal fishing, often using boats with non-European flags to get around the rules. The illegal market in Mediterranean bluefin tuna, for example, is twice the size of the legal one, according to Europol.
There is a glimmer of hope. At the World Trade Organization, talks are underway to reduce fishing subsidies, with an agreement due by the end of the year. According to Isabel Jarrett, who leads the Pew Charitable Trusts’ project on reducing harmful fisheries subsidies, “China is pragmatic, not obstructive,” and is considered likely to cut its subsidies if everyone else does. Until then, however, China’s monster fishing fleet will continue to deplete the oceans, and millions of impoverished North Koreans, Africans, and others will go hungry.


foreignpolicy--2020-11-30--Kushner Heads to Middle East as Iran Reels from Killing

Kushner Heads to Middle East as Iran Reels from Killing Here is today ’ s Foreign Policy brief : Trump adviser Jared Kushner travels to Saudi Arabia and Qatar , France arrests police officers involved in the beating of a Black man , and Serbia backtracks on the expulsion of Montenegro ’ s ambassador .
We welcome your feedback at morningbrief @ foreignpolicy.com .
Jared Kushner , the senior advisor to U.S. President Donald Trump , is headed to the Middle East this week as tensions in the region have increased after the assassination of Iranian nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s the second visit to the region by a member of the Trump administration since Joe Biden became President-elect .
And like Mike Pompeo ’ s visit—which , according to Israeli media , included a trilateral meeting between the leaders of Saudi Arabia and Israel—what will be discussed behind closed doors is unknown .
Kushner is to meet with Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman as well as Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al Thani .
Kushner is reported to be eager to finalize more normalization agreements between Israel and Arab @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Arabia would represent the biggest prize .
More than a hit .
Beyond the perceived threat of Iran restarting its nuclear weapons program , the assassination of Fakhrizadeh serves multiple purposes for those that would seek to keep the United States and Iran far away from the negotiating table .
The provocation puts pressure on President Hassan Rouhani to retaliate immediately , giving Iran ’ s enemies a chance to escalate in turn .
It also gives further ammunition to hardliners , who say dealing diplomatically with the West is futile .
And @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a much more difficult negotiating environment with a country that—following Trump ’ s swift rejection of U.S. involvement in the 2015 nuclear deal—already had very little incentive to trust the word of the United States to begin with .
What can Biden do next ?
Writing in Foreign Affairs on Nov. 10 , Trita Parsi recommended a novel approach to help Biden back out of the corner the Trump administration and Israel seem determined to put him in .
“ Instead of asking himself what degree of sanctions relief he is willing to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ nuclear agreement , ” Parsi writes , “ he should ask himself what kind of relationship the United States would like to have with Iran in this century.
” A bigger picture answer ?
Normalize ties with Iran .
Writing in Foreign Policy on Nov. 25 , Benjamin H. Friedman and Stephen Wertheim propose an elegant solution : Do less .
As part of an argument for removing U.S. troops from the region , the authors show why the U.S. stepping away from the region may not be as damaging as others predict @ @ @ @ @ @ @ experiencing a competition for influence among multiple midsized powers—Iran , Turkey , Saudi Arabia , Egypt , and Israel—no one state credibly threatens to dominate the region and its oil supply , ” Friedman and Wertheim write .
“ The United States will obtain more security by doing less.
” On Monday , Nov. 30 , the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee will receive a closed briefing on the Trump administration ’ s plans for a $ 23 billion arms sale to the United Arab Emirates .
The countries of OPEC+ begin virtual @ @ @ @ @ @ @ output .
Italy assumes the rotating presidency of the G-20 , taking over from Saudi Arabia .
On Wednesday , Dec. 2 , the United Nations General Assembly will discuss the question of Palestine following the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People , observed on Sunday .
On Friday , Dec. 4 , a Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States ( CFIUS ) order banning Tiktok from operating in the United States is due to take effect .
On Saturday , Dec. 5 , Kuwaitis go to the polls @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Assembly for four-year terms .
On Sunday , Dec. 6 , Venezuela holds an election for its National Assembly ; opposition parties plan to boycott the vote .
Romania holds legislative elections for both its Parliament and Senate .
Cameroon holds regional elections in an attempt to address demands for decentralization ; critics argue it ’ s too little too late .
French police charged .
Four French police officers involved in the beating of Michel Zecler , a Black music producer , have been charged with racial abuse and intentional violence as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the video of Zecler ’ s beating and a draft security law that would have prevented its release .
Under the draft law , currently awaiting Senate approval , recordings of police that would damage their “ physical or psychological integrity ” would be prohibited .
Reacting to the assault , French President Emmanuel Macron condemned it as unacceptable .
The images “ shame us , ” Macron wrote on Twitter .
Abiy declares victory .
After declaring the three-week offensive against the Tigrayan People ’ s Liberation Front over following the capture @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has turned his sights on capturing Tigrayan officials who appear to have gone into hiding .
TPLF leader Debretsion Gebremichael , when asked by Reuters whether his group would continue fighting , was unequivocal in his reply .
“ Certainly .
This is about defending our right to self-determination , ” he said .
The TPLF have a history of guerilla warfare , although those tactics may be less effective than in the past now that Eritrea—which borders Tigray—is allied with Abiy ’ s government .
Massacre in Nigeria @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in northeast Nigeria after attackers targeted a village in Borno state .
Nigerian authorities have blamed Boko Haram for the attack , which took place on the same day Borno state held local elections .
Edward Kallon , the United Nations humanitarian coordinator for Nigeria described the incident as “ the most violent direct attack against innocent civilians this year.
” Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari said that the country had been “ wounded ” by the killings .
Serbia and Montenegro tensions .
Serbia has rescinded a decision to expel the Montenegrin ambassador @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for his removal following a tit-for-tat exchange with Montenegro .
Montenegro expelled the Serbian ambassador Vladimir Bozovic on Saturday for “ interfering in Montenegro ’ s internal affairs.
” In reversing the expulsion , Serbian Prime Minister Ana Brnabic said she wanted to extend “ the hand of cooperation and friendship ” to Montenegro .
Montenegro ’ s new Prime Minister Zdravko Krivokapic takes office this week .
Brexit talks back on .
In-person negotiations resumed between British and European Union over the weekend following their brief halt after one of the EU @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Both sides have little more than a month to conclude an agreement on their future relationship before a Dec. 31 deadline .
The Times of London reports that a call between British Prime Minister and EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen would be the first indication that talks are moving forward , although Reuters reports that no such call has been scheduled .
Intra-Afghan talks .
Afghan President Ashraf Ghani is holding up an agreement on talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban , even as the Taliban claim the two @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
According to a report in the New York Times , among Ghani ’ s concerns is the omission of the country ’ s official name—the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan—from guiding documents , which he argues undermines his government ’ s legitimacy .
Pigs flew in Taiwan ’ s parliament on Friday as opposition politicians adopted unorthodox methods to protest a deal that would allow U.S. pork imports that contain the additive ractopamine .
Lawmakers threw various pig organs on the floor of parliament , and eventually at each other , as chaos @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and shoving .
The additive ractopamine is used by farmers to promote leanness in pigs , and is banned in the European Union and China .
Taiwan ’ s president , Tsai-ing Wen , lifted the ban on ractopamine in September , and hopes to conclude a trade deal with the United States under a Biden administration .
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Here is today’s Foreign Policy brief: Trump adviser Jared Kushner travels to Saudi Arabia and Qatar , France arrests police officers involved in the beating of a Black man, and Serbia backtracks on the expulsion of Montenegro’s ambassador.
Here is today’s Foreign Policy brief: Trump adviser Jared Kushner travels to Saudi Arabia and Qatar, France arrests police officers involved in the beating of a Black man, and Serbia backtracks on the expulsion of Montenegro’s ambassador.
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Kushner Heads to Riyadh and Doha as Iran Weighs Response
Jared Kushner, the senior advisor to U.S. President Donald Trump, is headed to the Middle East this week as tensions in the region have increased after the assassination of Iranian nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh by suspected Israeli agents.
It’s the second visit to the region by a member of the Trump administration since Joe Biden became President-elect. And like Mike Pompeo’s visit—which, according to Israeli media, included a trilateral meeting between the leaders of Saudi Arabia and Israel—what will be discussed behind closed doors is unknown.
Kushner is to meet with Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman as well as Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al Thani. Kushner is reported to be eager to finalize more normalization agreements between Israel and Arab countries before leaving office, and Saudi Arabia would represent the biggest prize.
More than a hit. Beyond the perceived threat of Iran restarting its nuclear weapons program, the assassination of Fakhrizadeh serves multiple purposes for those that would seek to keep the United States and Iran far away from the negotiating table.
The provocation puts pressure on President Hassan Rouhani to retaliate immediately, giving Iran’s enemies a chance to escalate in turn. It also gives further ammunition to hardliners, who say dealing diplomatically with the West is futile. And for President-elect Joe Biden, it creates a much more difficult negotiating environment with a country that—following Trump’s swift rejection of U.S. involvement in the 2015 nuclear deal—already had very little incentive to trust the word of the United States to begin with.
What can Biden do next? Writing in Foreign Affairs on Nov. 10, Trita Parsi recommended a novel approach to help Biden back out of the corner the Trump administration and Israel seem determined to put him in. “Instead of asking himself what degree of sanctions relief he is willing to fight for in Congress to revive the nuclear agreement,” Parsi writes, “he should ask himself what kind of relationship the United States would like to have with Iran in this century.” A bigger picture answer? Normalize ties with Iran.
Writing in Foreign Policy on Nov. 25, Benjamin H. Friedman and Stephen Wertheim propose an elegant solution: Do less. As part of an argument for removing U.S. troops from the region, the authors show why the U.S. stepping away from the region may not be as damaging as others predict. “Because the Middle East is experiencing a competition for influence among multiple midsized powers—Iran, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Israel—no one state credibly threatens to dominate the region and its oil supply,” Friedman and Wertheim write. “The United States will obtain more security by doing less.”
The World This Week
On Monday, Nov. 30, the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee will receive a closed briefing on the Trump administration’s plans for a $23 billion arms sale to the United Arab Emirates.
The countries of OPEC+ begin virtual meetings to discuss plans to increase oil output.
On Tuesday, Dec. 1, NATO foreign ministers gather virtually for a two-day meeting.
Italy assumes the rotating presidency of the G-20, taking over from Saudi Arabia.
World AIDS day is observed worldwide.
On Wednesday, Dec. 2, the United Nations General Assembly will discuss the question of Palestine following the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, observed on Sunday.
On Friday, Dec. 4, a Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) order banning Tiktok from operating in the United States is due to take effect.
On Saturday, Dec. 5, Kuwaitis go to the polls to elect 50 members to its National Assembly for four-year terms.
On Sunday, Dec. 6, Venezuela holds an election for its National Assembly; opposition parties plan to boycott the vote.
Romania holds legislative elections for both its Parliament and Senate.
Cameroon holds regional elections in an attempt to address demands for decentralization. Critics argue it’s too little too late.
What We’re Following Today
French police charged. Four French police officers involved in the beating of Michel Zecler, a Black music producer, have been charged with racial abuse and intentional violence as France reels from street protests ignited by the video of Zecler’s beating and a draft security law that would have prevented its release. Under the draft law, currently awaiting Senate approval, recordings of police that would damage their “physical or psychological integrity” would be prohibited. Reacting to the assault, French President Emmanuel Macron condemned it as unacceptable. The images “shame us,” Macron wrote on Twitter.
Abiy declares victory. After declaring the three-week offensive against the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front over following the capture of the Tigrayan capital Mekele, Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has turned his sights on capturing Tigrayan officials who appear to have gone into hiding. TPLF leader Debretsion Gebremichael, when asked by Reuters whether his group would continue fighting, was unequivocal in his reply. “Certainly. This is about defending our right to self-determination,” he said. The TPLF have a history of guerilla warfare, although those tactics may be less effective than in the past now that Eritrea—which borders Tigray—is allied with Abiy’s government.
Massacre in Nigeria. At least 110 people were killed in northeast Nigeria after attackers targeted a village in Borno state. Nigerian authorities have blamed Boko Haram for the attack, which took place on the same day Borno state held local elections. Edward Kallon, the United Nations humanitarian coordinator for Nigeria described the incident as “the most violent direct attack against innocent civilians this year.” Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari said that the country had been “wounded” by the killings.
Keep an Eye On
Serbia and Montenegro tensions. Serbia has rescinded a decision to expel the Montenegrin ambassador Tarzan Milosevic after it had original called for his removal following a tit-for-tat exchange with Montenegro. Montenegro expelled the Serbian ambassador Vladimir Bozovic on Saturday for “interfering in Montenegro’s internal affairs.” In reversing the expulsion, Serbian Prime Minister Ana Brnabic said she wanted to extend “the hand of cooperation and friendship” to Montenegro. Montenegro’s new Prime Minister Zdravko Krivokapic takes office this week.
Brexit talks back on. In-person negotiations resumed between British and European Union over the weekend following their brief halt after one of the EU negotiating team was diagnosed with COVID-19. Both sides have little more than a month to conclude an agreement on their future relationship before a Dec. 31 deadline. The Times of London reports that a call between British Prime Minister and EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen would be the first indication that talks are moving forward, although Reuters reports that no such call has been scheduled.
Intra-Afghan talks. Afghan President Ashraf Ghani is holding up an agreement on talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban, even as the Taliban claim the two sides are close to resolving their issues. According to a report in the New York Times, among Ghani’s concerns is the omission of the country’s official name—the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan—from guiding documents, which he argues undermines his government’s legitimacy.
Odds and Ends
Pigs flew in Taiwan’s parliament on Friday as opposition politicians adopted unorthodox methods to protest a deal that would allow U.S. pork imports that contain the additive ractopamine. Lawmakers threw various pig organs on the floor of parliament, and eventually at each other, as chaos descended and some members engaged in fistfights and shoving. The additive ractopamine is used by farmers to promote leanness in pigs, and is banned in the European Union and China. Taiwan’s president, Tsai-ing Wen, lifted the ban on ractopamine in September, and hopes to conclude a trade deal with the United States under a Biden administration.
That’s it for today.
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foreignpolicy--2020-11-30--Pentagon Says UAE Funding Russia’s Shadowy Mercenaries in Libya

The United Arab Emirates is apparently helping to finance the Russian mercenary group Wagner in Libya , according to a report issued last week by the Pentagon ’ s Inspector General for counterterrorism operations in Africa , a finding which is likely to complicate the United States ’ close relationship with the Gulf state .
Experts have long suspected that the UAE may be using Russian private military contractors to help obfuscate its role in the conflict , but the report is the first public , official assessment of the arrangement .
Military officials have been increasingly candid in their @ @ @ @ @ @ @ destabilizing role in Libya , amid concerns that the Kremlin may use the conflict to establish a military foothold off of Europe ’ s southern shores .
In July , the Pentagon ’ s Africa Command accused the group of indiscriminately laying landmines around Tripoli and putting the lives of civilians in jeopardy .
But the revelation that those Russian mercenaries may have been bankrolled by one of America ’ s closest military allies in the Middle East further complicates the calculus for Washington , and comes as Democrats in Congress have been @ @ @ @ @ @ @ administration ’ s proposed $ 23 billion sale of F-35 fighter jets to Abu Dhabi .
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee is set to hold a closed hearing on the arms sale early Monday evening .
“ Now there appears to be a permanent Russian presence on the flank of NATO , and it was enabled by a U.S ally , ” said Frederic Wehrey , a senior fellow in the Middle East Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace .
Nine countries have provided military support to the opposing factions in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as 10,000 mercenaries and foreign fighters have battled in support of the warring parties .
Most notably , Turkey has supported the Tripoli-based United Nations-backed Government of National Accord , while Russia has thrown its weight behind the renegade Libyan General Khalifa Haftar , who controls large swathes of territory in the country ’ s east .
While private military contractors are outlawed within Russia , a network of companies collectively known as the Wagner group has been at the forefront of Russian interference efforts abroad from Ukraine to Libya and Sudan .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ the group has lent its overseas operations a veneer of plausible deniability , but Wagner is deeply entwined with Russian military and intelligence structures and the Department of State has characterized it as a “ surrogate for the Russian ministry of defense.
” The group was initially thought to be bankrolled by Putin-ally Yevgeny Prigozhin , although it has increasingly secured a number of contracts with foreign actors in Syria , Sudan and the Central African Republic , further blurring the lines between Russian foreign policy and for-profit motives .
“ The overall @ @ @ @ @ @ @ very long time is that Wagner is being completely funded by foreign contracts , ” said Kimberly Marten , a professor of political science at Barnard College .
While the UAE has been the biggest military backer of Haftar as part of its broader effort to quash political Islam in the region , the Gulf state ’ s role in the conflict has received significantly less scrutiny than Russia ’ s intervention .
Experts attribute this to the UAE ’ s formidable lobbying efforts in Washington , and the country ’ s role @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , such as the maximum pressure campaign on Iran and the UAE ’ s peace deal with Israel , which has been hailed as a rare foreign policy success for the Trump administration .
“ It doesn ’ t gather a lot of traction because when you mention it to U.S officials , they say well , we have other equities with the UAE , ” said Emadeddin Badi , a nonresident senior fellow at the Middle East Program of the Atlantic Council .
The UAE is Russia ’ s closest ally in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ harbored suspicions that the two countries were closely cooperating in Libya , the emirates ’ reliance on Russian mercenaries on the ground has also enabled them to obfuscate their involvement .
“ It ’ s deniability , it ’ s better than direct involvement , ” said Anna Borshchevskaya , a senior fellow at the Washington Institute .
The cautious wording in the Inspector General report that “ The DIA [ Defense Intelligence Agency ] assessed that the United Arab Emirates may provide some financing for the group ’ s operations ” is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ involved .
The Trump administration has long been reluctant to call out U.S. partners in the Gulf , including the UAE , despite allegations of human rights abuses in the conflict in Yemen , and Trump has gone as far as to say that the U.S. has no interests in Libya .
“ I would imagine DIA has some good information on the UAE ’ s support to Wagner , ” said Douglas Wise , who served as deputy director of the Defense Intelligence Agency from 2014 to 2016 .
“ Having DIA @ @ @ @ @ @ @ less formal and embarrassing way to chide the UAE on their behavior than a diplomatic note or a press release from DoD or the White House .
It lets the UAE know that we know , ” he said .
Throughout 2020 , experts tracking the conflict in Libya have noted patterns that would indicate closer ties between the UAE and Russia .
In January , after Turkey ’ s parliament approved a measure to allow active-duty troops to fight on the ground in Libya alongside Turkish-backed mercenaries , there was a drastic @ @ @ @ @ @ @ laden with weapons and ammunition–flying to eastern Libya and western Egypt .
Like Russia , the UAE supports Haftar , the eastern Libyan strongman who was once a CIA asset and for years lived in the Washington , D.C. , suburbs .
The increased Russian presence in Libya has also coincided with Emirati drawdowns , further sparking suspicions .
As cargo shipments began to tick up and more Turkish troops entered the country , the UAE withdrew its equipment from the al-Khadim airbase near Benghazi and allowed Russian forces to take over the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for the U.S. military that led to flagging the UAE was the deployment of a dozen Russian fourth-generation fighter jets operated by Wagner in May , which was part of Haftar ’ s push to stop Turkish-backed forces from advancing further into the country , said Jalel Harchaoui , a senior fellow at the Paris-based Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime .
“ That moment incensed many within the Department of Defense , but the only facet that was made public back then was AFRICOM naming and shaming the Russians publicly , ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of course was that the Americans knew full well that part of the Wagner mission in Libya was likely paid for by Abu Dhabi.
” But while the U.S. election was still up for grabs when the Pentagon first spotted Russian fighters in Libya , the Trump administration ’ s departure makes it easier for the Pentagon to speak up now .
“ Alluding to it in May was a much tougher proposition than now , ” Harchoaui said .
The United Nations Panel of Experts , which reports on possible sanctionable activities @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the UAE repeatedly violated the world body ’ s embargo on arms transfers into Libya .
“ We ’ ve known that there has been battlefield coordination between the Emirates and Wagner , ” said Wehrey of Carnegie .
“ But the funding is just one more indictment of the Emirates ’ collaboration .
”

The United Arab Emirates is apparently helping to finance the Russian mercenary Wagner Group in Libya, according to a report issued last week by the U.S. Defense Department’s inspector general for counterterrorism operations in Africa—a finding that is likely to complicate the United States’ close relationship with the Gulf state.
The United Arab Emirates is apparently helping to finance the Russian mercenary Wagner Group in Libya, according to a report issued last week by the U.S. Defense Department’s inspector general for counterterrorism operations in Africa—a finding that is likely to complicate the United States’ close relationship with the Gulf state.
Experts have long suspected that the UAE may be using Russian private military contractors to help obfuscate its role in the conflict—a charge that Abu Dhabi denies—but the report is the first public, official assessment of the arrangement.
“The UAE is not financing and has never financed the Wagner Group as suggested by a recent Foreign Policy story,” Emirati Ambassador to the United States Yousef Al Otaiba said in a statement, insisting that the finding presented in the inspector general report is a “vague and unsubstantiated claim.” Otaiba said the UAE has asked the Pentagon to share how it reached the finding “so we can all know how suggestion and ambiguity can become ‘news.’”
Yet military officials have been increasingly candid in their assessments of the Wagner Group’s destabilizing role in Libya, amid concerns that the Kremlin may use the conflict to establish a military foothold off Europe’s southern shores. In July, U.S. Africa Command accused the group of indiscriminately laying land mines around Tripoli and putting the lives of civilians in jeopardy.
But the revelation that those Russian mercenaries may have been bankrolled by one of the United States’ closest military allies in the Middle East further complicates the calculus for Washington and comes as Democrats in Congress have been mounting a campaign to oppose the Trump administration’s proposed $23 billion sale of F-35 fighter jets to Abu Dhabi. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee is set to hold a closed hearing on the arms sale on Monday.
“Now there appears to be a permanent Russian presence on the flank of NATO, and it was enabled by a U.S. ally,” said Frederic Wehrey, a senior fellow in the Middle East Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Nine countries have provided military support to the opposing factions in the Libyan conflict, and as many as 10,000 mercenaries and foreign fighters have battled in support of the warring parties. Most notably, Turkey has supported the Tripoli-based, United Nations-backed Government of National Accord, while Russia has thrown its weight behind renegade Libyan Gen. Khalifa Haftar, who controls large swaths of territory in the country’s east.
While private military contractors are outlawed within Russia, a network of companies collectively known as the Wagner Group has been at the forefront of Russian interference efforts abroad from Ukraine to Libya and Sudan. The Kremlin’s increasing reliance on the group has lent its overseas operations a veneer of plausible deniability, but Wagner is deeply entwined with Russian military and intelligence structures and the U.S. State Department has characterized it as a “surrogate for the Russian ministry of defense.”
The group was initially thought to be bankrolled by Putin-ally Yevgeny Prigozhin, although it has increasingly secured a number of contracts with foreign actors in Syria, Sudan, and the Central African Republic, further blurring the lines between Russian foreign policy and for-profit motives.
“The overall impression that I have had for a very long time is that Wagner is being completely funded by foreign contracts,” said Kimberly Marten, a professor of political science at Barnard College.
While the UAE has been the biggest military backer of Haftar as part of its broader effort to quash political Islam in the region, the Gulf state’s role in the conflict has received significantly less scrutiny than Russia’s intervention. Experts attribute this to the UAE’s formidable lobbying efforts in Washington and the country’s role in other key U.S. foreign-policy objectives, such as the maximum pressure campaign on Iran and the UAE’s peace deal with Israel, which has been hailed as a rare foreign-policy success for the Trump administration.
“It doesn’t gather a lot of traction because when you mention it to U.S. officials, they say, ‘Well, we have other equities with the UAE,’” said Emadeddin Badi, a nonresident senior fellow in the Middle East Program at the Atlantic Council.
The UAE is Russia’s closest ally in the Gulf, and while experts have long harbored suspicions that the two countries were closely cooperating in Libya, the country’s reliance on Russian mercenaries on the ground has also enabled it to obfuscate its involvement. “It’s deniability. It’s better than direct involvement,” said Anna Borshchevskaya, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute.
The cautious wording in the inspector general report that the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) “assessed that the United Arab Emirates may provide some financing for the group’s operations” is likely a reflection of the political sensitivities involved. The Trump administration has long been reluctant to call out U.S. partners in the Gulf, including the UAE, despite allegations of human rights abuses in the conflict in Yemen, and President Donald Trump has gone as far as to say the United States has no interests in Libya.
“I would imagine DIA has some good information on the UAE’s support to Wagner,” said Douglas Wise, who served as DIA deputy director from 2014 to 2016. “Having DIA issue this would be an easy and less formal and embarrassing way to chide the UAE on their behavior than a diplomatic note or a press release from [the Defense Department] or the White House. It lets the UAE know that we know.”
Throughout 2020, experts tracking the conflict in Libya have noted patterns that would indicate closer ties between the UAE and Russia.
In January, after Turkey’s parliament approved a measure to allow active-duty troops to fight on the ground in Libya alongside Turkish-backed mercenaries, there was a drastic increase in Russian and Emirati cargo planes—likely laden with weapons and ammunition—flying to eastern Libya and western Egypt. Like Russia, the UAE supports Haftar, the eastern Libyan strongman who was once a CIA asset and for years lived in the Washington, D.C., area.
The increased Russian presence in Libya has also coincided with Emirati drawdowns, further sparking suspicions. As cargo shipments began to tick up and more Turkish troops entered the country, the UAE withdrew its equipment from al-Khadim air base near Benghazi and allowed Russian forces to take over the facility.
But the likely turning point for the U.S. military that led to flagging the UAE was the deployment of a dozen Russian fourth-generation fighter jets operated by Wagner in May, which was part of Haftar’s push to stop Turkish-backed forces from advancing further into the country, said Jalel Harchaoui, a senior fellow at the Paris-based Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime.
“That moment incensed many within the Department of Defense, but the only facet that was made public back then was Africom naming and shaming the Russians publicly,” he said. “The other facet of course was that the Americans knew full well that part of the Wagner mission in Libya was likely paid for by Abu Dhabi.”
But while the U.S. election was still up for grabs when the Pentagon first spotted Russian fighters in Libya, the Trump administration’s departure makes it easier for defense officials to speak up now.
“Alluding to it in May was a much tougher proposition than now,” Harchoaui said. The U.N. Panel of Experts monitoring possible sanctionable activities in Libya has reported that the UAE repeatedly violated the world body’s embargo on arms transfers into Libya.
“We’ve known that there has been battlefield coordination between the Emirates and Wagner,” said Wehrey of Carnegie. “But the funding is just one more indictment of the Emirates’ collaboration.”
Update, Dec. 4, 2020: This article was updated to add a statement from the Emirati ambassador to the United States.


Truth After Trump

One of the first and potentially most delicate challenges for the President-elect Joe Biden is deciding what to do with the Trump administration ’ s legacy of corruption , incompetence , and abuse of power .
An obvious approach is to let bygones be bygones , which is the norm in American politics .
It is what the Ford administration did in the wake of Watergate , including issuing a pardon to former President Richard Nixon .
It is also the approach that President Barack Obama adopted when it confronted the George W. Bush administration ’ s policies in Iraq @ @ @ @ @ @ @ use of torture on suspected terrorists , are internationally recognized as war crimes .
Biden shouldn ’ t be so quick to forget and move on .
A compelling case can be made that the Trump administration ’ s political misdeeds , especially those that stand in direct violation of universal human-rights norms , are deserving of a different approach : a truth commission , a quintessential practice of the international human-rights movement for holding former leaders and political regimes accountable for their human rights abuses .
For many , the first thing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ truth commissions is South America in the twilight of the Cold War .
It was in Argentina that truth commissions first drew international attention by becoming a key component in that country ’ s successful transition from authoritarian to democratic rule .
Argentina ’ s National Commission on the Disappeared met for nine months between 1983-84 to document the political excesses of the country ’ s notorious Dirty War , including the forced disappearance and presumed murder of an estimated 30,000 political dissidents .
Its final report , Nunca Más ( Never Again @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in 1986 , became an international best-seller .
It would be a mistake , though , to think of truth commissions as the sole province of transitional democracies like Argentina in the 1980s .
In recent years , truth commissions have been embraced by older , Western democracies to address large-scale human rights violations .
In 2007 , for example , Canada established a truth commission to document the terrible legacy of the Indian Residential Schools , a network of government-run institutions that separated thousands of Indigenous children from their families and communities @ @ @ @ @ @ @ program made attendance in the residential schools compulsory for Indigenous children ages seven-16 as part of a policy of so-called aggressive assimilation .
The truth commission was part of a court-ordered settlement that also included a formal government apology and a $ 1.8 billion payout to the surviving students .
Truth be told , truth commissions leave a lot to be desired .
They are a poor substitute for justice since they can allow even the most egregious human-rights abusers to get away with impunity in exchange for information .
Indeed , one @ @ @ @ @ @ @ truth commission is able to gather the full story is by offering amnesty to those implicated in wrongdoing .
That tactic was most famously employed by South Africa ’ s Truth and Reconciliation Commission ( TRC ) , founded in 1995 to chronicle systemic racial discrimination under Apartheid .
Although the TRC is widely seen as one of the most successful truth commissions in history , many South Africans resent the fact that no one from the old regime has ever faced prosecution .
Truth commissions are also known to have a problematic @ @ @ @ @ @ @ effort to put victims , rather than their oppressors , at the center of the search for facts , those in charge of truth commissions tend to privilege oral recollections as the primary source of evidence .
But these recollections are often hazy , incomplete , and faulty either because the events in question are long in the past or because of the trauma caused by the events themselves .
Moreover , truth commissions can complicate the process of national reconciliation by reviving the memory of a difficult and painful history .
Although @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is that remembering the past is a moral imperative for any civilized , democratic society , some degree of forgetting is also necessary for any country to get past traumatic historical events .
That said , truth commissions remain a very useful tool for coping with the crimes and misdeeds of a departed political administration , especially human-rights violations , which explains their worldwide popularity .
They can serve to restore dignity to the victimized while allowing for some degree of redemption for those willing to admit to their complicity with human-rights abuses @ @ @ @ @ @ @ catalyst for human-rights prosecutions , such as Argentina ’ s “ trial of the generals , ” which convicted the country ’ s military junta to life in prison , and for reforming state institutions with the intention of deterring future human-rights abuses .
They can also lead to the creation of ministries charged with promoting and policing human rights , to reforms to the state ’ s security apparatus , to reparations for the victims of state-sponsored human-rights abuses , and to constitutional provisions intended to strengthen human rights .
Most importantly @ @ @ @ @ @ @ official narrative of past wrongdoing that countries can employ to help ensure that history is not repeated .
The final report of Argentina ’ s truth commission has been incorporated in school curricula to teach children about the value of respecting human rights and motivated the creation of museums and memorials honoring the victims of the Dirty War .
South Africa ’ s truth commission has inspired numerous documentaries , exhibitions , and works of fiction .
One product of Canada ’ s truth commission was the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation @ @ @ @ @ @ @ houses the archives of the truth commission and organizes a wide range of activities about the history of Canada ’ s Indigenous peoples .
Under Trump ’ s watch , the State Department downgraded the importance of human rights in U.S. foreign policy and withdrew the United States from the U.N. Human Rights Council over the Council ’ s treatment of Israel .
Trump also embraced the world ’ s most notorious human-rights violators , including Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi , who the State Department has accused of overseeing “ unlawful killings and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ disappearances , ” and Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte , famous for having said that he would like to “ slaughter ” drug dealers “ just like Hitler killed Jews during the Holocaust.
” Little wonder that just one year into the administration , Human Rights Watch ’ s 2017 report warned that Trump ’ s policies threatened to “ reverse the accomplishments of the modern human-rights movement.
” When the Trump administration directly engaged with human rights , in 2020 , with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo ’ s “ Report on the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ brazenly conceptualized human rights as entailing property rights and freedom of religion .
The report pointedly skirted the real core of the matter : the intrinsic dignity of every human life ; the right to life and liberty , freedom from slavery and torture , and freedom of opinion and expression .
The problem wasn ’ t just rhetoric .
Trump ’ s policies have created an untold number of human-rights victims .
A truth commission will not erase this legacy , but it will assist in restoring the dignity taken from its @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and reparations .
Most famously , the Trump administration ’ s “ zero tolerance ” policy forcibly separated approximately 2,500 children ( many of them under the age of five ) from their parents at the U.S.-Mexican border .
The children were housed in U.S .
Custom and Border Protection ( CBP ) facilities described as “ cages ” in the media ; as “ concentration camps ” by New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez ; and as “ internment camps used by Japanese-Americans during World War II ” by former first lady Laura @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Immigration Freedom , a nonprofit legal organization , which drew on interviews with 9,500 minors conducted in 2019 , found that nearly 1 in 10 had been verbally abused by CBP officers , while 147 said that they had been subjected to physical abuse .
More than 40 percent reported a lack of adequate food and water during their detention .
Some 700 children remain under custody because the Trump administration did not bother to keep any records at the time it deported their parents .
American citizens are also among the victims @ @ @ @ @ @ @ abuses , starting with the LGBTQ community .
Among Trump ’ s first actions as president was to revoke the Obama administration ’ s transgender student guidance for schools , which extended Title IX protections to transgender students ; Trump also declared a ban on transgender people serving in the military and fought to prevent LGBT protection under the 1964 Civil Rights Act .
He demonized minority communities , having described an African-American majority district in the City of Baltimore as “ a disgusting , rat-infested mess , ” after the district congressional @ @ @ @ @ @ @ criticized the poor conditions at Trump ’ s migrant detention centers .
Trump ’ s Justice Department authorized the gassing of thousands of ordinary Americans for protesting peacefully on Washington , D.C. ’ s Lafayette Square as part of the national reckoning with racial injustice .
Last , but not least , Trump put politics ahead of science when confronting the COVID-19 pandemic , which so far has killed about 250,000 Americans .
Beyond committing the Trump administration ’ s misdeeds to the public record in painful detail , the most important benefit @ @ @ @ @ @ @ give a much-needed boost to the American human-rights movement .
It will establish a historical precedent for handling presidential misbehavior while bolstering America ’ s capacity to promote human rights around the world .
It is an understatement to say that when it comes to human rights , the United States has often failed to practice what it preaches .
This inconsistency mirrors the very strange career of human rights in American history .
Even though notable Americans , especially former first lady Eleanor Roosevelt , played a leading role in drafting the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and the fact that human rights are rooted in the United States ’ foundational documents , especially the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights , during the Cold War conservatives successfully branded human rights as foreign and un-American .
This stigma has hindered the capacity of U.S. social movements—from the Civil Rights movement to the LGBTQ rights movement—to use the language and practices of human rights , including truth commissions , to advance their objectives .
Last June , following a spate of killings of African Americans by the police and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of protests across American cities against systemic racism led by the civil rights organization Black Lives Matter , California Democratic Rep. Barbara Lee introduced a bill calling for the creation of the U.S. Commission on Truth , Racial Healing and Transformation .
Its task will be to examine the historical legacy of slavery and Jim Crow laws .
Several cities , including San Francisco and Boston , have announced plans to create a truth commission to examine police brutality as well .
Given the unprecedented assault on American democracy by the Trump administration @ @ @ @ @ @ @ fall back on the default mode of letting bygones be bygones .
The most important take-away from the 2020 general election is that while Trump was defeated , Trumpism was not .
But harnessing the resources and prestige of the U.S. government to expose the whole truth about Trumpism , especially its contempt for basic human rights , will go a long way towards ensuring its passing .

One of the first and potentially most delicate challenges for the President-elect Joe Biden is deciding what to do with the Trump administration’s legacy of corruption, incompetence, and abuse of power. An obvious approach is to let bygones be bygones, which is the norm in American politics. It is what the Ford administration did in the wake of Watergate, including issuing a pardon to former President Richard Nixon. It is also the approach that President Barack Obama adopted when it confronted the George W. Bush administration’s policies in Iraq. Some of them, including the use of torture on suspected terrorists, are internationally recognized as war crimes.
One of the first and potentially most delicate challenges for the President-elect Joe Biden is deciding what to do with the Trump administration’s legacy of corruption, incompetence, and abuse of power. An obvious approach is to let bygones be bygones, which is the norm in American politics. It is what the Ford administration did in the wake of Watergate, including issuing a pardon to former President Richard Nixon. It is also the approach that President Barack Obama adopted when it confronted the George W. Bush administration’s policies in Iraq. Some of them, including the use of torture on suspected terrorists, are internationally recognized as war crimes.
Biden shouldn’t be so quick to forget and move on. A compelling case can be made that the Trump administration’s political misdeeds, especially those that stand in direct violation of universal human-rights norms, are deserving of a different approach: a truth commission, a quintessential practice of the international human-rights movement for holding former leaders and political regimes accountable for their human rights abuses.
For many, the first thing that comes to mind when thinking about truth commissions is South America in the twilight of the Cold War. It was in Argentina that truth commissions first drew international attention by becoming a key component in that country’s successful transition from authoritarian to democratic rule. Argentina’s National Commission on the Disappeared met for nine months between 1983-84 to document the political excesses of the country’s notorious Dirty War, including the forced disappearance and presumed murder of an estimated 30,000 political dissidents. Its final report, Nunca Más (Never Again), which was published in English in 1986, became an international best-seller.
It would be a mistake, though, to think of truth commissions as the sole province of transitional democracies like Argentina in the 1980s. In recent years, truth commissions have been embraced by older, Western democracies to address large-scale human rights violations. In 2007, for example, Canada established a truth commission to document the terrible legacy of the Indian Residential Schools, a network of government-run institutions that separated thousands of Indigenous children from their families and communities. Dating to the 1920s, the program made attendance in the residential schools compulsory for Indigenous children ages seven-16 as part of a policy of so-called aggressive assimilation. The truth commission was part of a court-ordered settlement that also included a formal government apology and a $1.8 billion payout to the surviving students.
Truth be told, truth commissions leave a lot to be desired. They are a poor substitute for justice since they can allow even the most egregious human-rights abusers to get away with impunity in exchange for information. Indeed, one of the principal means by which a truth commission is able to gather the full story is by offering amnesty to those implicated in wrongdoing. That tactic was most famously employed by South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), founded in 1995 to chronicle systemic racial discrimination under Apartheid. Although the TRC is widely seen as one of the most successful truth commissions in history, many South Africans resent the fact that no one from the old regime has ever faced prosecution.
Truth commissions are also known to have a problematic relationship with the truth. In an effort to put victims, rather than their oppressors, at the center of the search for facts, those in charge of truth commissions tend to privilege oral recollections as the primary source of evidence. But these recollections are often hazy, incomplete, and faulty either because the events in question are long in the past or because of the trauma caused by the events themselves. Moreover, truth commissions can complicate the process of national reconciliation by reviving the memory of a difficult and painful history. Although a core tenet of the human-rights movement is that remembering the past is a moral imperative for any civilized, democratic society, some degree of forgetting is also necessary for any country to get past traumatic historical events.
That said, truth commissions remain a very useful tool for coping with the crimes and misdeeds of a departed political administration, especially human-rights violations, which explains their worldwide popularity. They can serve to restore dignity to the victimized while allowing for some degree of redemption for those willing to admit to their complicity with human-rights abuses. Truth commissions can also be a catalyst for human-rights prosecutions, such as Argentina’s “trial of the generals,” which convicted the country’s military junta to life in prison, and for reforming state institutions with the intention of deterring future human-rights abuses. They can also lead to the creation of ministries charged with promoting and policing human rights, to reforms to the state’s security apparatus, to reparations for the victims of state-sponsored human-rights abuses, and to constitutional provisions intended to strengthen human rights.
Most importantly, perhaps, truth commissions create an official narrative of past wrongdoing that countries can employ to help ensure that history is not repeated. The final report of Argentina’s truth commission has been incorporated in school curricula to teach children about the value of respecting human rights and motivated the creation of museums and memorials honoring the victims of the Dirty War. South Africa’s truth commission has inspired numerous documentaries, exhibitions, and works of fiction. One product of Canada’s truth commission was the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation at the University of Manitoba. It houses the archives of the truth commission and organizes a wide range of activities about the history of Canada’s Indigenous peoples.
Among the benefits of a truth commission in the United States will be to help expose the Trump administration’s full depravity and venality. The most compelling charges for any potential prosecution of outgoing President Donald Trump by the Biden administration would be perjury (for offering false testimony to the special counsel investigating Russian interference in the 2016 general elections); public corruption (for using the presidency to enrich himself); and obstruction of justice (for firing FBI Director James Comey). Prosecution under these charges will undoubtedly strengthen the rule of law, which under Trump has taken a blow. But observers should not expect much in the way of shedding light on the Trump administration’s atrocious human-rights record. What is known about this record warrants a serious investigation.
Under Trump’s watch, the State Department downgraded the importance of human rights in U.S. foreign policy and withdrew the United States from the U.N. Human Rights Council over the Council’s treatment of Israel. Trump also embraced the world’s most notorious human-rights violators, including Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, who the State Department has accused of overseeing “unlawful killings and torture” as well as “enforced disappearances,” and Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, famous for having said that he would like to “slaughter” drug dealers “just like Hitler killed Jews during the Holocaust.” Little wonder that just one year into the administration, Human Rights Watch’s 2017 report warned that Trump’s policies threatened to “reverse the accomplishments of the modern human-rights movement.” When the Trump administration directly engaged with human rights, in 2020, with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s “Report on the Commission on Unalienable Rights,” it brazenly conceptualized human rights as entailing property rights and freedom of religion. The report pointedly skirted the real core of the matter: the intrinsic dignity of every human life; the right to life and liberty, freedom from slavery and torture, and freedom of opinion and expression.
The problem wasn’t just rhetoric. Trump’s policies have created an untold number of human-rights victims. A truth commission will not erase this legacy, but it will assist in restoring the dignity taken from its victims and open the way for prosecutions and reparations. Most famously, the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” policy forcibly separated approximately 2,500 children (many of them under the age of five) from their parents at the U.S.-Mexican border. The children were housed in U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) facilities described as “cages” in the media; as “concentration camps” by New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez; and as “internment camps used by Japanese-Americans during World War II” by former first lady Laura Bush. A report by Americans for Immigration Freedom, a nonprofit legal organization, which drew on interviews with 9,500 minors conducted in 2019, found that nearly 1 in 10 had been verbally abused by CBP officers, while 147 said that they had been subjected to physical abuse. More than 40 percent reported a lack of adequate food and water during their detention. Some 700 children remain under custody because the Trump administration did not bother to keep any records at the time it deported their parents.
American citizens are also among the victims of the Trump administration’s human-rights abuses, starting with the LGBTQ community. Among Trump’s first actions as president was to revoke the Obama administration’s transgender student guidance for schools, which extended Title IX protections to transgender students; Trump also declared a ban on transgender people serving in the military and fought to prevent LGBT protection under the 1964 Civil Rights Act. He demonized minority communities, having described an African-American majority district in the City of Baltimore as “a disgusting, rat-infested mess,” after the district congressional representative, the late Elijah Cummings, criticized the poor conditions at Trump’s migrant detention centers. Trump’s Justice Department authorized the gassing of thousands of ordinary Americans for protesting peacefully on Washington, D.C.’s Lafayette Square as part of the national reckoning with racial injustice. Last, but not least, Trump put politics ahead of science when confronting the COVID-19 pandemic, which so far has killed about 250,000 Americans.
Beyond committing the Trump administration’s misdeeds to the public record in painful detail, the most important benefit of a truth commission would be to give a much-needed boost to the American human-rights movement. It will establish an historical precedent for handling presidential misbehavior while bolstering America’s capacity to promote human rights around the world. It is an understatement to say that when it comes to human rights, the United States has often failed to practice what it preaches. This inconsistency mirrors the very strange career of human rights in American history. Even though notable Americans, especially former first lady Eleanor Roosevelt, played a leading role in drafting the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the fact that human rights are rooted in the United States’ foundational documents, especially the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights, during the Cold War conservatives successfully branded human rights as foreign and un-American. This stigma has hindered the capacity of U.S. social movements—from the Civil Rights movement to the LGBTQ rights movement—to use the language and practices of human rights, including truth commissions, to advance their objectives.
Even though the creation of a truth commission to examine the human-rights abuses of the Trump administration would only require an executive order, it would still face an uphill struggle. Because of the political polarization of the moment, it is almost a given that the Republican leadership in Washington will label any investigation of the human-rights abuses of the Trump administration a partisan undertaking, and maybe even try to use the historical association of truth commissions with nations with a history of authoritarian rule to discredit the idea as unbecoming of the United States. But the climate for truth commissions in the United States has never been more auspicious.
Last June, following a spate of killings of African Americans by the police and in the midst of a massive wave of protests across American cities against systemic racism led by the civil rights organization Black Lives Matter, California Democratic Rep. Barbara Lee introduced a bill calling for the creation of the U.S. Commission on Truth, Racial Healing and Transformation. Its task will be to examine the historical legacy of slavery and Jim Crow laws. Several cities, including San Francisco and Boston, have announced plans to create a truth commission to examine police brutality as well.
Given the unprecedented assault on American democracy by the Trump administration, it is far too risky to fall back on the default mode of letting bygones be bygones. The most important take-away from the 2020 general election is that while Trump was defeated, Trumpism was not. But harnessing the resources and prestige of the U.S. government to expose the whole truth about Trumpism, especially its contempt for basic human rights, will go a long way towards ensuring its passing.