Myanmar

Fondjättarna Länsförsäkringar och Sjunde AP-fonden äger aktier i bolag som enligt FN:s särskilda rapportör för Myanmar förser militärjuntan i landet med utrustning. AP7 äger även aktier i bolag som gör oljeaffärer med juntan, visar Di:s kartläggning.

Situationen i myanmariska Rakhine liknar alltmer perioden som föregick den omfattande våldskampanjen mot rohingyer 2016–2017, varnar en FN-expert. Tre år efter statskuppen är juntan kraftigt försvagad – och rohingyerna alltmer utsatta.

Antalet flyktingar från strider i västra Myanmar har stigit till omkring 45 000. FN beräknar att merparten av dem som flytt provinsen Rakhine (tidigare Arakan) är rohingyer och att många tagit sin tillflykt till Bangladesh.

Gaza, Ukraina, Nagorno-Karabach och Sudan, för att nämna några konflikthärdar. Om det känns som att världen står i brand, plågad av krig och lidande, så finns det fog för den känslan. Antalet krig, deras intensitet och längd är på den högsta nivån sedan innan slutet av kalla kriget, enligt data från Uppsala Conflict Data Program. Trots det så finns det hopp om en ljusare framtid, enligt en text i Foreign Affairs. Enskilda länder, snarare än multilaterala organisationer som FN måste ta ett större ansvar för att stoppa konflikter. Och fler aktörer, till exempel hjälporganisationer, måste involveras mer för att hitta lösningarna. What Is Behind the Global Explosion of Violent Conflict? By Emma Beals and Peter Salisbury October 25, 2023 Violent conflict is increasing in multiple parts of the world. In addition to Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel, and the Israeli offensive on Gaza, raising the specter of a wider war in the Middle East, there has been a surge in violence across Syria, including a wave of armed drone attacks that threatened U.S. troops stationed there. In the Caucasus in late September, Azerbaijan seized the disputed enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh—forcing an estimated 150,000 ethnic Armenians to flee their historical home in the territory and setting the stage for renewed fighting with Armenia. Meanwhile, in Africa, the civil war in Sudan rages on, conflict has returned to Ethiopia, and a military takeover of Niger in July was the sixth coup across the Sahel and West Africa since 2020. In fact, according to an analysis of data gathered by the Uppsala Conflict Data Program, conducted by the Peace Research Institute Oslo, the number, intensity, and length of conflicts worldwide is at its highest level since before the end of the Cold War. The study found that there were 55 active conflicts in 2022, with the average one lasting about eight to 11 years, a substantial increase from the 33 active conflicts lasting an average of seven years a decade earlier. Notwithstanding the increase in conflicts, it has been more than a decade since an internationally mediated comprehensive peace deal has been brokered to end a war. UN-led or UN-assisted political processes in Libya, Sudan, and Yemen have stalled or collapsed. Seemingly frozen conflicts—in countries including Ethiopia, Israel, and Myanmar—are thawing at an alarming pace. With the Russian invasion of Ukraine, high-intensity conflict has even returned to Europe, which had previously enjoyed several decades of relative peace and stability. Alongside the proliferation of war has come record levels of human upheaval. In 2022, a quarter of the world’s population—two billion people—lived in conflict-affected areas. The number of people forcibly displaced worldwide reached a record 108 million by the start of 2023. Until now, the international response from European Union member states, the United Kingdom, and the United States, all of whom invested heavily in peace building in the wake of the Cold War, has been to shift the goal posts of “peace” from conflict resolution to conflict management. But events in the Middle East and elsewhere are a reminder that conflict can be managed for only so long. As fighting flares worldwide and the root causes of conflict remain unresolved, traditional peace building and development tools look increasingly ineffective. The result is that aid bills grow, refugees are displaced, and fractured societies continue to suffer. A new approach to resolving and managing conflicts and their impact is urgently needed. Having fallen between 1990 and 2007, the total number of conflicts worldwide began to rise in 2010, the Uppsala Conflict Data Program found. The number of civil and interstate wars, and the fatalities they cause, are now at their highest levels since the mid-1980s, and the UN declared in January that the number of violent conflicts worldwide is at its highest level since the end of World War II. Wars that are halted are increasingly likely to reignite within a year, as happens about five times a year on average. Wars are becoming more common, and difficult to end, for a number of reasons. One is the changing nature of conflict. Twenty-first-century wars tend to be fought between states and armed groups committed to different causes with access to relatively advanced weaponry and other forms of technology, as well as money earned from natural resources and criminal activity. Complex, multiparty conflict became the norm after the Soviet Union collapsed, which removed the binary organizing principle of West-Soviet competition that shaped many earlier wars. More recently, conflicts have also become increasingly internationalized. Countries including Russia, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, and the United States regularly become drawn, whether indirectly or directly, into foreign wars, as has been seen repeatedly in conflicts in the Middle East and Africa. The more local and international parties that are involved in a conflict, the harder it is to end it. The UN, once the go-to conflict mediator, has been sidelined. The UN’s loss of influence has been driven by geopolitical competition, which has divided powerful states. The UN Security Council is particularly affected by these forces. It has seized up, plagued by growing international rivalries between the United States, Russia, and China and by an increasingly transactional approach to international politics. Deadlock at the Security Council means that the UN can offer neither solutions nor censure for war crimes or aggression. Security Council–mandated peacekeeping and transition teams are becoming rarer and are often short-lived, and UN envoys, peacekeepers, and other officials increasingly lack leverage and credibility with conflicting parties. This June, for example, Mali sought the withdrawal of a decadelong UN peacekeeping presence because of tensions between the government and the mission, including a disagreement over their role and mandate. Sudan’s rival warlords reportedly refused to even speak to their country’s UN Special Envoy Volker Perthes, before he resigned in September. The UN peacekeeping chief, Jean-Pierre Lacroix, has stated that divisions within the Security Council mean UN missions are no longer able to achieve “the ultimate goal of peacekeeping”—devising durable political solutions—and must instead settle for “intermediate goals” such as “preserving cease-fires.” Increasingly overwhelmed by a series of global crises and new policy priorities, including Russian aggression in Europe and an assertive China, many high-level policymakers in the United States and Europe see limited value in intervening militarily or investing significant political capital in far-flung conflicts that they regard as of little strategic consequence. Attention has instead shifted to dealing with the consequences of conflicts—waves of refugees and cross-border smuggling of drugs and weapons, in particular—rather than their causes. Faced with this array of challenges, the perception of what is possible among UN officials and Western countries who once threw their weight behind peacemaking—principally EU member-states led by France and Germany, as well as the United Kingdom and the United States—is changing. A former UN official who worked for decades on international peace processes has noted that the numerous barriers to mediation make it “almost impossible” to end modern conflicts. In practice, UN intervention today often serves to de-escalate conflicts or, in a best-case scenario, initiate a fragile political process that few expect to work. In private, many veteran mediators and policy officials have argued that the ambitions of many international mediation efforts are tacitly limited to bilateral dealmaking designed to achieve short-term détente or limited goals, such as the 2022 agreement that allowed Ukrainian grain to pass through the Black Sea. Marginalized during negotiations, and lacking broad peace agreements and political transitions in which they can play a significant role, UN mediators have lost much of their raison d’être. Most other peace-building tools—including inclusive political dialogue, accountability, transitional justice, and security sector reform—cannot succeed without political processes to anchor them. Elsewhere, the aspirations of many Western diplomats have quietly shifted to pursuing or supporting containment or de-escalation, avoiding the search for peaceful and sustainable resolution to conflicts. Efforts by the United States to describe the Abraham Accords—which sought to normalize Arab relations with Israel—as “a peace process” highlight this change. The accords in practice fail to address the drivers of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, as has become disastrously clear in the Israel-Hamas war. International aspirations for long-term solutions are particularly low in the Middle East and North Africa. The current phase of Yemen’s civil war has slowed to a near-halt following negotiations between the Houthi rebels—who sparked the conflict by seizing the capital in 2014—and Saudi Arabia, which intervened to oust them in 2015. But the UN and the Houthis’ domestic rivals have been excluded from negotiations, and the chances of a meaningful political settlement appear low. Many Yemenis, including the veteran researcher Nadwa al-Dawsari, expect either a return to fighting sooner or later, or the continuation of a limbo state of “no war, no peace” if the Houthi-Saudi channel remains the main negotiation track. Syria’s so-called frozen conflict is also seeing an alarming but predictable uptick in violence and instability because of the lack of progress of negotiations. On one track, negotiations between the Arab Liaison Committee, which is composed of Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Egypt and the Arab League, and the Syrian government have stalled. At the same time, the UN-led peace process in Syria is detached from the conflict’s drivers. It is pursuing limited objectives, including a new constitution to be drafted by a committee that has not met in 18 months, and a yet-to-begin process, led by the UN, that seeks to build mutual confidence between Syria and the Arab Liaison Committee, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States. This process is largely divorced from current political and military developments, including a recent spike in violence across the country. Until recently, some international officials appeared to think an end to fighting was a good-enough goal. In late September, U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, touting the Biden administration’s foreign policy bona fides, claimed that the Middle East was “quieter today than it has been in two decades.” But Hamas’s brutal attacks in Israel a week after his comments and Israel’s ongoing military response in Gaza, as well as surging violence across Syria, show the limits of containment. Containment does not resolve conflicts and requires active management. This means proactive efforts to address grievances, quell violence, advance negotiations, and take action to deal with increasing instability or unexpected events. Whereas reducing violence is a sensible initial goal, once conflicts have been de-escalated, attention all too often shifts elsewhere. It is easy, then, to miss warning signs that fighting is about to restart. This is a particular problem when armed actors or regimes remain in control after failed peace processes or during political transitions. Without accountability for their past misdeeds, such groups feel free to repeat violence. For this reason, Sudan’s generals appear to have believed that they would not be held to account by the UN, their international backers (particularly Saudi Arabia and the UAE), or the states engaged in supporting the transition process (including Norway, the United Kingdom, and the United States) when they began to fight each other in April. Sudanese activists and diplomats based in the capital rightly pointed out that they had repeatedly warned that the men who have governed the country since the 2019 military coup were gearing up for war with one another. But these warnings were either dismissed or watered down in Western capitals, including Washington, in part because no conflict had yet broken out and because officials did not see Sudan as a priority. Both regional actors and Western diplomats and analysts have long argued that the status quo in Gaza and the West Bank is unsustainable. But international attention has been focused elsewhere. Regional normalization efforts led by the Trump administration built ties between Israel and former Arab adversaries including Bahrain and the UAE. The Abraham Accords have been sustained by the Biden administration, which has energetically pursued an Israeli-Saudi deal. But these efforts have completely failed to address the drivers of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Despite this, even as the war between Israel and Hamas escalated, U.S. officials, including Secretary of State Antony Blinken, declared that Washington still hoped to continue Israeli-Saudi normalization negotiations. All too often, humanitarian aid has become a panacea for managing unresolved conflict. Take Syria, where, 12 years after the war began, the UN aid funding requests for 2023 included $4.81 billion for programs inside the country and $5.7 billion to support refugees. Similar sums are being expended in Sudan and Myanmar, both of which are suffering conflicts and have vacant UN political envoy roles and no discernible peace process. Violence grinds on unabated, and civilians subsist on meager aid provision—in areas where they can be reached. As the number of conflicts rises, the price tag for aid keeps growing. Donors cannot keep up with the growing cost of war. Funding for aid appeals increased by an average of ten percent year on year between 2012 and 2018 but then tapered off. Yet UN appeals for funds have continued to grow, quadrupling in number between 2013 and today. Of the 406 million people in need of humanitarian assistance in 2022, 87 percent lived in a country in the midst of high-intensity conflict, and 83 percent in a protracted crisis. Aid, in these circumstances, cannot be the only answer. Refugee return requires a fundamental shift in local dynamics that allows those fleeing violence and persecution to safely return home, access their properties, and reintegrate into society without discrimination. At the same time, postconflict justice and development require management by suitable governments that are willing to address the violations committed during the conflict and provide adequate governance free of discrimination to facilitate a productive economic environment in which corruption and illicit activity are combated. Locally led peace building that heals the social fractures caused by conflict requires civic space to conduct dialogue, address grievances, and secure inclusive decision-making and governance. The world is at an inflection point, and it is still possible to galvanize support for a new approach to resolving conflict. To achieve this, creative and courageous leadership is needed from a broad coalition of politicians, business leaders, the UN, peace builders, and local communities—aligned with a renewed ambition to make peace. Without aspiring to, and placing a value on, sustainable peace, it is all too easy to accept least bad outcomes and to forget the enormous human and resource toll of doing so. First and foremost, any effort at renewing peacemaking for the twenty-first century needs political will from powerful states, principally the United States and the other permanent members of the UN Security Council. This point was explicitly made by UN Secretary-General António Guterres in his recently published policy brief, “A New Agenda for Peace,” a vision that places the responsibility for securing the peace and upholding international norms in the hands of individual countries rather than the multilateral system. If governments that say they believe in a rules-based order—including those in Brussels, London, and Washington—are willing to uphold international laws and norms, then there may be some hope for the future. But if they are not, then the current race to the bottom is certain to continue. More accurate language referring to “peace” may help these governments reengage with the struggle for it. Describing negotiations over a cease-fire as a “peace process,” as if peace were just around the corner rather than years or decades away, all too often leads to early claims that it has been achieved just because the guns have temporarily fallen silent. This misconception leads to disengagement. New, more accurate framing that differentiates between stages of conflict management, conflict resolution, and peace building, as well as a more honest account of the prospects for progress into the next stage, would lead to a more honest account of what is possible and practical—or morally acceptable. In particular, this new approach to language would help to establish realistic expectations of what can be achieved in the short, medium, and long terms. It would also prevent the all too familiar rush to declare success that scuppers the continuation of many peace processes. Most important, a new approach to mediation is needed. Formal peace-building processes and practices were expanded and professionalized during the post–Cold War period, and they presume or require dynamics—including geopolitical cooperation and successful peace settlements and political transitions—that no longer exist. Today’s world is defined by geopolitical competition and requires something very different. In responding to these challenges, mediators must become more creative and collaborative. They must become advocates for their own cause, making the public case for peace, and they must secure diplomatic support and engage with a wide variety of groups, including civil society. In particular, mediators must work closely with, and empower, local peace builders, absorbing local knowledge and involving key players in peace processes, which must no longer seek to perpetuate status quo power dynamics. Mediators must also work closely with—and at times provide support to—regional blocs, play a greater role in supporting bilateral negotiations, and empower conflicting parties to create sustainable peace once the guns have been silenced. Meanwhile, those seeking to make peace will need to engage nontraditional actors—middle powers, humanitarian organizations, and actors from the private sector. These partnerships should harness the potential of the environmental, social, and corporate governance agenda to carve out a role for the private sector in supporting peace, forge new models of geopolitical cooperation, and use aid to support peace rather than serve as a substitute for it. These are big asks. But they are also the basic requirements for building sustainable peace, stopping the proliferation of conflict, and aiming for more than the temporary quelling of violence. © 2023 Council on Foreign Relations, publisher of Foreign Affairs. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency. Read the original article at Foreign Affairs.

Shorts, tubsockor, New Balance-skor och skrynklig T-shirt. Den bedrägerianklagade kryptokungen Sam Bankman-Frieds klädstil imponerar inte. Något han delar med Facebookgrundaren Marc Zuckerberg, vars mansbebis-uniform grå t-shirt, blå jeans och sneakers bara är snäppet slafsigare. Det finns fler likheter mellan männen än ointresset för mode. De är socialt trubbiga, har tvivelaktig moralisk kompass och en skyhög arbetsmoral. Bankman-Fried sov under flera år på en beaniebag intill skrivbordet. Deras eftermälen lär dock bli fundamentalt olika: Bankman-Fried kommer få epitetet kryptoskojare medan Zuckerberg går till historien som en av vår tids stora entreprenörer. Bankman-Fried geniförklarades till en början. Silicon Valleys riskkapitalister älskade hans ostrukna gamerlook och det faktum att han spelade tv-spel under investerarmötena. Vilket självförtroende! Alla kastade pengar efter honom och ett tag var hans kryptobörs FTX värderad till mer än 300 miljarder kronor. Sedan fick han lite risig pr, Wall Street Journal skrev bland annat att FTX-kundernas pengar inte var i tryggt förvar, vilket ledde till bankrusning. Och när alla kunder vill ha ut sina pengar samtidigt brukar det sällan sluta lyckligt för finansinstitut. I det här fallet visade det sig dessutom att degen flödat tämligen fritt mellan Bankman-Frieds handelsplattform och hans privata plånbok. Mark Zuckerberg dundrade in under parollen ”move fast and break things” och pushade alla tänkbara gränser för hur man bör hantera data och personuppgifter. Medan han byggde sitt sociala medier-imperium lyckades han definitivt ha sönder saker. Facebooks algoritmer, som skapar små ekokammare av hat genom att utnyttja den mänskliga hjärnans dragning till oenigheter, har bidragit till folkmord i Myanmar och sett till att vår värld är mer polariserad än någonsin. Det är en tunn linje mellan världsherravälde och katastrof. Vissa kommer undan, andra gör det inte. Bankman-Fried är en bedragare men Zuckerberg har i mina ögon orsakat betydligt mer elände. Kanske är nyckeln att växa sig så mäktig att man blir ”too big to fail”. Mina tips Se: Lessons in chemistry, med Brie Larson som en briljant kemist vars begåvning inte uppskattas av alla. Lyssna på: Den lättsamt folkbildande podcasten A-kursen, där Emma Frans och Clara Wallin ger lyssnarna får grundläggande kunskaper i aktuella ämnen. Drick: Ett glas fylligt kaliforniskt pinot noir, gärna till ugnsbakad kyckling med rotfrukter.

29 personer har dödats i en attack på ett flyktingläger i ett gerillakontrollerat område i norra Myanmar. Det uppger en talesperson för gerillagruppen Kachins frihetsarmé enligt TT. Gruppen har befunnit sig i konflikt med landets regering i decennier, en konflikt som eskalerade efter att en militärjunta på nytt tog makten 2021. Attacken har inte bekräftats av regeringssidan. – Den här handlingen av militärstyret är ett krigsbrott och ett brott mot mänskligheten, säger Kyaw Zaw, talesperson för oppositionens ”skuggregering”, enligt Hindustan Times.

Nya spelare som Sydkorea och Turkiet har tagit plats vid det globala vapenhandelsbordet, skriver The Economist. Med ett förändrat geopolitisk läge finns möjlighet att utmana de fem jättarna USA, Ryssland, Frankrike, Kina och Tyskland som står för mer än tre fjärdedelar av världens vapenexport. – Sydkoreas framgångar inom vapenhandeln beror på konkurrenskraftiga kostnader, vapen av hög kvalitet och snabba leveranser, säger Tom Waldwyn på den brittiska tankesmedjan International Institute for Strategic Studies. Where to buy drones, fighters and tanks on the cheap  By The Economist 19 September, 2023 The sight of North Korea’s chubby leader, Kim Jong Un, shaking hands with Vladimir Putin on September 13th—having travelled by train to a spaceport in Russia’s far east to discuss selling its dictator a stash of Korean weapons—was remarkable both on its own terms and for what it said about the business of selling arms. The world’s five biggest arms-sellers (America, Russia, France, China and Germany) account for more than three-quarters of exports. But up-and-coming weapons producers are giving the old guard a run for their money. They are making the most of opportunities created by shifting geopolitics. And they are benefiting from the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Mr Kim’s trip to Russia followed a visit to Pyongyang in July by Sergei Shoigu, Russia’s defence minister, who wanted to see if North Korea could provide gear that would help his country’s faltering war effort. North Korea would love to find buyers for its military kit. And few regimes are willing to sell Russia arms. China has so far been deterred from providing much more than dual-purpose chips (although it could yet channel more lethal stuff through North Korea). Only Iran has obliged, selling some 2,400 of its Shahed “kamikaze” drones. North Korea could provide a wider range of stuff. As well as drones and missiles such as the KN-23, which is almost a replica of the Russian Iskander ballistic missile, it could offer self-propelled howitzers and multi-launch rocket systems. According to sources in American intelligence, North Korea has been delivering 152mm shells and Katyusha-type rockets to Russia for the best part of a year. Russia is shopping in Pyongyang and Tehran because both regimes are already so heavily targeted by international sanctions that they have nothing to lose and much to gain by doing business with Mr Putin’s government. They are not so much an “axis of evil” as a marketplace of pariahs. If the North Korean arms industry is being boosted by the war in Ukraine, its southern foe is doing even better. South Korea’s arms exporters were cleaning up even before the conflict. In the five years to 2022 the country rose to ninth place in a ranking of weapons-sellers compiled by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (sipri), a think-tank (see chart); the government aspires to make South Korea the world’s fourth-largest arms exporter by 2027. Last year it sold arms worth $17bn, more than twice as much as in 2021. Some $14.5bn came from sales to Poland. The size and scope of the agreements South Korea has reached with Poland, which sees itself as a front-line country in Europe’s defence against a revanchist Russia, is jaw-dropping. The deal includes 1,000 k2 Black Panther tanks, 180 of them delivered rapidly from the army’s own inventory and 820 to be made under licence in Poland. That is more tanks than are operating in the armies of Germany, France, Britain and Italy combined. The package also includes 672 k9 Thunder self-propelled howitzers; 288 k239 Chunmoo multiple-rocket launchers; and 48 Golden Eagle fa-50s, a cut-price fourth-generation fighter jet. South Korea’s success in the arms business is down to competitive costs, high-quality weaponry and swift delivery, says Tom Waldwyn at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a think-tank based in London. Its prices reflect Korean manufacturing efficiency. The quality derives from Korea’s experience working with the best American weaponry, and from its own high-tech civil sector. Speedy delivery is possible because the Koreans, facing a major threat across their northern border, run hot production lines that can also ramp up quickly. Siemon Wezeman, a researcher with sipri’s arms-transfer programme, says wholehearted support from government and attractive credit arrangements are also critical to South Korea’s success. Asian customers like that the fact that it has close ties to America without being America, which is often seen as an unreliable ally. This could also help South Korea clinch a $45bn deal to renew Canada’s ageing submarine fleet. Questions for the future include how far South Korea will go in transferring technology to its customers—a crucial issue for Poland, which sees itself as an exporting partner of South Korea’s, competing with Germany and France in the European market. If South Korea is the undisputed leader among emerging arms exporters, second place goes to Turkey. Since the ruling ak party came to power in 2002 it has poured money into its defence industry. A goal of achieving near-autarky in weapons production has become more pressing in the face of American and European sanctions—the former imposed in 2019 after Turkey, a nato member, bought Russian s-400 surface-to-air missiles. SIPRI thinks that between 2018 and 2022 Turkey’s weapons exports increased by 69% compared to the previous five-year period, and that its share of the global arms market doubled. According to a report in July by a local industry body, the value of its defence and aerospace exports rose by 38% in 2022, compared with the previous year, reaching $4.4bn. The target for this year is $6bn. Pakistan is receiving modernised submarines from Turkey. And the last of four corvettes which Turkey has sold to the Pakistan navy was launched last month. More sales to other countries are likely, both because Turkey’s ships are competitively priced and because Turkey has few qualms about who it will sell to. Yet Turkey’s export charge is led by armed drones. On July 18th Turkey signed a $3bn agreement with Saudi Arabia to supply the Akinci unmanned combat aerial vehicle (ucav). It was made by Baykar, which also produces the Bayraktar tb2—a drone that has been used in combat by Libya, Azerbaijan, Ethiopia and Ukraine. The tb2 was developed to hunt Kurdish militants after America refused to sell Turkey its Predator drone. More than 20 countries lined up to buy it because it was cheaper and more readily available than the American alternative, and more reliable than the Chinese ucavs that had previously dominated the non-Western market. The Akinci (pictured right, next to the TB2) is more powerful. It can carry lots of big weapons, including air-to-air missiles and the som-a, a stealthy cruise missile with a range of 250km. It will find buyers among several other Gulf countries, such as Qatar, Oman and the uae, who are keen to hedge against souring relations with America by reducing their reliance on its weaponry. These countries have ambitions to build their own defence industries; they see Turkey as a willing partner and an example to follow. Turkey’s ambitions are shown by what else is in the pipeline. Its new navy flagship, the Anadolu, is a 25,000-ton amphibious assault ship and light aircraft-carrier that will carry Bayraktar ucavs. At least one Gulf country is said to be in talks to buy a similar ship. Turkey’s fifth-generation fighter jet, the kaan, in which Pakistan and Azerbaijan are partners, should fly before the end of the year. Developed with help from Britain’s bae Systems and Rolls-Royce, the kaan could be seen as a response to Turkey’s ejection from the f-35 partner programme (as punishment for buying the s-400). Turkey will market the plane to anyone America will not sell f-35s to—or who balks at the conditions. Once again, Gulf countries may be first in line. South Korea and Turkey have benefited from the woes of their main competitors. Russia’s arms exports between 2018 and 2022 were 31% lower than in the preceding four-year period, according to sipri. It is facing further large declines because of the strain its war of aggression is putting on its defence industries, its geopolitical isolation and the efforts of two major customers, India and China, to reduce their reliance on Russian weaponry. India, previously Russia’s biggest customer, cut its purchases of Russian arms by 37% in the 2018-22 period. It is probably wishing it had gone further: Russia’s largely state-controlled arms industry is having to put its own army’s needs ahead of commitments to customers. Many of India’s 272 Su-30mkis, the backbone of its air force, are kaput because Russia cannot supply parts. Some of Russia’s weapons have performed poorly in Ukraine, compared with nato kit. And sanctions on Russia are limiting trade in things such as microchips, ball-bearings, machine tools and optical systems, which will hinder Russia’s ability to sell combat aircraft, attack helicopters and other lethal contraptions. The longer the war in Ukraine lasts, the more Russia will struggle to claw back its position in the global arms market. As for China, over half its arms exports in the 2018-22 period went to just one country, Pakistan, which it sees as an ally against India. Nearly 80% of Pakistan’s major weapons needs are met by China, according to sipri. These include combat aircraft, missiles, frigates and submarines. Beijing has no interest in its customers’ human-rights records, how they plan to use what China sends or whether they are under Western sanctions. But China’s arms industry also has its problems. One challenge, says Mr Waldwyn, is that although China set out to dominate the military drone market a decade ago, its customers got fed up with poor quality and even worse support, opening a door for Turkey. A second is that, with the exception of a putative submarine deal with Thailand and a package of weapons for Myanmar, other countries in South-East Asia are tired of Chinese bullying and “won’t touch them”, says Mr Wezeman. At least China does not have to worry about competition from India. Despite much effort, India’s growth as an arms-exporter has been glacial. The government of Narendra Modi has listed a huge range of weapons parts that must be made in India; it hopes homemade light tanks and artillery will enter service by the end of the decade. But India has relied for too long on the transfer of technology from Russia under production-licensing agreements for aircraft, tanks and warships that have failed to deliver. Investment is wastefully channelled through the state-owned bodies. Red tape suffocates initiative. Projects such as the Tejas light combat aircraft have taken decades to reach production, and remain fraught with problems. The Dhruv light helicopter, launched in 2002, has crashed dozens of times. After decades in development, the Arjun Mk-2 tank turned out to be too heavy for deployment across the border with Pakistan. Locally made kit is often rejected by India’s own armed forces; “If they don’t want it, exporting it becomes impossible,” says Mr Wezeman. South Korea and Turkey show how countries can build lucrative arms businesses that underpin domestic security. India, for all its bombast, is a lesson in how not to do it. © 2023 The Economist Newspaper Limited. All rights reserved.

▸ Aung San Suu Kyis liv äventyras av militärjuntan i Myanmar, hävdar hennes politiska parti som anklagar generalerna för…

Både poliser och tulltjänstemän misstänks vara inblandade i en människosmugglingshärva som har avslöjats i Indonesien. The Diplomat belyser hur organhandeln går till. Vissa luras till grannländer som Kambodja under föresvävningen att de ska få jobb – sedan blir de skuldsatta för resekostnaderna och tvingas av sina organ. I andra fall handlar det om ren fattigdom. – De flesta offren blev av med sina jobb under pandemin och gick med på att sälja sina njurar eftersom de behöver pengar, säger Hengki Haryadi vid Jakartapolisen. Jakarta’s recent breaking of an organ trafficking ring has cast a light on a grim regional trade. By Aisyah Llewellyn 5 September, 2023 How does someone come to sell a kidney? In Indonesia, the answer to that question can be complex. The thorny issue of organ donation has once again come to the fore as a result of a case involving police and immigration officers accused of working with human traffickers to send as many as 122 Indonesian nationals to Cambodia, where their kidneys were harvested for sale. The case, which first hit the news in July, has now resulted in some 12 people being arrested in an effort to break a large transnational human trafficking syndicate. The victims apparently included teachers, factory workers, executives, and security guards, who all allegedly agreed to sell their kidneys in exchange for cash. As Hengki Haryadi, the Jakarta police director for general crimes, put it, “Most of the victims lost their jobs during the pandemic and they agreed to sell their organs because they needed money.” Damai Pakpahan, a feminist activist based in Yogyakarta, told The Diplomat that human trafficking occurs in Indonesia due to a multitude of factors that include lack of state intervention coupled with economic and educational challenges. “Due to a shortage of work opportunities and poverty, people just believe online information or have low literacy,” making them vulnerable to scams, she said. “The government is not doing its mandate to protect the people and there are failed bureaucratic reforms, bribes and corruption that add to the problem.” In a surprising twist to the tale, some nine of the suspects in the recent trafficking scandal were themselves former organ trade victims. In turn, they allegedly worked as recruiters and engaged social media to lure victims to travel to Cambodia where their organs were harvested at Preah Ket Mealea Hospital in the country’s capital Phnom Penh, and then transplanted. According to Haryadi, the transnational trafficking group had been in operation since 2019 and had netted some $1.6 billion over the years, with each victim promised just $9,000 for a kidney. One of the accused was a police officer from Bekasi, in addition to an immigration officer in Bali and 10 other traffickers, three of whom were operating in Cambodia. The police said that the immigration officer in Bali was a key component to the scheme, falsifying travel documents for the victims and receiving $200 per victim. Paid organ donation has been prohibited by the World Health Organization (WHO) since 1987 and many countries around the world, including Indonesia, have local regulations that outlaw the sale of organs. Voluntary organ donation is legal in Indonesia for those over 18 years old who have permission from doctors and family members to make such a donation. However, according to the WHO, some 5 percent of all transplants worldwide are illegal, with the live donation of kidneys listed as the most common form of illegal organ trade. “Human trafficking networks that ensnare victims from among the poor by persuading them to sell their vital organs are rife in Indonesia. As an example, we have this network offering money by selling organs taken in hospitals not in Indonesia but in Cambodia,” said Gabriel Goa, the chairman of the non-governmental organization, the Advocacy Services for Justice and Peace in Indonesia (PADMA). “Another modus operandi is that young Indonesians are lured to work abroad with very tempting salary offers. But the fact is that the promised ticket money, passport money and others turn out to be debts that need to be paid off. If the victims don’t reach their targets, their vital organs are sold instead,” he added. “We have seen so many of these kinds of online scams that send Indonesians to the Philippines, Cambodia and Myanmar. This is an extraordinary type of crime across Southeast Asia.” According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), Indonesia’s geographical location and border weaknesses “exacerbate the country’s vulnerability to trafficking in person, drugs and natural resources, as well as smuggling of migrants.” Indonesia is a major source country for trafficking in persons, the UNODC states, and “most victims are primarily trafficked for forced labour and debt bondage in other Asian and Middle East countries.” One of the issues with human trafficking is that it can be a laborious crime to prosecute due to the transnational nature of the offense. Wahyu Susilo, the executive director of Migrant CARE, the Indonesian Association for Migrant Workers Sovereignty, told The Diplomat that one of the problems with organ harvesting is that it is not just a transnational crime but “a transnational crime that preys on the ignorance of its victims.” “These victims who sell their organs due to ignorance can also sometimes face criminal sanctions as a result of their actions,” he said. He added that the line between legal donation and the illegal sale of organs can sometimes be blurred due to a lack of clear legislation on the issues. Indonesia is a signatory of the Palermo Convention, or the United Nations Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime, a multilateral treaty from 2000 meant to tackle transnational organized crime, which the country signed into its own law in 2009. It is also a signatory to the ASEAN Convention Against Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children, a regional, legally binding agreement between ASEAN states signed in 2015. “However, we have seen a lack of effort on the part of law enforcement to implement these laws,” Susilo said of the legislation. The suspects in the Indonesian case have been charged with human trafficking, which carries a maximum sentence of 15 years in prison and a potential $39,000 fine, while the immigration and police officers are facing additional charges relating to abuse of power and obstruction of justice. Yet Goa of PADMA said that countries in the region need to do more and “unite to catch and suppress these transnational networks.” “Heads of state and the police of Southeast Asian countries should immediately form a dedicated task force for the prevention and eradication of Southeast Asian human trafficking,” he said. © 2023 The Diplomat. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency.

▸ En journalist i Myanmar har dömts till 20 års fängelse för rapporter om konsekvenserna efter en cyklon.