Day: April 14, 2022

The Biden administration appears set to include discussions of international economic repercussions of the Russian invasion and potentially Ukraine’s reconstruction as part of the November G-20 summit agenda, an idea that is likely to create further rift in the economic forum.

“It is not uncommon for events that are impacting the global community as Ukraine is, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine, to play a central role at international forums,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki told VOA during a briefing Wednesday. “And their economic recovery and rebuilding and reconstruction is going to be something that the global community is going to be involved in and address.”

In March, President Joe Biden said he wanted Russia removed from the Group of 20 largest economies or to have Ukraine be invited as an observer in the upcoming G-20 summit in Bali, Indonesia.

“The inclusion of Ukraine does not mean it’s only about the battle on the ground. We’re going to need to rebuild Ukraine,” Psaki added, noting that Ukraine has applied for membership in the European Union, which is part of G-20.

The Indonesian government said it is monitoring the situation while keeping sight on the pandemic and economic downturn.

“As the G-20 Presidency, Indonesia continues the constructive discourse with G-20 members,” Indonesia’s G-20 Co-Sherpa Dian Triansyah Djani told VOA. “We will listen to members’ views while also maintain G-20’s traditions and its crucial role as the premier global economic cooperation forum.”

Responding to criticism that Western demands to exclude Moscow disrupt the summit’s agenda and create division in the group, Psaki said that Russian President Vladimir Putin has shown himself to be a “pariah in the world” and has “no place at international forums.”

Following its 2014 annexation of Crimea, Moscow was kicked out from the Group of Eight (G-8), now known as the Group of Seven (G-7). However, the G-20 is a much wider grouping with many more competing interests.

G-20 boycott

Biden has not said he would boycott the G-20 summit should Putin attend but insists the forum cannot be “business as usual.” Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison have also raised concerns about Putin’s participation.

This puts Indonesian President Joko Widodo, as this year’s G-20 chair, in a tough position. He must prepare to host leaders of the 20 largest economies at a time when the world is technically still under a pandemic and attempt consensus on the world’s most pressing economic problems while navigating new geopolitical rivalries triggered by Putin’s war.

Middle-power members, including India, Brazil, South Africa, Mexico, Saudi Arabia and others, have their own agenda centered around post-pandemic recovery that do not align with the West’s focus of isolating Putin and helping Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

“That’s all going to have to be renegotiated,” William Pomeranz, acting director of the Wilson Center Kennan Institute, told VOA. “Most of their members do not feel obliged to rebuild Ukraine.”

Gregory Poling, who researches U.S. foreign policy in the Asia Pacific at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told VOA’s Indonesian Service that while it is understandable that non-Western G-20 members are reluctant to have condemnation of Russia override the agenda, there is simply no possibility for Biden and other Western leaders to sit across Putin at the summit’s table.

Ultimately for Jakarta, it may boil down to whether they are willing to trade Putin’s attendance for several Western leaders’ absence, Poling said. And while Indonesian diplomats would have preferred quiet negotiations rather than public announcements from Western leaders, the tension was going to surface at some point.

“Indonesia was never going to disinvite Vladimir Putin without significant pressure and that pressure would have had to have been delivered publicly, sooner or later,” Poling said.

Jakarta’s dilemma

As a middle power struggling to recover from the pandemic, Indonesia is focused on using its G-20 presidency to create a conducive environment for emerging economies to excel and safeguard the forum from geopolitical rivalries that could further market uncertainties, Dinna Prapto Raharja, founder of the Jakarta-based think tank Synergy Policies, told VOA.

“His [Widodo’s] desire is mainly to make sure that (the) G-20 will be the forum that can sustain its mandate, which is the economic mandate,” Prapto Raharja said. “The scarcity of goods, the consequences of untenable rise of energy prices, the inability of emerging economies to get out from the COVID-19 crisis – this needs to be the agenda.”

Including Ukraine as an observer, as Biden has suggested, will complicate matters as Kyiv’s main interest is to secure assistance against Russian aggression and has nothing to do with G-20 goals, she said. However, Jakarta must prepare a contingent mechanism to allow views on Ukraine to be aired without disrupting the summit’s focus.

Meanwhile, the Indonesian public views Russia’s invasion of Ukraine partly through the lens of anti-West attitudes and skepticism of U.S. foreign policies. These sentiments have been magnified by pro-Putin propaganda pushed on social media.

“Our research shows 95% of TikTok users and 73% of Instagram users in Indonesia supports Russia after Zelenskyy said Ukraine needs assistance from NATO and the West,” Dudy Rudianto, founder of Jakarta-based data analysis firm Evello, told VOA’s Indonesian Service. This suggests Widodo may pay a political price should his government be seen as caving into Western demands to kick Putin out of the summit.

So far, Jakarta has neither revoked Putin’s invitation nor agreed to include Ukraine in the G-20 agenda. Earlier this month, a spokesman said the government will continue to focus on the three pillars of its G-20 presidency: global health architecture, sustainable energy transition and digital transformation.

As an informal grouping established in 1999 following a global economic crisis, the G-20 has no mechanism to expel a member, said Matthew Goodman, who holds the Simon Chair in Political Economy at CSIS.

“It doesn’t have a formal set of rules or even a really clear rationale for who’s in the group and who isn’t,” Goodman told VOA. “In practice, it would require all the other 19 countries to say, we don’t want that 20th country in the group.”

This is unlikely considering China’s position that Moscow is an important member of the forum, as well as other members’ reluctance to condemn Russia, including India, Brazil, South Africa and Saudi Arabia.

A National Security Council spokesperson told VOA that the U.S. will continue discussions with G-20 partners, including Indonesia.

“We will continue to explore participation as Putin’s war continues and we get closer to the G-20 Leaders’ Summit that is still over seven months away,” the spokesperson said.

Fractured support

While there has been solid backing from Europe and the G-7 for Biden’s efforts to hold Russia accountable, support beyond that has been more fractured.

Most notable is G-20 and Quad member, India. New Delhi, reliant on Moscow for military hardware, has abstained from various U.N. votes relating to the conflict.

India’s ambivalence on the Ukraine war is emblematic of Russia’s considerable influence around the world. Washington needs to be mindful of these geopolitical realities, analysts said.

“It’s not going to be as simple as showing the videos of the terrible actions in Ukraine and then the rest of the world will say – yes, Russia is committing war crimes and so forth and that we need to isolate it,” Pomeranz, of the Wilson Center, said.

The Biden administration must also take into account how the war in Ukraine could trigger nonaligned instincts.

“There is a danger if you have a zero-sum competition between these two blocs,” Stewart Patrick, director of the International Institutions and Global Governance Program at the Council on Foreign Relations, told VOA. He noted that many countries loathe their Cold War experience of being treated as pawns in global rivalries.

Perceptions about selectivity of U.S. foreign policy is also a factor, Patrick said. It is problematic for Washington to rally global support against Moscow in light of its own invasion on Iraq and Afghanistan, and the Trump administration’s recognition of Israel’s annexation of the Golan Heights.

“I don’t have any updates on that front,” Psaki told VOA last month when asked if the Biden administration has plans to revoke the recognition.

Source: Voice of America

More than 80% of Somalia’s new parliament members were sworn in Thursday, following repeated poll delays and an ongoing feud between the president and the prime minister.

The chairperson of the Somali Federal Election Committee, Muse Guelleh Yusuf, hailed the event, held at the heavily guarded Mogadishu airport compound, as “a major breakthrough in the Somali electoral process.”

“It was a historic breakthrough ending a long and exhausted electoral process that lasted nearly two years. Some 290 lawmakers have been sworn in today and the rest are expected to be sworn in in the coming days,” Yusuf said.

But, he added, “we are missing some 25 seats which remain unfilled in the Hirshabelle and Jubaland states.”

The oldest member of the new parliament, Abdisalan Dabana’ad, will informally serve as chairman until a speaker is elected. The legislature will begin its preparations for the elections of the speaker and then the president on Saturday.

Elections for lower and upper house lawmakers were scheduled to be completed before President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed’s term expired in February 2021. But the elections dragged on, delayed by political and electoral disputes at both the regional and national levels.

With the new parliament seated, Somali political observers are breathing a bit easier.

“This ends an electoral process that has dragged on for [too] long … largely due to the political dispute between President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed and his prime minister, Mohamed Hussein Roble. And now, as a new parliament is in place, I think it is a relief and it is a new dawn for Somalia politics,” Somali diplomat Shafic Yusuf Omar told VOA Somali.

The swearing-in followed months of international pressure to complete the elections and choose a new president.

The United States, which has funneled billions of dollars in aid to Somalia and whose troops support Somali government efforts to fight the militant group al-Shabab, had imposed sanctions and visa restrictions on unnamed Somali officials if they disregarded the election timetable.

Once completed, the new parliament — which contains 275 lower-house MPs and 54 from the upper house — will jointly elect a president.

Source: Voice of America

International relief agencies say they welcome the global outpouring of aid for Ukraine since Russia’s invasion but worry that the crisis is diverting attention and finances from equally urgent humanitarian emergencies in Africa, the Middle East and elsewhere.

The vast scale of the refugee crisis has generated “an extraordinary response” in compassion and aid, an official with the international charity Save the Children said.

“The level of both financial support that has poured into Save the Children, to other international NGOs (nongovernmental organizations) and U.N. agencies … support coming from the U.S. government, the solidarity, the flags waved the Ukrainian colors — I mean, it’s just an extraordinary level of support,” said Gregory Ramm, who oversees humanitarian response for the charity and is based in Washington.

But “there are many crises that are neglected,” he added. “Right now, we have a world facing conflict, facing the climate crisis, COVID, and yet it is difficult to get the world’s attention to Sudan, to eastern Congo, to Yemen, to the Sahel, to those places where children are suffering in the same way that the children of Ukraine are suffering.”

More than 4.6 million people have fled Ukraine following Russia’s February 24 invasion, and another 7.1 million have been internally displaced, the United Nations reports. Of the 11.7 million people who have been displaced inside or outside Ukraine, 7.5 million are children — and they’re among 190 million youngsters worldwide living “in areas of serious conflict,” Ramm said.

The U.N. estimates 274 million people worldwide will need humanitarian aid this year, up from a record 235 million in 2021. The U.N.’s World Food Program, which had already cut back rations because of funding shortfalls, warned in late March that the crisis involving major grain producers Ukraine and Russia could trigger the worst global food crisis since World War II.

‘Dramatic entry’ draws support

Maurice Amollo, a Nigeria-based official with the humanitarian aid group Mercy Corps, also praised the “swift” response to the Ukrainian crisis and “the generosity in Europe and the United States and beyond.” But, he told VOA in a phone interview, “we are also getting a little concerned that resources and diplomatic support will inevitably be diverted away from millions of other deserving and vulnerable communities around the world into Ukraine.”

For instance, Denmark announced that to fund the reception of fleeing Ukrainians, it would defer part of the development aid it had earmarked this year for the West African countries of Burkina Faso and Mali by 50% and 40%, respectively, according to Mercy Corps. VOA was not able to independently verify that information with Denmark’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Amollo attributed “big differences” in global response in part to the “dramatic entry” of the Ukrainian crisis as opposed to the “protracted and slow-onset crises” in Afghanistan or Somalia. International media attention, he said, has influenced the distribution of resources, “whether it is individuals or corporations or governments.”

Devex, a media platform providing information on global development, said it had recorded more than $4 billion in various countries’ commitments to Ukraine, though not all of that amount was for humanitarian aid, nor did it include public giving.

Disparities in aid response were the focus of a March 24 report by The New Humanitarian, an independent news site founded by the U.N.

The report noted that the U.S. announced $1 billion in aid to European countries taking in refugees, on top of earlier contributions, and that other donor states had pledged $1.5 billion toward Ukraine-related humanitarian efforts at a funding conference earlier in March. It quoted U.N. spokesperson Stephane Dujarric as saying, “This is among the fastest and most generous responses a humanitarian flash appeal has ever received.”

The situation is quite different in Afghanistan, where an unprecedented 94% of its people say they are suffering, according to Gallup polling. The U.N. reported late last month that it has secured just 13% of the $4.4 billion needed for humanitarian aid in Afghanistan this year.

Who donates and who doesn’t

A VOA world map showing various countries’ humanitarian and military aid to Ukraine indicates no major contributions from any African nation — or from swaths of Latin America and Southeast Asia.

Economics is one factor behind Africa’s absence as a donor, said Terence McNamee, a development and governance specialist in South Africa and a global fellow with the Washington-based Wilson Center’s Africa Program.

“The pandemic has been absolutely brutal for African economies. There just isn’t the economic means to provide any kind of assistance at the moment,” he said.

A second factor involves Africa’s complex historical relationships with both Russia and the West. The former Soviet Union supported liberation movements in African countries fighting to shake off the bonds of European colonial powers during the Cold War. More recently, Russia has continued to supply military training, weapons and support and expanded its economic investment in the continent.

“What that amazing map is not revealing is the extent of division within Africa that this conflict has opened up,” McNamee said, citing the U.N. General Assembly resolution demanding that Russia immediately halt its military operation in Ukraine. Put to a vote March 2, it passed with support from 141 countries.

While more than half of Africa’s 54 countries backed the resolution, 20 abstained or did not vote, “which effectively is at least tacit support of Russia,” he said.

He noted that most of the countries that abstained “are either hybrid regimes or authoritarian regimes with quite strong connections dating back to the Cold War and the Soviet era.”

African countries were also divided on the April 7 U.N. General Assembly resolution to suspend Russia from the U.N. Human Rights Council. The measure passed by a vote of 93-24, with 58 countries abstaining.

Ebenezer Obadare, a senior fellow for Africa studies at the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations, also noted African governments’ reluctance to publicly denounce Russian aggression — and the West’s initial irritation “that African countries are not joining the fight” publicly in solidarity with Ukraine.

A native Nigerian who lives just outside Washington, Obadare wrote a March blog post discouraging Western diplomats from taking African leaders for granted and emphasizing the need for finding common ground.

As he later told VOA, “What people are saying in Africa is that it’s not OK to invade the territory of another country. We get it.” But, Obadare added, they’re also saying “that the West ought to live up to its moral rhetoric, that the West has not always done that. … Many of these countries think that they have legitimate grievances, that this is the time for them to also articulate those grievances and to talk about how shoddily they’ve been treated in the past by Western countries.”

African donors help out

Obadare emphasized that “it’s important to differentiate between the leadership in African countries and the people of Africa. … Ordinary people are in support of the people of Ukraine.”

Some of that support is being channeled through Gift of the Givers Foundation, based in South Africa. It’s the continent’s largest nongovernmental disaster response and relief agency of African origin, said its founding director, Imtiaz Sooliman, drawing most of its funding from South African individuals, though at least a dozen corporate sponsors have joined amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

“We help people unconditionally. … And we reach out wherever anyone needs help, anywhere in the world,” Sooliman told VOA.

Since its Ukraine efforts began — initiated by a Ukrainian woman whose husband is in South Africa — donors have raised more than $100,000 and spurred an aid network reaching at least six Ukrainian cities including Kyiv, Kharkiv, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, Sooliman told VOA.

In Ukraine, as in the 43 other countries where Gift of the Givers operates, it buys locally procured supplies such as food, diapers, medicine and clothing. In many countries, the organization also provides services such as health care, education and search-and-rescue disaster response.

Gift of the Givers is also soliciting money to help African students in Ukraine and elsewhere to return to the continent.

“This is a unique campaign because it’s Africa reaching out to Europe,” Sooliman said, noting that Africa often is seen as “a begging bowl, that we are always backward … that we can never do things ourselves.”

Sooliman said he wants others “to realize that Africa can do something — that Africa is now helping Europe.”

Source: Voice of America

The families of American hostages kidnapped and killed in Syria by Islamic State militants welcomed a guilty verdict handed down Thursday by a U.S. court.

A jury took just over four hours to find British national El Shafee Elsheikh guilty on eight counts related to his role in holding about two dozen Western hostages in Syria, including four Americans who were killed.

American journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff and aid workers Peter Kassig and Kayla Mueller were among those kidnapped and later killed by the IS cell.

“This is a day that we didn’t need bombs or bullets to bring justice,” said Diane Foley, James Foley’s mother. “I really feel that justice prevailed.”

Mueller’s father also welcomed the verdict.

“We all saw the American justice system do what it does best,” said Carl Mueller, who attended the hearing with his wife, Marsha, at U.S. District Court.

The two-week trial included testimony from witnesses who were held captive by Elsheikh and other members of an IS cell known by their hostages as “The Beatles” because of their accents.

In total, 26 hostages were held between 2012 and 2015. Witnesses detailed the cruelty meted out to them, including beatings, being forced to fight each other, and sexual violence. Family members testified about the ransom demands made of them.

Elsheikh was captured in 2018 along with IS cell member Alexanda Kotey. The pair were brought to the United States to stand trial in 2020 after the U.S. agreed to not seek the death penalty.

Kotey pleaded guilty in 2021 in a deal that could allow him to serve part of his life sentence in Britain.

A third member of their cell, Mohammed Emwazi, also known as Jihadi John, was killed in a drone strike in 2015. He killed Foley, Sotloff and Kassig in 2014, in videos shared as terrorist propaganda.

Mueller was held before being handed over to IS leader Abu Bakr-al-Baghdadi. The court heard she was raped repeatedly before her death in February 2015.

Randall Rogan, a terrorism expert and professor of communication at Wake Forest University in North Carolina, described the trial as a “strike for justice.”

“It’s great news that the witnesses were able to pull themselves together and be able to testify under such difficult circumstances for themselves and having to revisit the horrors of that time for themselves and for their families,” he told VOA on Thursday.

“Hopefully, this is a positive note, a strike for justice, that this individual is ultimately being held accountable for the atrocities that he committed,” Rogan said.

The Committee to Protect Journalists described Thursday’s ruling as “a step toward accountability.”

“While the verdict and sentence won’t bring Foley or Sotloff back, it establishes a precedent toward justice for their families, and for the murders of journalists and human rights abuses worldwide,” said Justin Shilad, CPJ’s senior researcher for the Middle East and North Africa.

Speaking at the opening of the trial, Diane Foley welcomed the decision to make her son’s captors stand trial in the U.S.

“I think we must do the opposite of what was done. That to me is the huge contrast,” she said. “The British and American hostages were given nothing. They were treated like animals. They were tortured. They received … no beat of justice. I think it is important that we show how civilized people should react to others.”

As the trial concluded, she told reporters she hoped it would shine a light on the more than 60 Americans still held hostage or wrongfully detained globally.

Source: Voice of America