Day: February 22, 2023

War has been a catastrophe for Ukraine and a crisis for the globe. The world is a more unstable and fearful place since Russia invaded its neighbor on Feb. 24, 2022.

One year on, thousands of Ukrainian civilians are dead, and countless buildings have been destroyed. Tens of thousands of troops have been killed or seriously wounded on each side. Beyond Ukraine’s borders, the invasion shattered European security, redrew nations’ relations with one another and frayed a tightly woven global economy.

Here are five ways the war has changed the world:

THE RETURN OF EUROPEAN WAR

Three months before the invasion, then-British Prime Minister Boris Johnson scoffed at suggestions that the British army needed more heavy weapons. ‘The old concepts of fighting big tank battles on European landmass,’ he said, ‘are over.’

Johnson is now urging the U.K. to send more battle tanks to help Ukraine repel Russian forces.

Despite the role played by new technology such as satellites and drones, this 21st-century conflict in many ways resembles one from the 20th. Fighting in eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region is a brutal slog, with mud, trenches and bloody infantry assaults reminiscent of World War I.

The conflict has sparked a new arms race that reminds some analysts of the 1930s buildup to World War II. Russia has mobilized hundreds of thousands of conscripts and aims to expand its military from 1 million to 1.5 million troops. The U.S. has ramped up weapons production to replace the stockpiles shipped to Ukraine. France plans to boost military spending by a third by 2030, while Germany has abandoned its longstanding ban on sending weapons to conflict zones and shipped missiles and tanks to Ukraine.

Before the war, many observers assumed that military forces would move toward more advanced technology and cyber warfare and become less reliant on tanks or artillery, said Patrick Bury, senior lecturer in security at the University of Bath.

But in Ukraine, guns and ammunition are the most important weapons.

‘It is, for the moment at least, being shown that in Ukraine, conventional warfare – state-on-state – is back,’ Bury said.

ALLIANCES TESTED AND TOUGHENED

Russian President Vladimir Putin hoped the invasion would split the West and weaken NATO. Instead, the military alliance has been reinvigorated. A group set up to counter the Soviet Union has a renewed sense of purpose and two new aspiring members in Finland and Sweden, which ditched decades of nonalignment and asked to join NATO as protection against Russia.

The 27-nation European Union has hit Russia with tough sanctions and sent Ukraine billions in support. The war put Brexit squabbles into perspective, thawing diplomatic relations between the bloc and awkward former member Britain.

‘The EU is taking sanctions, quite serious sanctions, in the way that it should. The U.S. is back in Europe with a vengeance in a way we never thought it would be again,’ said defense analyst Michael Clarke, former head of the Royal United Services Institute think tank.

NATO member states have poured weapons and equipment worth billions of dollars into Ukraine. The alliance has buttressed its eastern flank, and the countries nearest to Ukraine and Russia, including Poland and the Baltic states, have persuaded more hesitant NATO and European Union allies, potentially shifting Europe’s center of power eastwards.

There are some cracks in the unity. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, Putin’s closest ally in the EU, has lobbied against sanctions on Moscow, refused to send weapons to Ukraine and held up an aid package from the bloc for Kyiv.

Western unity will come under more and more pressure the longer the conflict grinds on.

‘Russia is planning for a long war,’ NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said at the end of 2022, but the alliance was also ready for the ‘long haul.’

A NEW IRON CURTAIN

The war has made Russia a pariah in the West. Its oligarchs have been sanctioned and its businesses blacklisted, and international brands including McDonald’s and Ikea have disappeared from the country’s streets.

Yet Moscow is not entirely friendless. Russia has strengthened economic ties with China, though Beijing is keeping its distance from the fighting and so far has not sent weapons. The U.S. has recently expressed concern that may change.

China is closely watching a conflict that may serve as either encouragement or warning to Beijing about any attempt to reclaim self-governing Taiwan by force.

Putin has reinforced military links with international outcasts North Korea and Iran, which supplies armed drones that Russia unleashes on Ukrainian infrastructure. Moscow continues to build influence in Africa and the Middle East with its economic and military clout. Russia’s Wagner mercenary group has grown more powerful in conflicts from the Donbas to the Sahel.

In an echo of the Cold War, the world is divided into two camps, with many countries, including densely populated India, hedging their bets to see who emerges on top.

Tracey German, professor of conflict and security at King’s College London, said the conflict has widened a rift between the ‘U.S.-led liberal international order’ on one side, and angry Russia and emboldened rising superpower China on the other.

A BATTERED AND RESHAPED ECONOMY

The war’s economic impact has been felt from chilly homes in Europe to food markets in Africa.

Before the war, European Union nations imported almost half their natural gas and third of their oil from Russia. The invasion, and sanctions slapped on Russia in response, delivered an energy price shock on a scale not seen since the 1970s.

The war disrupted global trade that was still recovering from the pandemic. Food prices have soared, since Russia and Ukraine are major suppliers of wheat and sunflower oil, and Russia is the world’s top fertilizer producer.

Grain-carrying ships have continued to sail from Ukraine under a fragile U.N.-brokered deal, and prices have come down from record levels. But food remains a geopolitical football. Russia has sought to blame the West for high prices, while Ukraine and its allies accuse Russia of cynically using hunger as a weapon.

The war ‘has really highlighted the fragility’ of an interconnected world, just as the pandemic did, German said, and the full economic impact has yet to be felt.

The war also roiled attempts to fight climate change, driving an upsurge in Europe’s use of heavily polluting coal. Yet Europe’s rush away from Russian oil and gas may speed the transition to renewable energy sources faster than countless warnings about the dangers of global warming. The International Energy Agency says the world will add as much renewable power in the next five years as it did in the last 20.

A NEW AGE OF UNCERTAINTY

The conflict is a stark reminder that individuals have little control over the course of history. No one knows that better than the 8 million Ukrainians who have been forced to flee homes and country for new lives in communities across Europe and beyond.

For millions of people less directly affected, the sudden shattering of Europe’s peace has brought uncertainty and anxiety.

Putin’s veiled threats to use atomic weapons if the conflict escalates revived fears of nuclear war that had lain dormant since the Cold War. Fighting has raged around the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, raising the specter of a new Chernobyl.

But the conflict has also brought reminders that, sometimes, individual human actions make all the difference. Defense analyst Clarke said one such moment occurred a day after the invasion, when Zelenskyy filmed himself outside in Kyiv and vowed not to leave the city.

‘That was critical in showing that Kyiv would fight,’ Clarke said. ‘And with that, of course, the United States, Joe Biden fell in behind it. If those two things hadn’t happened – Zelenskyy and then Biden’s decision – the Russians would have won.

‘That Zelenskyy moment will go down in history as very, very important.’

 

Source: United News of Bangladesh

For nearly two weeks, Mehmet Ismet has lived in the ruins of Antakya’s most beloved historic mosque, a landmark in a now-devastated city that was famed for thousands of years as a meeting place of civilizations and revered by Christians, Muslims and Jews.

The 74-year-old took refuge in the Habib Najjar mosque after a 7.8-magnitude earthquake killed tens of thousands in Turkey and Syria on Feb. 6. He has slept and prayed under the few arches still standing, mourning the future of a city renowned for its past.

The destruction in Antakya was nearly total. Much of the city is rubble. What’s still standing is too unsafe to live in. Almost everyone has left. On Monday, a new 6.4 magnitude earthquake, centered in Hatay province where Antakya is located, struck again, killing people, injuring more than 200 and causing more buildings to collapse, in some cases trapping people.

‘It can be rebuilt. But it will not be like the old one,’ said Ismet, pointing to the destruction of the mosque, where he sat in the courtyard with a friend by a wood-burning heater. ‘The old is gone. Only the name remains.’

Antakya, known as Antioch in ancient times, has been repeatedly destroyed by earthquakes and rebuilt over history. But residents fear it will be a long time before it recovers from this one, and that its unique historical identity may never be fully restored. The destruction is so great, and they say the government cares little for this area.

Antioch, built in 300 B.C. by a general of Alexander the Great in the Orontes River valley, was one of the biggest cities of the Greco-Roman world, rivaling Alexandria and Constantinople. Saints Peter and Paul are said to have founded one of the oldest Christian communities here, and it’s here that the word ‘Christian’ first came into use. It later drew Muslim and Christian Crusader invaders.

The melding of faiths is part of the city’s character.

A parable from the Quran kept running through Ismet’s mind. Three messengers from God came to a town, urging its sinful people to follow His word. They refused, and God destroyed the city with a mighty blast. The Quran doesn’t name the town, but many traditions say it was ancient Antioch.

Ismet saw a new lesson from the present-day devastation.

‘All religions are here. We were living well. Then politics and hypocrisy prevailed, and disagreement followed,’ Ismet said. ‘People… have disagreed and are robbing each other. God is punishing them.’

The mosque can now be reached only by clambering over heaps of concrete and old stones that were once Antakya’s old city. It traces Antakya’s many histories: The site originally held an ancient pagan temple, then a church, before finally settling as a mosque, built in the 13th century. The mosque was destroyed in an earthquake in 1853 and rebuilt four years later by the Ottomans.

Even the legends surrounding Habib Najjar, the mosque’s unknown namesake, are intertwined with multiple faiths.

Ismet recounted one popular story: Najjar was a resident of Antioch who urged locals to believe God’s messengers referred to in the Quran. They beheaded him, and his head rolled down the mountain to the spot where the mosque now stands. Another version of the legend says Najjar was a believer in Jesus, whose disciples cured his son of leprosy, and was killed for promoting the new Christian faith.

Modern Antakya was already a shadow of its ancient self.

In recent years, it witnessed steep economic decline and growing emigration to Europe and the Gulf. Tension had been growing between the shrinking local population, which included Christian and Alevi communities, and a growing Syrian population that fled its country’s civil war.

Some city residents complain of neglect from a central government busy with helping other provinces where it has a stronger voting base. With little evidence, locals accused Syrian refugees of stealing from stores and the government of downplaying the death toll. Many worry more people could leave if Antakya is not rebuilt quickly.

In the face of rising criticism from several quake-hit cities, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and other officials have recognized delays in the response. No one addressed Antakya’s woes in particular.

‘Maybe in one month, we will start the renovation or organization,’ Yahya Coskun, deputy director general of Turkey’s museums and cultural heritage, said about the destruction to the city’s landmarks.

‘Antakya’s destruction is a loss to humanity,’ said Jan Estefan, a silversmith and one of the city’s few remaining Christians. ‘We still want to live here. We have no intention of leaving.’

Antakya’s Greek Orthodox Church was destroyed. The church, which was the seat of the Greek Orthodox patriarch up until the 14th century, was leveled in an 1872 earthquake and rebuilt.

‘History has once again been wiped out,’ said Fadi Hurigil, chairman of the board of directors of Antakya Greek Orthodox Church Foundation.

Old mosques were cut off by mountains of rubble. The old bazaar lay in ruins. Crushed buildings line Kurtulus Street, said to have been the world’s first illuminated street when it was lit with torches at night in Roman times. Parts of the archaeological museum have been damaged.

Outside the city center, Mount Starius protected one of Christianity’s earliest churches – St. Pierre – which is built in a cave in the mountain and has sections dating to the 4th century. A set of stairs leading to it was damaged.

There were cracks in the walls of the Synagogue of Antakya, home to the area’s 2,500-year-old Jewish community. The president of the city’s Jewish community and his wife didn’t survive. About a dozen Jewish residents and the synagogue’s Torah scrolls were temporarily relocated to Istanbul, said Rabbi Mendy Chitrik, chairman of the Alliance of Rabbis in Islamic States.

Chitrik said it will hard for the small, elderly community, whittled down by years of emigration, to rebuild. ‘However, I am certain that it will come back.’

Many residents seem to have accepted it is their city’s fate to return from disaster.

‘After seven times, they rebuilt and brought it to life again. Now is the eighth time, and God willing … we will live in it again,’ said Bulent Cifcifli. His mother was killed in the quake, and it took a week to dig her body out.

In one shape or another, Antakya will survive, he said.

‘Death is unavoidable. We will die and new people will come,’ he said, choking on tears. ‘Who is Antakya? Today it is us. Tomorrow someone else.’

 

Source: United News of Bangladesh

President Joe Biden is wrapping up his whirlwind, four-day visit to Poland and Ukraine by reassuring eastern flank NATO allies that his administration is highly attuned to the looming threats and other impacts spurred by the grinding Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Before departing Warsaw on Wednesday, Biden will hold talks with leaders from the Bucharest Nine, a collection of nations on the most eastern parts of the NATO alliance that came together in response to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s 2014 annexation of Crimea from Ukraine.

As the war in Ukraine drags on, the Bucharest Nine countries’ anxieties have remained heightened. Many worry Putin could move to take military action against them next if he’s successful in Ukraine. The alliance includes Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania and Slovakia.

‘When Russia invaded, it wasn’t just Ukraine being tested. The whole world faced a test for the ages,’ Biden said in an address from the foot of Warsaw’s Royal Castle on Tuesday to mark the somber milestone of the year-old Russian invasion. ‘Europe was being tested. America was being tested. NATO was being tested. All democracies were being tested.’

Biden met Tuesday in Warsaw with Moldovan President Maia Sandu, who last week claimed Moscow was behind a plot to overthrow her country’s government using external saboteurs.

Sandwiched between Ukraine and Romania and one of Europe’s poorest countries, the Eastern European nation has had historic ties to Russia but wants to join the 27-nation European Union. Biden in his remarks endorsed Moldova’s bid to join the EU

‘I’m proud to stand with you and the freedom-loving people of Moldova,’ Biden said of Sandu and her country in his Tuesday address.

Since Russia invaded Ukraine nearly a year ago, Moldova, a former Soviet republic of about 2.6 million people, has sought to forge closer ties with its Western partners. Last June, it was granted EU candidate status, the same day as Ukraine.

Sandu spoke out last week about a Russian plot ‘to overthrow the constitutional order.’ She spoke out after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said his country had intercepted plans by Russian secret services to destroy Moldova. Those claims were later confirmed by Moldovan intelligence officials.

Biden’s speech on the Ukraine war came one day after he made a surprise visit to Kyiv, a grand gesture of solidarity with the Ukraine. The address was part affirmation of Europe’s role in helping Ukraine repel Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine and part sharply worded warning to Putin that the U.S. won’t abide Moscow defeating Ukraine.

The White House has praised several eastern flank countries, including Lithuania, Poland and Romania, over the last year for stepping up efforts to back Ukraine with weapons and economic aid and taking in refugees.

Biden has given particular attention to Poland’s efforts. The country is hosting about 1.5 million Ukrainian refugees and has committed $3.8 billion in military and economic assistance to Kyiv.

“The truth of the matter is: The United States needs Poland and NATO as much as NATO needs the United States,” Biden said during talks with Duda on Wednesday.

 

Source: United News of Bangladesh

It’s generally held that Ekushey February is the mother moment of Bangladesh history. It is celebrated nationally to produce the cultural meta imagination of state building called Shaheed Dibash. It;s as much a cultural event as it’s a memorial to the national identity surge that ultimately birthed Bangladesh as the Bengali state.

And that is also seen as a fitting rebuttal to the other nationalist surge which supposedly birthed the previous state seeking aspiration, the Muslim state of Pakistan. Mingled into all this is the collateralization of political domination through culture. Politics in most if not all spaces look for the legitimacy that will push it from the realm of political sociology to that of political theology.

In that process, Ekushey has become the Big Bang of our state making theology of history. Why and how did that happen?

A long history of political claims

The class origins of cultural movements are less studied in our world. Over time, such movements are deified and in the process placed outside scrutiny. Cultural events therefore are seen as a fundamental phenomenon that ultimately ends with claims and credit of state making. This has also been the case of Ekushey. But who did it and why is not asked.

As a sacred issue, it becomes a historical trigger beyond question and remains less examined. Ekushey signifies the primary marker that became the trigger of history which in turn produced 1971. In the end, the claim of 1952 is actually about who owns the state that 1971 gave birth to. Cultural identity is used to describe qualifications regarding the ownership of the state.

State ownership qualifications

State identity markers are multiple and sourced from all dimensions of society. They are from race, ethnicity, language, faith, territory, class clusters etc. Every person carries several of these markers so it becomes a contest of proving which marker is dominant historically hence has the right to claim ownership or dominance.

One purpose of single markers is their unifying role in a nation-state making project. It’s necessary to unite them under one meta banner of uncontested “sacred” identity markers ignoring or diminishing other markers. This has been observed in South Asian history consistently. Establishing a ‘nation-state’ exclusive to one identity allows effective denial of diversity and rights of others even when the demand for a state began with resistance to denial.

Hence the culturalization of politics has become a very important exercise as it defines controlling political state management schemes. Thus they are not “cultural” in its commonly understood sense but act as an aid of political control of a class or group.

Cultural processes have no objective of controlling but its political users do. The process of amalgamating both cultural and political is therefore critical to achieve this. Ekushey as the ultimate national icon fulfills those objectives.

Socio economics of state making identities

Such icons have dominant and subsidiary characteristics. Their proximity to the socio-economic space is important in understanding the semiotics of the event and its purpose. Ekushey also needs to be interpreted by tracing its location, participants and ultimate iconization.

Ekushey is a dominantly a protest movement that began in the Dhaka city as a reaction to the marginalization of Bengali in state institutions and economic accessing system including civil service exams. Its leadership came from the elite educated minority.

This narrative established the dominant identity defining the aspired for state. It was this class’s main issue but was projected as the meta national issue of all. Bengali identity was projected as the dominant construction of the national liberation movement and described as the prime marker. In the process the bearers of the elite ‘salariat’ class became prime interpreters of the state objective as well.

Language loyalty meant discarding religious identity. Pakistan was considered “Islamic” and Bangladesh was considered “Bengali” hence it was projected as a either or situation. In reality, putting two identities from different baskets made little sense but it was not a cultural issue but political. So it became a vehicle for state making nationalism. That both were present in Bangladeshis were ignored for the moment in striving for state making by the middle class Ekushe based leadership.

1971 politics of state making

1971 shows that the most robust resistance to Pakistan came from the peasantry who had little to do with cultural markers like language and religion as they were dominated by agriculture not formal state institution based official employment or urban cultural activities. They had little education so language mattered even less. They, to put it mildly, were not ‘Bengali nationalists’ They had no discernible socio-economic stake in the language issue.

Current research shows that the peasantry interprets the world differently from the middle class and produces and follows their own historical streams. What is also clear is that a state is not a monolithic interest or identity driven project but one which encapsulates many ideas and identities. If that is so, the search for the nature of the state and its actual identity must continue instead of settling for a single class’s version of history, culture and more importantly politics.

 

Source: United News of Bangladesh

North Korea on Wednesday accused U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres of ‘an extremely unfair and imbalanced attitude,’ as it lambasted him for condemning its recent missile test but ignoring alleged U.S. hostility against the North.

After the North’s intercontinental ballistic missile test on Saturday, Guterres strongly condemned the launch and reiterated his call for the North to immediately desist from making any further provocations. In a statement, Guterres also urged North Korea to resume talks on denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.

‘To be most deplorable, the U.N. secretary-general is going on the rampage of illogical and miserable remarks, which are little different from those of U.S. State Department officials over the years,’ Kim Son Gyong, the North’s vice foreign minister for international bodies, said in a statement carried by state media.

Kim said North Korea’s ICBM test was a response to the security threat the U.S. posed to the North by temporarily deploying long-range bombers for joint training with South Korea earlier this year. Kim said the test was also a warning to the earlier convocation of the U.N. Security Council on the North.

North Korea views U.S.-South Korea military drills as an invasion rehearsal and is particularly sensitive to the U.S. mobilization of B-1B bombers that can carry a massive conventional payload of both guided and unguided weapons. After the North’s ICBM test, the United States flew B-1B bombers again for separate drills with South Korean and Japanese warplanes.

‘The U.N. secretary-general should clearly understand that his unreasonable and prejudiced stand on the Korean Peninsula issue is acting as a factor inciting the hostile acts of the U.S. and its followers against (North Korea),’ Kim said.

Last November, North Korean Foreign Minister Choe Son Hui called Guterres ‘a puppet of the United States’ for condemning an earlier ICBM test by the North.

Saturday’s ICBM test, the North’s first missile test since Jan. 1, was made on a steep angle to avoid neighboring countries. The reported launch details again suggested the North has missiles that can reach the U.S. mainland. But many foreign experts say the North still must develop some last remaining technologies to acquire functioning nuclear-tipped missiles, such as one shielding missiles from the harsh conditions during atmospheric reentry.

In response to the latest U.S. deployment of B1-B bombers on Sunday, North Korea said its 600-millimeter multiple rocket launcher fired two rounds off its east coast the next day. North Korea has said its rockets can carry nuclear warheads. South Korea views the weapons as a short-range ballistic missile.

South Korea and the United States are to hold a set of joint military drills in coming weeks, including a table-top exercise set to take place at the Pentagon on Wednesday.

Last year, North Korea test-launched more than 70 missiles, the most ever in a single year, as part of its efforts to enlarge its weapons arsenal. Observers say the North would eventually want to win international recognition as a legitimate nuclear state and use that status as a way to get U.N. and other international sanctions on it lifted.

 

Source: United News of Bangladesh

Bangladesh National Herbarium has identified 17 foreign invasive plant species harmful to Bangladesh under the Sustainable Forest and Livelihood Project of the Forest Department, seven of which are major, said Environment, Forest and Climate Change Minister Md. Shahab Uddin.

‘Under this programme, five strategic management plans have been formulated for the proper management of the alien invasive plant species in five protected areas of the country-Himchari, Kaptai and Madhupur National Parks and Rema-Kalenga and Sundarban East Wildlife Sanctuaries,’ he said.

These management strategies will play an important role in conserving national forests and forest resources and achieving the sustainable development goals, said the minister.

He said these at the final workshop of the program titled ‘Developing Bangladesh National Red List of Plants and Developing Management Strategy of Alien Species of Plants in Selected Protected Areas’ organized at the Forest Department on Wednesday.

The minister said under this program, which is being implemented with the help of the World Bank and the support of International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) all these invasive plants can be controlled by preventing their marketing and trade that have a negative impact on the environment, economy and society, and by eliminating them from the ecosystem and preventing their spread.

Moreover, preventive measures such as early detection, screening for imported plant species and quarantine procedures would be easy to incorporate, he added.

The environment minister said that as one of the signatories to the Convention on Biological Diversity, Bangladesh is committed to protecting ecosystems and biodiversity.

‘Therefore, it is necessary to ensure the conservation of indigenous plant species and forest areas by fully identifying all alien invasive plant species in all areas including 51 protected areas that have the ability to compete with native species spread in different protected areas and forest areas of the country, change the ecosystem and disrupt the food chain, and formulate their proper management strategies,’ said the minister.

Professor Dr. Mohammed Kamal Hossain presented the final results of Invasive Plants and its Strategic Management Plan of 5 protected areas namely Himchhari National Park, Kaptai National Park, Madhupur National Park, Rema-Kalenga Wildlife Sanctuary, and Sundarban East Wildlife Sanctuary. Specialists, researchers and field level officers of Forest Department also discussed the issues.

Secretary to the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change Dr. Farhina Ahmed, Additional Secretary and Director of Bangladesh National Herbarium Sanjay Kumar Bhowmik, Gobinda Roy, Project Director of SUFAL Project and Rakibul Amin, Country Representative of IUCN Bangladesh spoke at the workshop as special guest chaired by Md. Amir Hossain Chowdhury, Chief Forest Conservator of the Forest Department.

 

Source: United News of Bangladesh