While Iran Oil Exports Plummet, the U.S. Presses on with Sanctions
A Weekly Political News Magazine
How Europe Can Reform Its Migration Policy
Issue 1717 - October 12/10/2018
How US Sanctions are Impacting Hezbollah
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The Catalan Crisis, One Year Later
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Issue 1717 - October 12/10/2018
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How US Sanctions are Impacting Hezbollah Pressures Against Tehran’s Main Proxy Could Push the Group to Its Limits 8
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The United States’ policy has shifted recently to focus more on Iran and its proxies now that ISIS has been significantly weakened, and its caliphate defeated. more on Iran and its proxies now that ISIS has been significantly weakened, and its caliphate defeated. The new policy – although focused on sanctions – entails other mechanisms, and is directed at hurting Iran and its proxies financially.
A WAR OF SANCTIONS
Hassan Nasrallah, the head of Lebanon›s militant Shiite Muslim movement Hezbollah, speaks during a ceremony on the eve of the tenth day of the mourning period of Muharram, in a southern suburb of the capital Beirut on October 2016 ,11. (Getty Images)
by Hanin Ghaddar Sanctions that the United States re-imposed on Iran have been more effective than expected, according to top US administration officials. These sanctions are not only causing Iran’s own economy to suffer, it has also affected Iran’s main proxy: Hezbollah. With HIFPA 2 (Hezbollah International Financing Prevention Amendments Act) being amended to include associated and more vigorous reporting, additional treasury sanctions against Hezbollah, and sanctions against the Iranian regime, Hezbollah is starting to feel the pressure. The United States’ policy has shifted recently to focus
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After the first wave of sanctions, which ended on Aug. 6, the U.S. has put sanctions on the Iranian government to purchase or acquire U.S. dollars. This first wave also included sanctions on Iran’s trade in gold and precious metals, and in the supply or transfer of aluminum, steel and coal. Sanctions were also placed on «significant transactions related to the purchase or sale of Iranian rials,» in addition to sanctions on Iran’s automotive sector. However, the second wave which will take effect on November 4 will be most painful. Iran’s port operators, shipping and shipbuilding sectors will be limited. The National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) will also see sanctions along with petroleum-related transactions that include the purchase of petroleum, petroleum products, and petrochemical products from Iran. Along with the impact on Iran›s energy sector, sanctions will also affect transactions between foreign financial institutions and the Central Bank of Iran. On a related level, sanctions against Lebanese Hezbollah have increased to unprecedented levels. Only last week, the US Treasury Department has imposed sanctions on one person and seven Lebanese companies on charges of financing Hezbollah. U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) accused Mohammad Abdallah al-Amin of “assisting in, sponsoring, or providing financial, material, or technological support for, or financial or other services to or in support of, [Adham] Tabaja,” an alleged Hezbollah financier. The companies include: Sierra Gas SAL Offshore, Lama Foods SARL, Lama Foods International Offshore SAL, Impulse SARL, Impulse International SAL Offshore, M. Marine SAL Offshore and Thaingui SAL Offshore.
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Earlier in May, the US Treasury imposed new sanctions on Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah and other leaders of the organization. This was significant because the Treasury has rarely targeted political officials but rather focused on financiers and business associates. Many saw this as a political message with a clear warning to Hezbollah’s political arm, as HIFPA 2 was being prepared and policy shifts were being discussed. In the same month, the Treasury Department also imposed sanctions on Muhammad Qasir, a Hezbollah official, as well as the governor of the Central Bank of Iran, three others, and an Iraqi-based bank. Not only do these sanctions cripple Hezbollah’s financial movements, they mainly shatter the financial bond that Hezbollah shares with its business community; that is, Shia businessmen who had long-term partnerships with the group. Today, many of these businessmen are wary of maintaining their relationship with Hezbollah, fearing being sanctioned themselves. Although Hezbollah needs them today more than ever, these businessmen prefer to protect their money than sacrifice it to the Resistance. The days of free donations are over and the Shia community understands this clearly. In addition to the months-long protests in Iran over deteriorating economic conditions and charges of corruption and mismanagement, Iran’s financing of its proxies will also decrease. Signs of this are felt deeply with the Shia community in Lebanon, where reports of salaries cutbacks are increasing, making it more difficult for Hezbollah to reassure financial stability or make any promises. In addition, if the Senate approves the part of HIFPA 2 that includes the “reporting on Hezbollah’s associates,” Hezbollah might start also losing its allies or the trust of some of them. The US has so far only targeted Hezbollah, its officials, and financiers. However, the word “associates” is stretchy enough for the US President to go after Hezbollah’s
Although Hezbollah needs them today more than ever, Shia businessmen who had long term partnerships with the group prefer to protect their money than sacrifice it to the Resistance.
allies, such as the Amal Movement or the Aounist Party (also known as the Free Palestine Movement, or FPM). Without Hezbollah’s financial insecurity, and with fear of sanctions, these allies will start reconsidering this alliance. But there’s more.
THE ISRAELI THREAT Israel has been targeting Iran and Hezbollah in Syria for a few years now, and it seems an unspoken understanding has developed whereby Israel bombs Hezbollah’s missile depots and factories in Syria – not in Lebanon – and Hezbollah won’t retaliate. This has worked for a while, until Hezbollah started moving many of its missiles from Syria to Lebanon. In a surprising presentation, and speaking at the UN General Assembly on September 27, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused Hezbollah of building missile production sites in the Ouzai neighborhood of Beirut. The group reportedly intends to use these underground facilities—located in the middle of an urban area near mosques, homes, schools, and the international airport— to convert regular missiles into more accurate precision weapons. The Israeli military also released a video and photos of
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Lebanese security forces guard the entrance of Al-Ahed stadium in Beirut›s southern suburbs during a tour organised by the Lebanese foreign minister for ambassadors on October 2018 ,1 of alleged missile sites around the Lebanese capital in a bid to disprove Israeli accusations that the Hezbollah movement had secret missile facilities there. (Getty Images)
It is becoming more apparent that Hezbollah is part of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps, and if this entity is not targeted, Hezbollah will never be weakened.
The photo shows an Iranian 20.000 rial banknote with the portrait of Ajatollah Ruhollah Chomeini between dollar banknotes. (Getty Images)
three Beirut sites reportedly established to improve the precision of Hezbollah’s missiles—a goal that the prime minister tied directly to Iran. Israel might not use this revelation to start a war against Hezbollah in Lebanon, as a war in Lebanon is not Israel’s priority. However, if Hezbollah continues to move and convert its missiles in Lebanon, Israel might not have a choice but to bomb these sites, even if they go for surgical attacks. This possibility – stemming from the message behind Netanyahu’s revelation – is not sitting well with Hezbollah. Yes, it knows that Iran has transformed Lebanon into its regional operation room, and yes, it knows that their regional role involves many risks and compromises, but it’s also well aware that another war with Israel in Lebanon is not going to end with another ”Divine Victory”. Hezbollah does not want to fight Israel in Syria, and it won’t, but it specifically doesn’t want to fight Israel in Lebanon. The arsenal it got from Iran and stored in Lebanon so far could be its last, and it can’t afford to lose it; otherwise, the main power of these weapons, which is deterrence, will be eliminated. Also, Hezbollah can’t afford to deal with hundreds of thousands of Shia refugees with the current financial
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crisis its going through. In 2006, many of these refugees went to Syria, and today this is not an option. Others moved to other Lebanese areas, and that today is complicated, given that 1,500,000 Syrian refugees are taking these spots in Lebanon. As such, if another war is to happen, Hezbollah will have to deal with a major refugee crisis. Moreover, post 2006, reconstruction was not an issue, as money came from everywhere, including the Gulf states. But, these previous donors might not be as willing to send money to Hezbollah or even the Lebanese government for reconstruction, if this funding is going to empower Hezbollah as it did in 2006. With all these pressures and more on the way post November 2018 ,4, Hezbollah might find itself in a very tight spot where its support base will push it to the limits. Old methods of pressuring Hezbollah while making deals with the mothership in Tehran failed. It is becoming more apparent that Hezbollah is part of – not a proxy of – Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps, and if this entity is not targeted, Hezbollah will never be weakened. * Hanin Ghaddar is the Friedmann Visiting Fellow at The Washington Institute.
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While Iran Oil Exports Plummet, the U.S. Presses on with Sanctions Iran gloats at Haley’s departure from the UN while the U.S. presses on with Iran sanctions and pays a price in trans-Atlantic relations 12
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Whoever replaces Haley, it is clear that the tough line on Iran she represented remains the consistent policy of the Trump Administration - at least with respect to economic sanctions. Court of Justice to invalidate an Iranian demand for the recovery of 175$ billion in assets which had been seized by U.S. courts. A 2016 ruling by the American Supreme Court determined that the assets should be remitted to families of victims of Hezbollah’s 1983 Marine barracks bombings in Beirut. During that trial, evidence was furnished by the plaintiffs showing that Iran had provided material support to Hezbollah. Iran had made its claim to the funds at The Hague on the basis of a 1955 “Amity Treaty.” U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo underscored his government’s request of the international court in his own statement. In addition to asserting that Iran had petitioned the court in bad faith, he said, “We owe it to our fallen heroes, their families, and the victims of Iran›s terrorist activities to vigorously defend against the Iranian regime›s meritless claims this week in The Hague, where we will show that Iran›s case should be dismissed.” The U.S., Government has also announced that it would withdraw from the Amity Treaty.
Gas flare on an oil production platform in the Soroush oil fields is seen alongside an Iranian flag in the Gulf July 2005 ,25. (Reuters)
by Joseph Braude The Iranian government appeared to take heart on Tuesday when Nikki Haley, the outspoken U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, announced that she would be resigning at the end of the year. The Iranian mission to the UN released a statement welcoming her departure as a relief. Haley had led the charge against Iran at the international body, memorably giving a press conference in the company of shards of missiles which she said had been provided to Yemen’s Houthi rebels by Iran. Whoever replaces Haley, it is clear that the tough line on Iran she represented remains the consistent policy of the Trump Administration — at least with respect to economic sanctions. Earlier this week, the U.S. government asked the International
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Iran’s crude exports have meanwhile fallen further over the first week of October: Iran exported a total of 1.1 million barrels per day, down from 2.5 million bpd in April, before the American withdrawal from the JCPOA. The Iranian government is bracing itself for more substantial U.S. sanctions on its petroleum sector, due to go into effect on November 4. Though there is substantial evidence that U.S. sanctions on Iran are indeed functioning as intended, reporting in the New York Times this week found that a major casualty of the new measures is the U.S.-European alliance. The newspaper quoted Volker Perthes, director of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs in Berlin, as saying that the U.S. withdrawal from the deal had “opened a rift between the U.S. and its European allies that is unlikely to close again as long as he is in office.” The paper noted that European officials are urging Tehran to bide its time, adhering to the deal, in hopes that Trump will not be re-elected in 2020 and a future Administration will rejoin the JCPOA.
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How Europe Can Reform Its Migration Policy The Importance of Being Sustainable By Alexander Betts, Paul Collier Three years since the start of the European refugee crisis, the continent’s politics are still convulsed by disagreements over migration. This is despite the sharp decline in the number of people crossing the Mediterranean into Europe—60,000 between January and August 2018, compared with over one million in 2015 and 350,000 in 2016. The crisis, in short, is not one of numbers but one of trust: European publics believe that migration is out of control and that their leaders have no real plan for handling it. Among the new arrivals, some are refugees with no choice but to flee to Europe, while others are refugees who might have found protection closer to home. But many are aspirational migrants, leaving poor but not necessarily dangerous
countries, such as Morocco and Tunisia, for better jobs and opportunities in the EU. Europe’s problem is that it currently has no effective way of distinguishing between these groups or of forcing EU member states to share responsibility for legitimate refugees. And with some countries, such as France and the United Kingdom, which return less than half of rejected asylum seekers, migrants without a real claim to asylum have an incentive to apply for it anyway, knowing they will probably be able to stay regardless of the bureaucratic outcome. The absence of rule of law in the admission of migrants, coupled with haphazard integration policies, undermines public confidence, in turn fueling a populist backlash with devastating consequences for both migrant welfare and European democracy. From Brexit to the rise of the populist Alternative for Germany party, divisions relating to migration have poisoned politics.
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The populists grossly exaggerate and distort the socioeconomic impact of human migration, which is often beneficial dysfunctional, requiring frontline countries such as Italy and Greece to shoulder the burden of mass inflows. Stopgap measures by the European Commission (EC), such as its September 2015 plan to reallocate 160,000 refugees among EU member states, remain unimplemented. And the EU’s latest emergency summit, on June 29–28, produced a largely symbolic agreement whose core proposals—the voluntary creation of processing centers within Europe and the exploration of “regional disembarkation platforms” outside the EU—are inadequate to the task of reform. An alternative vision is urgently needed, one that can provide Europeans with a humane, economically sound, and democratically legitimate framework for dealing with the challenge of migration. On June 21, the authors, working in collaboration with the Norwegian government and the EC’s European Migration Network, launched the Sustainable Migration Framework in Oslo, our proposal for reforming the EU’s asylum and immigration policy. Here, we outline our framework and its implications for Europe.
SUSTAINABLE MIGRATION
Migrants eat hot meals received from volunteers, outside of derelict warehouses which they use as a makeshift shelter, in Belgrade on January 2017 ,15, with temperatures just bellow zero Celsius overnight. (Getty)
The populists grossly exaggerate and distort the socioeconomic impact of human migration, which is often beneficial. The primary source of public anxiety is structural economic change, in particular the collapse of labor-intensive manufacturing. Yet even if migration is not the root cause of discontent, migration policies must enjoy democratic legitimacy if they are to remain sustainable. European politicians, however, have neither the effective policies nor the unifying narrative necessary to regain voters’ trust. The Common European Asylum System (CEAS) is in tatters. Under it, EU member states are supposed to adopt common standards for recognizing and assisting asylees. This has become a fiction: last year, France recognized 86 percent of asylum claims from Iraqis; the United Kingdom, only 19 percent. The Dublin Regulation, an EU law requiring migrants to apply for asylum in the first country in which they are processed, has also proven
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To begin to reform, Europe’s politicians and policymakers must reach agreement on their desired endpoint. We suggest that a new discourse of “sustainable migration” can offer a unifying language for debate. A sustainable migration policy will need to satisfy three simple conditions: it must meet widely accepted ethical obligations, enjoy broad democratic support, and avoid decisions that people (whether migrants, receiving societies, or sending societies) will later come to regret. If a policy deviates from these criteria, it is liable to come unstuck. Europe’s migration and refugee policy since 2015, however, has been the opposite of sustainable: chaotic, reactive, and ad hoc. Nowhere was this more apparent than in the shift in Germany’s migration policy between September 2015, when Chancellor Angela Merkel threw open Europe’s doors to refugees, and March 2016, when she led the push for an EU deal with Turkey that attempted to slam the doors shut. Much of the support for Merkel’s initial policy came from a widely shared sense that the rich countries of Europe have an ethical obligation to accept refugees and migrants from poor countries, regardless of how they entered Europe, whether they had a legitimate claim to asylum, or how European citizens felt about the matter.
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Europe does indeed have ethical obligations to the rest of the world. At the same time, a well-intentioned but ill-considered policy is likely to produce results such as the ones we have seen in Europe over the last three years: collapsing public trust, political backlash against migration, and bitter disputes between EU member states. A sustainable migration policy must therefore distinguish between Europe’s reciprocal ethical obligations, which arise from transactional relationships of mutual gain, and its nonreciprocal ones—those it has a duty to fulfill regardless of whether it gains anything in return. Rich countries have nonreciprocal obligations to help poor societies develop and to assist refugees fleeing from conflict and persecution. They do not have nonreciprocal obligations—other than humane treatment— to aspirational migrants.
STAYING HOME Europe’s clearest nonreciprocal obligation is to help refugees who may be at imminent risk of harm. For some, asylum in Europe is the only way to ensure their safety. Yet most refugees are neither in Europe nor attempting to come to Europe. Eighty-five percent of the world’s refugees find sanctuary in low- and middle-income countries. Currently there are nearly three million Syrian refugees in Turkey, more than one million in Lebanon, and over 650,000 in Jordan, compared with about one million in Europe as a whole. Refugees are not natural migrants: they are people who chose to stay home until they were forcibly displaced by crisis. What they need is not permanent migration per se but safety and normality until they can either go home or become accepted as productive citizens in their regional haven or elsewhere. If the EU can give refugees adequate assistance and development opportunities, it will be fulfilling its ethical obligations and leaving most with little need to move on to Europe. Assistance and development opportunities, however, cannot come in the form of indefinite humanitarian aid, which acts as a drain on rich countries’ resources and does little to put the refugees on a sustainable, self-sufficient footing. These opportunities must instead help refugees restore a sense of autonomy, community, and dignity within the non-European countries where most
From Brexit to the rise of the populist Alternative for Germany party, migration-related divisions have poisoned politics
reside. This means jobs in their host countries—a policy with the added benefit of offering host countries an economic incentive to keep their borders open. The best way for Europe to meet its obligations to the vast majority of the world’s refugees is to provide them with jobs in their host countries, from which both the refugees and the hosts can profit. Examples abound of progressive policies for the economic inclusion of refugees in developing countries. In 2016, Jordan, supported by trade concessions from the EU and finance from the World Bank, gave refugees the right to work. Virtually since independence, Uganda has allowed refugees relative freedom of movement and the right to work. In 2016, Kenya opened its Kalobeyei settlement, which is the world’s first designed, marketbased settlement in which both refugees and host community members live side by side. That same year, Ethiopia committed to move from an encampment policy to one that will gradually give refugees the right to work and move. With international support, these countries are creating sustainable models that both protect refugees and simultaneously benefit host communities. Recent studies by the World Bank and the International Finance Corporation, for instance, provide evidence that host communities in Kenya have benefited from a market-based approach to refugee assistance. Oranized resettlement schemes, which enable refugees to move onward to a third country, should be made available when refugees are trapped in limbo for long periods of time, unable
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People pulling suitcases arrive at the Central Registration Office for Asylum Seekers of the State Office for Health and Social Services in Berlin who are seeking asylum in Germany, on March 2015 ,11 in Berlin, German. (Getty)
Europe’s migration and refugee policy since 2015 has been the opposite of sustainable: chaotic, reactive, and ad hoc increases in income actually make people more likely to emigrate, since they are better able to afford it. What is needed from Europe is more profound and requires a nuanced understanding of the relationship between migration and development. Young Africans must come to believe that Africa itself will provide opportunity and promise, just as young Chinese now look confidently to their country’s future. Every year ten to 12 million young Africans enter the labor market, yet only one to two million new jobs are created. At the moment, emigration is the de facto solution to this employment gap. Africa needs jobs, but it also needs a transformed narrative, one that no longer identifies Europe as the default outlet for youthful aspirations. To help this transformation, Europe must support empowered production rather than entitled consumption among Africa’s young people, specifically by creating opportunities for meaningful work and entrepreneurship on the continent. to either return home or integrate with the host community. But these schemes should have clear criteria and involve greater international coordination than at present. Organized resettlement can also be made more sustainable by introducing options for private sponsorship. Canada, for instance, has had a successful system for the private sponsorship of refugee resettlement since the 1970s, enabling communities with progressive values to take on the costs of integrating refugees who most need safe haven in Canada. Although this system has not been widely adopted in Europe, Germany and the United Kingdom are currently exploring implementation.
ASPIRATIONAL ALTERNATIVES Europe’s other main nonreciprocal obligation is to help poor countries develop. This is an important part of a sustainable migration policy, since a significant proportion of the people coming to Europe are not refugees but aspirational migrants. Those crossing the Mediterranean from Libya, for instance, are disproportionately young, educated men, often driven on by an idealized vision of Europe. The EU does not need to accept aspirational migrants as refugees—a status that should be reserved for those in genuine danger—but this does not mean that Europe has no obligation toward them at all. Traditional forms of development assistance, such as simply giving aid to poor-country governments, are inadequate to the task. Moreover, they cannot stop aspirational migration: modest
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Doing so will also mean helping African governments create a sense among their citizens of shared belonging based on common purpose, which should in turn be linked to a credible economic strategy. Rwanda, for example, has in recent years combined nation building, good governance, and job creation for its young citizens. Here, international financial institutions such as the European Investment Bank, the International Finance Corporation (the business arm of the World Bank), and the newly reconstituted Overseas Private Investment Corporation have a central role to play. The core competence of such organizations is bringing international firms to countries that desperately need job growth, yet they are barely known within Europe’s interior ministries—a reflection of the regrettable lack of policy coherence across development and home affairs. As a general rule, it makes more sense to bring jobs to people than to bring people to jobs. Even so, many economic sectors in Europe need migrant workers, at least in the short term. Circular migrationpolicies, in which migrants work for a short time before returning home, have been successfully used for agricultural labor by Canada and the United States, and Europe should begin considering them as a means of providing mutually beneficial labor migration.
ASYLUM IN EUROPE? Once the EU has met its responsibilities to refugees outside of Europe, the issue of asylum within Europe should become a
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minor one. But it will still need to be addressed. If the EU is to have a rules-based system, this will mean maintaining a clear distinction between refugees and aspirational migrants. And because Europe is such a tempting destination for poor people, a sustainable European asylum policy will also need to distinguish between those refugees who can find safety closer to home and those who absolutely need to move to Europe. To be sustainable, EU asylum policy needs to address five main questions. First, how should asylum decisions be made? EU policy for distinguishing between refugees and aspirational migrants must be consistent across time and space. Inconsistencies and unpredictability undermine public trust, incentivize migrants to gravitate to the countries with the least demanding asylum standards, and contribute to arbitrary and unjust outcomes for refugees. Although geographic consistency has been a core aim of CEAS,it has been misinterpreted as referring merely to common criteria for granting asylum in European courts. This misses a much more important aspect of geographic consistency, which is that the outcome of an asylum (or other migration visa) decision should be identical regardless of whether asylees have applied within their country of origin, a regional safe haven, a transit country, or the EU. Currently, this is not the case. The business of people smuggling will continue to thrive as long as reaching European soil greatly increases one’s chances of settlement in Europe. Second, where should asylum decisions be made? Decisionmaking for asylum cases should still be available within the EU, and indeed the process should be simplified and sped up considerably. But it makes sense for the bulk of asylum and migration procedures to be undertaken outside of Europe, thereby reducing the need for people to embark on dangerous journeys. Europe’s unrivaled network of consulates and embassies should be empowered to operate under European jurisdiction in both haven countries and migrants’ countries of origin. These decisions should not, however, be concentrated in the countries currently being used for transit, such as Libya. Libya is not a haven country, and people should not be induced to go there. Creating processing centers there, as some EU states have proposed, risks both inhumane outcomes and attracting more people. Third, how should responsibility be shared? Europe will also need to reform its system for distributing refugees within the EU. The Dublin Regulation is manifestly inequitable. A sustainable system requires a clear separation between responsibility for assessing a claim—which can be done by whichever embassy or consulate an asylum seeker chooses to use (or within the first European territory in which a person arrives)—and responsibility for the settlement and integration of refugees whose claims have been accepted. Refugees should be distributed across EU member states based on mutually agreed-upon criteria.
European countries have different histories, demographics, and degrees of diversity, which could make agreement hard to reach. Yet a solution is not impossible as long as distribution criteria respect citizen preferences. For instance, a preference matching system could be used to link the preferred destinations of refugees to the states and communities willing to welcome them. This approach can contribute to sustainability because it respects both citizen and refugee preferences while leading to a fair distribution of what should be small numbers of refugees. Yet once a match has been made, refugees should stay in the country to which they have been assigned. The Schengen Agreement, which largely abolished Europe’s internal borders, was intended to confer reciprocal rights of frictionless movement on European citizens, not on refugees or temporary migrants. Enforcement of this provision need not require border checks as long as there are effective controls on access to employment, benefits, and public services. For migrants who are already living in Europe but have yet to receive an asylum decision, claims should be assessed by the countries in which they are currently living—as long as there are common criteria for deciding claims, there is no need for the migrants to move between countries. This should be accompanied by EU financial assistance to frontline states such as Greece and Italy, where unprocessed asylum seekers disproportionately live.
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Syrian refugees cross inside AL- Azraq camp for Syrian refugees on April ,30 2015 in Al-Azraq, Jordan. (Getty)
Countries that host large numbers of refugees, such as Jordan, Uganda, Kenya, and Ethiopia, are creating sustainable models for economic inclusion that both protect refugees and benefit host communities seekers is low, and it is far too easy for rejected asylum seekers to disappear into the informal economy. This system, in which official asylum decisions are de facto ignored, is unsustainable, illegitimate, and a subversion of the rule of law. To reform it, Europe will have to reduce disappearances. It should not do so through draconian detention policies, however. Instead, identity cards and biometric information, policed by employers and welfare agencies, can help identify illegal migrants. And countries in which it is currently easy to disappear, such as Italy, will need to raise their standards of transparency and enforcement.
Fourth, how should Europe deal with the boats still attempting to cross the Mediterranean? The EU, of course, must absolutely commit to saving lives at sea. But in addition, it must establish clear procedures for disembarkation after migrant ships have been intercepted or migrants have been rescued at sea. Disembarkation points—places that can house migrants while their asylum claims are being processed—should be close to Europe, but they should not themselves be a potential destination. One location that meets these criteria is Malta, although there are many other islands in the Mediterranean that could work. As with the frontline states, Malta and other islands should be financially compensated for serving as disembarkation points. To cooperate, they will need assurances from the EU both that claims will be decided quickly and that unsuccessful claimants will be returned. Initially, it may be necessary to back these assurances with a default procedure, such as transfer to an alternative safe haven country for cases in which no decision has been reached after a determined period. Fifth, how can Europe make returns work? Europe also needs to develop an effective and humane mechanism for returning unsuccessful asylum claimants, either to a regional haven country (for those who can receive effective protection there) or to their country of origin (for those determined to be aspirational migrants). Currently, the rate of deportation for failed asylum
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But there may also be innovative alternatives. For difficult cases in which third country agreements, diplomatic assurances, or nationality identification systems are unavailable, one possibility would be to identify a group of willing third countries prepared to participate in an alternative labor migration routes pool. For countries with a demand for labor migration, rejected asylum seekers might have the option to express a preference between participating alternative destination states, while those participating states could similarly rank preferences about the profiles of prospective migrants.
MAKING MIGRATION WORK Migration policy will shape Europe’s future. The continent’s leaders have lost the trust of their citizens, and that trust will not be restored by acrimonious disputes over illusory quick fixes, which is what Brussels has largely offered so far. The EU urgently needs to change its approach. Its overarching priority in this should be to reassure citizens by adopting a refugee and migration policy that gains sufficiently wide support, meets Europe’s ethical obligations, and is sufficiently prudent that it will not leave a legacy of regrets. Sustainable migration can offer a common and unifying language through which politicians can reconnect with citizens. More, it offers policies that are principled yet pragmatic enough to endure the migration challenges it will inevitably face in the future. This article was originally published on ForeignAffairs.com.
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The Catalan Crisis, One Year Later Can the Deadlock Over Independence Be Resolved? by Omar G. EncarnaciĂłn It was a year ago this month that Catalans voted to break away from Spain and create the Republic of Catalonia. Although 90 percent of the Catalan public endorsed independence, only the Catalan government and those who voted in favor of it took the results seriously. Madrid declared the referendum illegal, based on a ruling from the Constitutional Court, while the European Union and the rest of the international community, including the United States, ignored the results. Most important, perhaps, the bulk of those opposed to Catalan independence boycotted
the vote, effectively denying the referendum any legitimacy. These setbacks did not deter Catalan separatists from declaring independence a few weeks after the vote, on October 28, prompting Madrid to revoke Catalonia’s autonomy statute, prosecute those who authorized the referendum, and order new elections in the region. Despite the advent of new political leadership in Barcelona and Madrid, Catalonia has remained politically deadlocked since the aborted attempt at independence. The separatist coalition of parties managed to hang on to power in last December’s regional elections, but received only 47 percent of the vote. Indeed, the party that received
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Although much of the ensuing developments points to why Catalan independence remains a quixotic struggle, there are also glimmers of hope for resolving the crisis lot has. And although much of the ensuing developments points to why Catalan independence remains a quixotic struggle, there are also glimmers of hope for resolving the crisis.
NO WAY OUT Catalan separatists’ biggest obstacle has been and remains the absence of a viable route to independence. Nobody wants to see a reprise of last year’s illegal referendum, which saw violence in the streets of Barcelona and other Catalan cities after Rajoy deployed the Guardia Civil to prevent people from voting and triggered a massive flight of Catalan businesses to other regions of Spain. A plan by Catalonia’s new premier, Quim Torra, to persuade the Sánchez administration to authorize a state-sponsored referendum sometime this autumn is going nowhere fast.
Protester waves the 'Estelada' Catalan independentist flag during a demonstration by pro-Catalan independence supporters calling for the release of jailed separatist leaders on November 2017 ,12, in Brussels. (Getty)
the most votes was Ciudadanos, or Citizens, an ardent opponent of Catalan independence. In June, a new Spanish prime minister, the leader of the Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE), Pedro Sánchez, was sworn in, and he pledged to find a way out of the current stalemate in Catalonia. But he is steadfast in his opposition to independence, as was his conservative predecessor, Mariano Rajoy, of the Popular Party (PP). Sánchez’s only concession to the separatists was to allow for the transfer of 12 Catalan officials being prosecuted for rebellion to prisons in Catalonia. None of this is to say that nothing of consequence has happened in Catalonia since the referendum. In fact, a
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Meanwhile, Sánchez’s tenuous hold on power hamstrings his ability to pass legislation. To oust Rajoy, via a noconfidence motion, Sánchez managed to cobble together support from the left-wing-populist Podemos (We Can) party and the separatist-nationalist parties from Catalonia and the Basque Country with the barest of majorities: 180 of 350 parliamentary seats. Not surprisingly, Sánchez has struggled to get anything through the parliament. To date, his most significant legislative achievement is a vote to exhume and remove the remains of General Francisco Franco from El Valle de Los Caídos, or the Valley of the Fallen, Franco’s one-sided memorial to the Spanish Civil War. But this was a popular vote with the public, and the parliament had already approved the exhumation last year in a nonbinding resolution. Complicating matters is that the Catalan people remain very divided on the issue of independence. A poll commissioned by the Catalan government from last July showed that 46.7 percent of Catalans wanted independence, versus 44.9 percent that wished to remain within Spain. This split presents a major challenge to the pro-independence coalition. Although some, such as Torra, believe that the Catalan government should continue to press unilaterally
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for independence, others are decidedly less sure, believing in the need to widen public support for independence. “If a separatist is so naïve or stupid to believe he can impose independence on the 50 percent of Catalans who are not separatists, it’s clear that they are mistaken,” said Joan Tardà, a member of the Spanish parliament from the Republican Left of Catalonia, or ERC, one of the parties in Torra’s separatist government. The absence of a viable path to independence and the divisions within the separatist coalition were on vivid display on September 11, when the Catalans celebrated La Diada, Catalonia’s national holiday, which marks the fall of Barcelona in the Spanish War of Succession of 1714. In anticipation of the celebration, separatist leaders released public statements that were distinctly at odds. Torra recommitted himself to realizing the unilateral independence declared by Catalan Prime Minister Carles Puigdemont last October, arguing, “We have a social majority in favor of independence.” That statement stood in pointed contrast to the cautious statement made by ERC leader Oriol Junqueras, one of the separatist leaders currently in prison. He noted to a Catalan television station, “There is no shortcut to independence; this can only happen via a referendum agreed to by the Spanish state.” Just as visible were the deep political divisions within Catalonia. Traditionally, the Diada draws all of Catalonia’s major political groups to Barcelona to celebrate Catalan identity. This year, however, only the pro-independence parties, led by Together for Catalonia, showed up, marching for “making the Catalan Republic” down Avenida Diagonal, a thoroughfare that crisscrosses Barcelona. The unionist parties—the Catalan Socialist Party, Ciudadanos, and the PP—all boycotted the march. At their own Diada
The pro-independence coalition in Catalonia is divided, some believe that the Catalan government should continue to press unilaterally for independence, while others seek to first widen public support for a split from Spain
events, unionist leaders excoriated the separatists for using an event associated with local pride to divide the Catalan people.
GLIMMERS OF HOPE? Amid the deadlock, however, there are glimmers of hope. Despite all the political posturing of the last 12 months, some semblance of normalcy has returned to Catalonia. Madrid lifted its direct rule of the region after the December elections, tourism bounced back, and the flight of businesses slowed. Much of this is credited to improved relations between Madrid and Barcelona. The relationship between Rajoy and Puigdemont, which I characterized last year as a clash between a Spanish strongman and a Catalan martyr, was downright toxic. For months, both leaders talked past each other, choosing instead to play to their political bases: Spanish nationalists for Rajoy and Catalan separatists for Piugdemont. This allowed what began as a dispute over Catalonia’s desire for more autonomy from Madrid to careen into Spain’s biggest constitutional crisis in the post-Franco era. By contrast, Torra and Sánchez seem to go out of their way to stress the importance of dialogue.
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Catalonia's pro independence supporters march during a demonstration to commemorate the first anniversary of the Independence referendum in front of the Escola Mediterranea school on October 2018 ,1 in Barcelona, Spain. (Getty)
Nobody wants to see a reprise of last year’s illegal referendum, which saw violence in the streets of Catalan cities after Rajoy deployed the Guardia Civil and triggered a massive flight of businesses to other regions of Spain that a previous referendum on Catalan autonomy, approved in 2006 by 73 percent of Catalan voters, violated the Spanish Constitution by, among other things, making reference to Catalonia as “a nation.” Presumably, the Sánchez administration will ensure that any future referendum on Catalan autonomy passes constitutional muster before putting it to the voters.
More important, a political solution appears to be in the horizon. Sánchez has proposed a referendum on a new autonomy statute with Madrid that, if approved by the Catalans and the Spanish parliament, would upgrade Catalonia’s capacity to rule itself. “It is a referendum for autonomy, not self-determination,” Sánchez said. Although the details of the new statute are not yet known, it is expected to include more control for Catalonia over its finances. Were Sánchez to succeed in pulling off this referendum, he would certainly set himself up very nicely for the next general elections, expected sometime before 2020. But significant obstacles stand in the way, which is why both sides are approaching the proposal with extreme caution. For Sánchez, the risks include antagonizing the PP and Cuidadanos, both of which oppose greater autonomy for Catalonia. It could also upset other rebellious communities in Spain, such as the Basques, which would reasonably conclude that the Catalans are being rewarded for misbehaving. Ultimately, this could force a debate over amending the Spanish constitution to allow for a federal system in which all regions would have the same level of autonomy from the central administration. Another hurdle is the 2010 Constitutional Court ruling
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Torra faces even higher risks, which is why he has already dismissed the proposal. A new autonomy statute could be the final nail in the coffin for the dream of Catalan independence. Support for independence falls considerably among Catalan voters when polls include the option of getting more autonomy from Madrid. If anything, the prospect of a referendum on autonomy has strengthened Torra’s resolve to secure a referendum on independence. Last week, Torra issued an ultimatum to the Sánchez administration: if the prime minister did not approve a referendum on independence, the Catalan separatists would withdraw their support in the national parliament. This could, in theory, bring down the Sánchez government. But the more moderate wing of the separatist movement, led by the ERC, made it clear that it was not willing to play along with Torra’s heavy-handed tactics. This has left Torra’s coalition teetering on collapse, with each side trying to avoid the blame for the botched independence project. Whether Sánchez and Torra, two very weak politicians leading highly fractured governing coalitions, can manage to see past the political risks and do something that could end the current impasse in Catalonia is very much in doubt. But one year since the crisis erupted in earnest, it does appear that there is, at least on the part of Madrid, a newfound willingness to make constructive and conciliatory gestures. This alone stands in sharp contrast to the grandstanding we have become accustomed to by both sides and could well pave the way for a breakthrough. This article was originally published on ForeignAffairs.com.
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Why Duterte Remains So Popular The Failure of the Philippines’ Liberal Reformism by Mark R. Thompson
an opportunity that was skillfully seized by Duterte.
Why did the Philippines, a seemingly stable electoral democracy, prove so vulnerable to Duterte’s strongman challenge? The 2016 election revealed that despite surface-level calm, a systemic crisis of the Philippines' political order had been building for years. Although Aquino had remained personally popular, his liberal reformist agenda had been slowly sapped of its legitimacy by administrative bungling, a failure to address structural problems or root out institutionalized corruption, and at least one major scandal. This created
LIBERAL REFORMISM’S DEAD END Since the end of Ferdinand Marcos’ corrupt dictatorship in 1986, Philippine politics have been dominated by an agenda that I call “liberal reformism,” which has emphasized civil liberties (honored more in the breach than in the observance), good governance (usually conceived of in terms of rooting out corruption), and market-based economic reform as the keys to the country’s developmental success and democratic consolidation. This agenda, which tends to skirt more
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fundamental questions of inequality and redistribution, has proved popular among members of the Philippine elite, including powerful interest groups such as the Catholic Church and big business. Duterte’s predecessor, Noynoy Aquino, was a politician in this liberal reformist tradition. The son of Corazon Aquino, a popular former president and leader of the 1986 anti-Marcos revolution, he easily won the 2010 election by promising to take the “straight path” and clean up corruption—a popular message coming on the heels of the scandal-plagued administration of President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo. In the early years of his presidency, Aquino cracked down on tax cheats, passed a number of (often symbolic) anti-corruption measures, and achieved high rates of economic growth— between six and seven percent a year from 2012 to 2016. International credit-rating agencies promoted the country’s bonds to investment grade, and its ranking in Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index steadily improved.
Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte listens to political speeches during a campaign rally on April 2016 ,23 in Manila, Philippines. (Getty)
But Aquino’s liberal reformist agenda soon ran off track in the face of the Philippines’ endemic structural problems. Aquino had pledged that “if there is no corruption, there will be no poverty,” but the country saw little improvement in the lot of the poor, while a major pork barrel scandal in 2013exposed legislators pocketing public funds. Growth, although fast, remained profoundly unequal, with high unemployment and an increase in self-reported poverty. The government continued to drag its feet on the persistent issue of land reform, symbolized by the Aquino-Cojuangco family’s tenacious resistance to court-ordered land redistribution of its huge sugar estate. And other missteps added to public perceptions of incompetence: the Aquino administration was unable to deal with the devastation caused by the supertyphoon Haiyan in 2013; it made slow progress on building or maintaining infrastructure in the country’s major cities, which are plagued by some of the worst traffic in Asia; and its promised institutional reforms, including an attempt to clean up the notoriously corrupt Bureau of Customs, mostly came to nothing. It was the problems of the Philippine justice system, however, that were ultimately the most damaging. These were symbolized by the trial of the accused perpetrators of the 2009 Maguindanao massacre, in which 57 people, including 32 journalists, were murdered at the behest of the powerful Ampatuan family. Aquino had promised the trial would be concluded during his presidency. It wasn’t, leading to widespread perceptions that the state was powerless to punish the guilty. Along with other highprofile scandals—such as the revelation that drug lords in the country’s Bilibid Prison were “living like kings”— this contributed to a sense among many Filipinos that the Aquino government was incapable of enforcing the law,
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The 2016 election revealed that despite surface-level calm, a systemic crisis of the Philippines' political order had been building for years despite statistics showing a decline in violent crime.
PENAL POPULISM AND ILLIBERAL DEMOCRACY The Aquino administration’s failures proved a boon for Duterte. Although drugs and the criminal violence surrounding them had long been an issue in Philippine politics, incidents such as the Bilibid scandal allowed Duterte to hammer the country’s establishment over the supposed breakdown of law and order, striking a chord with the public through promises to crack down ondrug use and trafficking by whatever means necessary. Practicing a style of politics described by the sociologist Nicole Curato as “penal populism,” he politicized latent anxieties about crime and social disorder, pointing to his alleged success in cleaning up Davao City—where he had been either the mayor or the power behind the throne for three decades—to argue that he was the country’s only shot at overcoming its enormous challenges, and that progress would have to come at the price of liberal rights. Since taking office in May 2016, Duterte has made good on his word, moving to eliminate liberal barriers to his agenda. He has sought to sideline domestic critics by intimidating independent media, government institutions (particularly the Commission on Human Rights), and civil society groups, whom he accuses of “coddling” criminals. And in May, his judicial allies removed the chief justice of the country’s Supreme Court, who had questioned Duterte’s list of judges supposedly involved in the drug trade and his administration’s extension of martial law on the island of Mindanao. Duterte’sdrug war has led to spectacular levels of violence— although the police have deliberately made it difficult to count the dead, one opposition senator plausibly claims that as many as 20,000 people may have already been killed—and drawn condemnation from rights groups around the world. Yet the bloodshed has been a political success: Duterte is the one of the most popular Philippine presidents since the return of democracy, with one major polling organization recording approval ratings of 78 percent or higher during his first two years in office before dipping below that level last
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September. And although most Filipinos acknowledge it has involved extrajudicial killings, they consider the drug war to be Duterte’s major achievement. In some respects, there has also been considerable continuity between Duterte and his liberal reformist predecessors. He has pursued governance reforms and, like his predecessors, met with only middling success. Despite pledges to root out corruption in his administration, for instance, several officials accused of corruption, such as Bureau of Customs Commissioner Nicanor Faeldon, have simply been reassigned. Duterte established a commission that has drafted a new constitution, which would put strict limits on political dynasties and federalize the country in order end the dominance of Manila, but the project has become embroiled in controversy. He has also, despite labeling himself a “socialist,” deferred to market-friendly technocrats whendesigning his economic policies, incdluding implementing a major tax reform, lowering and simplifying personal income taxes while increasing VAT, and stressing infrastructure with his “build, build, build” campaign, ramping up government spending in the hopes that major Chinese investments will materialize in the future.
DUTERTE’S TROUBLES Duterte’s dystopian depiction of drugs as the root of all social ills has been a successful deflection strategy,distracting Filipinos from the country’s limited developmental gains and shifting the blame for social problems onto drug criminals, who can be ruthlessly targeted in the name of national progress. Yet recent months have been less kind to Duterte. The president, who has admitted to using the powerful opioid fentanyl, has had a recent health scare involving a potentially cancerous growth in his intestines. And during a
Duterte promises national political salvation by claiming only that violent strongman rule can bring about needed reforms and establish order in a country with institutions weakened by the failures of liberal reformists
rambling speech in September, he seemed to openly admit his involvement in extrajudicial killings, leading critics to call for the International Criminal Court to step up its investigations of his “drug war”. Duterte has also started running into political problems. At the beginning of his presidency, he successfully had one of his leading critics in the Senate, Leila de Lima, imprisoned on improbable drug charges after he publicly “slut-shamed” her. But his efforts in September to jail another opposition senator, Antonio Trillanes IV,have backfired. Trillanes, a retired army officer who helped plot a coup against the unpopular former president Macapagal Arroyo,has accused Duterte and several of his top officials of corruption, and has suggested that his son and son-in-law are both involved in drug smuggling. It is impossible at this point to assess the credibility of Trillanes’ accusations, but multiplying scandals and the heatedness of the Duterte administration’s reaction suggest that where there is smoke there well may be fire.
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Rodrigo Duterte and his supporters onboard a truck during a campaign motorcade on May 2016 ,1 in Manila, Philippines. (Getty)
Duterte’s feud with Trillanes has brought him into open conflict with elements of the military, including some of the top brass, who fear that the attempt to prosecute Trillanes will provoke a split within the armed forces. Many officers also worry about Duterte’s close ties to China—the Philippine military has historically close ties to the United States, which were reinforced by U.S. assistance during the siege of Marawi, after the city was taken over by an Islamic State affiliate in mid2017-. A coup is unlikely, despite Duterte’s warnings, but the country’s armed forces appear to have maneuvered behind the scenes to preserve their institutional integrity, putting limits on his authoritarian ambitions. Some of Duterte’s reform efforts have also begun to falter. His attempt to change the constitution has met with strong resistance, including from some of his own cabinet officials, who have criticized provisionscreating state-level governments as too expensive. A combination of rising oil
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prices, VAT tax increases, and a falling peso have led inflation to more than double this year, reaching nearly seven percent. The rising price of rice and other basic food stuffs has hit the poor hard, yet the depreciating peso has done little to boost the country’s weak export sector. But although his approval ratings have begun to sag, threefourths of Filipinos continue to back him. Duterte remains widely revered, including by many Filipinos working abroad who fear the corruption of Manila and the danger posed by drug addiction to their families in the provinces. Duterte promises national political salvation by claiming only that violent strongman rule can bring about needed reforms and establish order in a country with institutions weakened by the failures of liberal reformists. For now, at least, it seems that most Filipinos still believe him. This article was originally published on ForeignAffairs.com.
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The Changing Contours of the Terror Threat How Nations Seek to Advance their Resilience and Ability to Combat Terrorism by Yasmine El-Geressi As the forces of ISIS are gradually defeated and its tactics change, violent extremism and its consequences remain a major threat to international peace, and therefore the need for a nuanced approach to understanding this menace has never been greater. Talento Media Academy brought together a panel of distinguished speakers at Frontline Club on October 4 for an in-depth analysis and discussion on the changing contours of the terror threat and how nations seek to advance their resilience and ability to combat terrorism in the Middle East and Europe. The talk was moderated by Said Shehata, expert and lecturer in Islamic movements and counter-
terrorism, who opened the conference by discussing homegrown and lone-actor terrorists in the West and the acute challenges they present for law-enforcement practitioners in detection and disruption. “In the West the problem is complex because of the phenomenon of the homegrown terrorists who are not on the radar of the security services however they committed attacks like what happened in Westminster and Manchester. Even some that are on the radar are not followed by security forces because they under immense pressure,� he said. On the response to counter-terrorism, Shehata opined that more needs to be done. “There are immense efforts on an international level, regional and domestic levels but they are not
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An armed police officer stands guard near Westminster Bridge and the Houses of Parliament on March ,22 2017 in London, England. (Getty)
enough,” he explained. Shehata pinpointed four key challenges in the realm of counterterrorism: The law, security and intelligence services, social media, non-state actors and terrorism funding. Michael Binyon, an English journalist and eminent foreign corresponded who has been an editorial writer, columnist and foreign correspondent for The Times since 1971, discussed the symbiotic relationship between terrorism and the press. “The press gets a lot of the blame for terrorism because terrorism feeds on publicity and always has done. That is the point of terrorism, it is to inflict a psychosis on an innocent population and to make a group feel that it is actually able to
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“To try to get the press to be engaged in actively combatting terrorism is almost impossible” Michael Binyon achieve its political objectives by instilling fear into others… but of course the problem is that in reporting it, there is always a danger that you glorify, or at least you give publicity to terrorism,” he explained. Binyon highlighted that the press must ensure that it takes great care in the terminology used when reporting on the difficult and emotive subject of terrorism to maintain standards of accuracy and
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especially impartiality. “It is very difficult if you use the world terrorist, it is so laden with political overtones because people will say well one man’s terrorist is another person’s freedom fighter and then many people say well what about state terrorism,” he said. On the press’s role in countering terrorism, Binyon explained that the British press are “uncontrollable” and will not take a unified view at the direction of government ministers or intelligence services. “To try to get the press to be engaged in actively combatting terrorism is almost impossible,” he explained. Dr Lina Khatib, head of the Middle East and North Africa Programme at Chatham House, explained that there is an oversimplification in the public domain and a tenancy to seek equivalence where it doesn’t exist when it comes to terrorism in the Middle East. “It is the half-truths that are sometimes more dangerous than the lack of information altogether so we have to be very careful not to make inferences without actually looking very deeply into the details because sometimes things when looked at superficially can lead us to misleading conclusions,” she elaborated. Khatib explained that deciding who is a terrorist and who is not is very sensitive as there are individuals who have unwittingly assisted in
“Civil liberties are at risk when we apply a very heavy handed, very black and white approach to tackling terrorism funding” Dr Lina Khatib
financing terrorism through NGOs or charitable organisations and others who have been forced to pay taxes in areas that were under the control of ISIS. She explained that we should therefore be mindful when approaching the subject as “sometimes this issue gets politicised by governments and by all kinds of entities that use the issue of terrorism to crack down on opponents and this is sadly something we see in many areas.” “Civil liberties are at risk when we apply a very heavy handed, very black and white approach to tackling terrorism funding because otherwise what is going to happen is that you start stifling the space for a public debate and the space for charitable activities and this causes resentment and terrorist organisations gain because they prey on people’s grievance,” she elaborated. Khatib also pointed to the worrying trend of terrorist organisations themselves becoming an attractive source of income for people living in marginalised areas. “Not everyone that becomes a member of an organisation necessarily believes in the ideology of that organisation, sometimes
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people join organisations and support them for pragmatic reasons…sometimes out of economic gain,” she explained. Brigadier Paul Gibson, former Director Counter Terrorism and UK operations, talked about the tangible evidence that the terrorism threat in the UK is “growing and evolving.” “The threat has mutated. We have seen particularly in the UK the diversification in the nature of the attacks. The use of the word asymmetric. If you are good are stopping people moving weapons into the United Kingdom, if your borders are relatively secure, if you have got a good handle on explosives, if you’ve got a good handle on the equipment people can use in the more conventional terrorist attacks, then the terrorist inevitably is going to be drawn to the low tech, the kitchen knife and the rental van or car and some of these individuals are operating as lone wolves.” Gibson explained that the hardest element of the UK’s counter terrorism strategy is preventing
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“You want to retain as government the moral high-ground. You have got to be fair, strong but supported by those communities” Paul Gibson radicalisation. “The government is wrestling with safeguarding and supporting the vulnerable people who might be radicalised and might wish to conduct terrorist attacks…because we don’t yet understand the totality of radicalisation.” He explained that he believes that some of what the government has done to counter the terrorist threat may have “gone too far.” “What you end up doing is alienating the very community within which these potentially vulnerable people live and they are the people you want supporting your aims,” he explained. “You want to retain as government the moral high-ground. You have got to be fair, strong but supported by those communities.”
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Endangering Animals Is Hazardous to Your Health What Wildlife Advocates Can Learn From Public Health Campaigns by Vanda Felbab-Brown
officials will convene to address an increasingly urgent problem.
In recent years, the illicit wildlife trade has expanded to unmatched proportions. The traffic in animal parts gravely threatens global biodiversity and entire ecosystems. Those who partake in it do so to meet the demand for wildlife products used in everything from foods and medications to clothing and decorations. Reducing the demand for these products is crucial to stopping the poaching and trafficking of animals. Such strategies will feature prominently at this week’s London summit, where conservationists and public
Campaigns to reduce demand for wildlife products often miss the mark, however. They rely heavily on altruistic messaging, which has been shown to have little influence on people’s behavior—say, posters of baby elephants with messages discouraging ivory use. Television ads featuring local celebrities condemning wildlife consumption do better but are insufficient. Wildlife advocates should look to public health campaigns for models that have effectively
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Wildlife advocates should highlight how consuming certain wildlife products can harm the individual consumer, not just the species or the environment of species are at risk. Some, such as sharks and turtles, are illegally hunted and traded by the millions each year. Together with global warming and habitat destruction, the illegal wildlife trade contributes to a species extinction rate that is now up to 1,000 times the historic average. Wildlife trafficking can trigger global pandemics, including devastating varieties of influenza, and has been linked to the spread of SARS and the Ebola virus. The illicit trade in animal products hurts economies, threatens the security of nations, and has permanently damaged forest-dependent communities. The demand driving this problem is complex. Some animal species are traded as pets; products derived from wildlife are used in luxury foods, protein supplements, medications, clothing, decorations, rituals, and aphrodisiacal elixirs popular in Traditional Chinese Medicine. The global rise of the middle class has contributed to a spike in demand for illegally or unsustainably sourced wildlife products, particularly in East Asia and among East Asian diasporic communities. Demand has also expanded in Africa and in Latin America, where it often goes unnoticed because of the unique difficulties of monitoring illegal offtake from tropical forests. Research shows that reducing the demand for wildlife products is the single most effective way to stabilize and protect wildlife populations. But changing consumer behavior is not as simple as persuading potential buyers that their choices can do harm.
A pile of illegal ivory is pictured during a campaign to destroy over 2 tonnes of illegal ivory at the Department of National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation in Bangkok, Thailand on August 2015 ,26. (Getty)
changed public behavior. In particular, campaigns to reduce smoking and drug use have been successful when they’ve warned consumers about immediate, short-term risks to their health, survival, prestige, or prospects for sex. Wildlife advocates should do likewise, highlighting how consuming certain wildlife products can harm the individual consumer, not just the species or the environment.
REDUCING DEMAND Elephants, rhinos, and tigers have become the emblems of the illicit wildlife trade, but in fact tens of thousands
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Campaigns that warn consumers of long-term, diffuse, public drawbacks to their behavior are well proven to be ineffective. The administration of former U.S. President George W. Bush tried to discourage drug use by pointing to links between drug trafficking and terrorist financing, but the campaign was unpersuasive. Demand did not budge. The United Kingdom is currently trying to discourage cocaine use by linking it to deforestation in Colombia. Although conclusive evaluations of the campaign’s effectiveness are not available yet, historical evidence suggests that there are good reasons to be skeptical. Messaging that calls attention to short-term, personal risk, however, tends to be more effective. Even teenagers have been effectively deterred from smoking cigarettes when
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exposed to campaigns that highlight personal health risks. Antismoking campaigns in which children confront their parents about the health risks of secondhand smoke have also been effective. Graphic representations on cigarette packages showing the damage smoking can do have been among the most successful deterrent strategies, particularly when they are accompanied by higher cigarette prices, restricted tobacco advertising, and bans on smoking in public places. Similarly, some of the most successful environmental protection campaigns—against ozone depletion, acid rain, and pesticides—emphasized links to cancer, birth defects, and other life-threatening or debilitating diseases. A successful campaign to reduce shark-fin soup consumption in Hong Kong and China stressed the fact that shark fins are loaded with mercury and cadmium, both of which can cause cancer and birth defects. Increased awareness in China of these dangers seems to have simultaneously helped reduce the demand for manta ray gills, which also contain mercury and cadmium, and to have galvanized support for a campaign to outlaw them entirely. When luxury or social prestige factors into the appeal of a wildlife product, celebrities and political leaders can help discourage consumption. In 2013 Chinese President Xi Jinping prohibited serving shark-fin soup at official functions as part of a campaign to combat corruption, extravagance, and opulence among party officials. The move may have been designed to consolidate Xi’s power, but it had the effect of damaging the prestige of the product and driving down demand. In some cultures, particularly in Asia, certain wildlife products are believed to have medicinal properties such as increasing sexual potency or preventing cancer. Most of these claims are bogus: the keratin in rhino horn no more cures cancer than consuming a tiger’s penis enhances
When advocates succeed in reducing the demand for harmful products, vested interests can be expected to push back.
sexual performance. But that doesn’t stop people from taking such notions seriously or traders from actively promoting them. Using scientific evidence to debunk myths surrounding certain animal products has so far not been enough to dissuade consumers. But advocates could try to disassociate these products from health or good sex by associating them with the opposite: for example, advertisements could feature attractive men or women rejecting suitors who use wildlife products, establishing a social stigma linked to sex. One obvious way to reduce demand is to enforce the laws that prohibit illicit wildlife trade. Such enforcement can be difficult because so much of the trade takes place through private exchanges on social media and other online platforms. Ivory is now prohibited in China, where traffickers and large-scale retailers should be punished with stiff prison penalties. When law enforcement officials are able to overcome the barriers to identifying them, even small-scale buyers should be subject to mild but embarrassing punishments, such as a week of cleaning public toilets.
CREATING SUSTAINABLE ALTERNATIVES None of these measures can be effective if consumers
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A Chinese tourist dangles a piece of raw meat in front of a Siberian tiger as they ride in a bus at the Heilongjiang Siberian Tiger Park on August 2017 ,16 in Harbin, northern China. (Getty)
consumer conscience (using eco-friendly messaging to sell products that may or may not actually be safer). Consumers have no way of knowing how meaningful labels are that identify products as sustainably produced. Some industries pay for their own sustainability inspectors. But in the best cases, developing alternatives to illegal products can help protect the livelihoods of poor communities that live in proximity to wildlife and whose involvement in conservation efforts is critical to their success.
THE LONG GAME When advocates succeed in reducing the demand for harmful products, vested interests can be expected to push back. In 2017, a Chinese doctor raised concerns online about a popular tonic liquor made out of animals and plants. The doctor claimed that it was not only ineffective but potentially poisonous. The tonic industry had him arrested for libel, which carried a sentence of several years (he was released after three months in response to popular pressure). More often, traders will seek new markets and invent new products to counteract successful demand-reduction campaigns. Chinese traders are already advertising the tusk of the hornbill, an iconic Asian bird, as a poor man’s alternative to the rhino horn.
believe that the outlawed products are indispensable. For this reason, prevention requires that we study and understand the demand for particular products. Providing poor, forest-dependent populations with sustainable alternatives to wildlife meat might be far more effective in reducing demand than prohibiting and punishing poaching. And if environmentalists want to stop people from buying rhino horns to cure cancer, they should partner with public health advocates to connect those consumers to effective resources for cancer prevention and treatment. Some consumers can be persuaded to substitute less harmful products. In Yemen, where rhino-horn daggers known as jambiyas are particularly prized, the demand has sharply decreased, not only because of the war, which reduced disposable income and led to a rash of jambiya theft, but because artificial jambiyas made of Chinese gum entered the market. In the 1990s, efforts to encourage Asian consumers to switch from rhino horn to the horn of the saiga antelope were similarly effective, but with catastrophic consequences for the antelope, whose population numbers remain dangerously low. Policies that redirect consumers to substitute products carry a host of other risks. Licensed products can be used to launder illegally harvested ones or to “greenwash” the
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Consumers, too, will backslide, as they have after successful antismoking and safe sex campaigns in the United States. The apparent progress in reducing sharkfin soup consumption proved to be short-lived and not as robust as had been hoped. Large numbers of shark fins from protected species continue to flow into Hong Kong in a trade that kills millions of sharks annually and devastates ocean ecosystems. A surprising 98 percent of the restaurants in Hong Kong—one of the most environmentally aware places in East Asia—still serve shark-fin soup on the Chinese New Year. The effort to reduce the consumption of illicit wildlife will have to be as subtle as it is insistent, paying careful attention to who uses what products and why, and to how traders adapt to changes in public behavior. Consumers should be made to understand the immediate risks the products can pose to them. Such risks can be increased by the enforcement of the law. And they can be avoided by purchasing licensed products backed by a rigorous, independent inspection process. Advocates can help communities locate alternative sources of protein or medicine. Consumers’ motivation and diligence can fade, even while traders and vested interests step up their game. The work of advocates is to remain alert, with continual efforts that evolve to meet the changing demand. This article was originally published on ForeignAffairs.com.
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An Introvert’s Guide to Healthy Social Engagement Being more social is linked with greater health benefits, but what if you’re not comfortable in the company of others? Harvard Health Research continues to stress the relationship between social connection and long-term health. Interacting regularly with other people appears to lower your risk for heart disease, depression, and early death. But what if being social is not who you are? People who are introverts — that is, they prefer time alone over group outings — are often at a disadvantage when it comes to social engagement. While introverts are not necessarily at a higher risk for problems related to isolation, they should make efforts to stay engaged with others on some level, says Dr. Steven Schlozman, an assistant professor of psychiatry at Harvard-affiliated Massachusetts General Hospital. “You don’t always have to be more social if you don’t miss it, but humans are social beasts by nature. We do well when we connect with others, even for brief periods.”
A NEED TO RECHARGE An introvert is someone who enjoys solitude and focuses more on internal thoughts, feelings, and moods rather than seeking out external stimulation. Unlike extroverts, who gain energy from social interaction, introverts have to expend extra energy in social
situations. After being with a large group of people, introverts often feel a need to “recharge” by spending time alone. Being an introvert should not be confused with having social anxiety or suffering from agoraphobia (a disorder in which people fear and avoid public places or situations that cause them to feel trapped or helpless). Introverts often have a greater challenge keeping connected as they age. Many introverts become accustomed to using the interactions of their working life as a way to stay socially engaged — for instance, through business lunches and water-cooler banter. “They often get just enough engagement without feeling overwhelmed,” says Dr. Schlozman. “Yet that social circle often disappears as people age, and introverts have trouble re-creating it.”
WORK WITH YOUR PERSONALITY Don’t feel you have to change your introvert nature in order to socialize more. In fact, that’s often tough to do. Many studies have shown that a person’s core traits tend to remain constant throughout life. “If you were an introvert when you were younger, odds are you will be later in life,” says Dr. Schlozman.
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He suggests that you work with your personality, and focus only on the type and level of interactions you can do and enjoy. “Look at what is missing in your life now that you liked before,” says Dr. Schlozman. “Was it one-on-one time to discuss last night’s game, or was it being part of a group where the attention wasn’t focused on you? Once you can identify those types of engagement, you can create strategies to achieve them.” Introverts should also follow some basic guidelines when trying to expand their social lives. “Being stressed defeats the purpose of socializing, so you should make sure you are comfortable with the level of engagement and have the chance to back off or do something else if it doesn’t feel right,” says Dr. Schlozman. Here are some suggestions: • Know your boundaries. Many introverts are comfortable with social settings that have a defined beginning, middle, and end. “Introverts are often not comfortable with uncertainty about when something will end, and they need these boundaries in order to engage in conversation,” says Dr. Schlozman. • Focus on activities. Signing up for class at a local college or
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community center can help you place your energy and attention on the activity rather than conversing with others. “Sometimes just being around people is enough,” says Dr. Schlozman. • Control the setting. If going out is not easy, have people come to you. For instance, invite someone to your home for dinner, or have a small group over to watch the game. This puts you in control of the environment as well as the amount of socializing. • Join a club. Find an organization based on your interests or hobbies, like a golf league, walking group, civic club, or volunteering group. “It is often easier to interact with people who share your passions,” says Dr. Schlozman. These types of venues also have structured schedules with set time limits, which can offer the defined boundaries introverts often require. • Socialize from afar. Social media is a great way for introverts to stay connected. For example, Facebook has groups devoted to specific activities or interests that people can join and participate in at whatever level they wish. You can watch from afar and choose when to interact, and come and go as you please, without the worry of commitment.
B
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Should America Cut Off Low-Skilled Immigration? The Right and Wrong Arguments for Restrictionism 38
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Immigrants who come with the education, money, or smarts to succeed in the U.S. economy will help restore the legendary “melting pot” of the days of old yet another jeremiad warning that modern immigrants— unlike those good immigrants of ages past—are failing to assimilate and that race war looms. In fact, it is something completely different: a thoughtful, well-informed, mostly economic argument for limiting low-skilled immigration. In a marketplace of ideas dominated by shouting and bad faith, Salam’s book, although not without its flaws, is a much-needed injection of calm rationality.
AN OPEN-AND-SHUT CASE Salam’s case for immigration restriction is fairly simple. Mass immigration of low-skilled laborers—farm workers, child-care workers, gardeners, and so on—will create an economic underclass in the United States. In the past, waves of poor laborers from Ireland, Italy, and elsewhere eventually clawed their way to the middle class, but this time, Salam says, will be different. The rise of automation and globalization means that low-skilled labor will be devalued as never before—gone will be the good manufacturing jobs of yesteryear, replaced by insecure, low-paid work. The children and grandchildren of today’s low-skilled immigrants will become a permanent pool of surplus labor. New U.S. citizens during a naturalization ceremony in Old Sturbridge Village, Massachusetts July 2016. (Reuters)
by Noah Smith Smart, intellectually consistent cases for immigration restriction are in short supply these days. U.S. President Donald Trump’s voters claim that the president only wants to stop illegal immigration, even as Trump’s policies take aim at the legal variety. Fringe figures on the right resuscitate century-old arguments about the inferiority of non-Western cultures or make poorly supported claims about the perils of racial diversity, even as the president sneers at immigration from “shithole” countries. Given its provocative title, one might expect Reihan Salam’s new book, Melting Pot or Civil War? A Son of Immigrants Makes the Case Against Open Borders, to be
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Salam prophesies that the negative consequences of this will go beyond mere economic inequality. Because most low-skilled immigrants to the United States, indeed most U.S. immigrants in general, are nonwhite, many of them from Latin America, there will be a racialized aspect to the underclass. When generation after generation of poor Hispanic Americans find themselves unable to catch up to prosperous whites, society will fracture along racial lines—the “civil war” referenced in the book’s title. In order to avert this disaster, Salam calls for policies to shift the mix of U.S. immigration from low-skilled labor to the higher-skilled variety. Immigrants who come with the education, money, or smarts to succeed in the U.S. economy—and to pass that success on to their descendants—will help restore the legendary “melting
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pot” of the days of old, as Salam argues that economic assimilation leads to cultural acceptance. This argument stands out from those of many other immigration restrictionists for several reasons. It clearly springs not from racial animus but from humanism and patriotism. Salam is obviously concerned for the welfare of the poor and the cohesion of American society. He eschews common tropes, talking points, and buzzwords and instead reveals a deep knowledge of the academic literature. Salam’s proposed solution—a system that admits prospective immigrants based on skills instead of family ties—is good policy. In short, if you read one book making the case against increased immigration, Melting Pot or Civil War? should be it. There is certainly some evidence to support Salam’s basic thesis. The children of Hispanic immigrants do tend to close part of the income gap with whites, but then the convergence stops and the ethnic gap persists. In contrast, Asian immigrants—many more of whom were selected for their skills rather than their proximity to the United States—tend to surpass whites in earning power by the second generation. It matters who comes. There’s also evidence that skilled immigrants are much more quickly accepted by the native population in many countries, reducing the chances of a nativist backlash. Then there’s the salutary example of Canada, which has focused on taking in skilled immigrants from a wide variety of sources, and which so far, at least, has not suffered the same kind of nativism now gripping the United States and several European countries. Then again, Salam’s narrative—low-skilled immigration leading to a racialized underclass and social strife—doesn’t seem to describe the U.S. experience in recent decades. The late 1960s and
Because Salam focuses so much on the economics of immigration, he misses the chance to make a more subtle, cultural argument for closing the gate
the early 1970s were a time of great social chaos. Riots torched the hearts of Chicago, Los Angeles, Detroit, Newark, Washington, D.C., and other U.S. cities. Violent crime soared to heights unmatched anywhere else in the developed world. Hundreds of bombings rocked cities across the country every year. But those were decades in which the U.S. foreign-born population was at an alltime low. In contrast, the 1990s and 2000s— when the foreign-born population soared again— saw plunging crime rates, an apparent end to large-scale rioting, and a relative lack of interest in radical politics. The big cities most transformed by Hispanic immigration, such as Houston, Los Angeles, and San Diego, became far more peaceful than before (a fact Salam acknowledges in the case of his own New York City). This seeming negative correlation between the number of immigrants and social breakdown, although it doesn’t disprove Salam’s basic idea, should make us hesitant to accept it as an overarching theory of social division. And if the problem is not the number of immigrants but the mix of skills they bring, Salam’s book seems curiously timed. Net immigration from Latin America, particularly from Mexico, collapsed about a decade ago and, thanks to low fertility rates and rising per capita GDP throughout the region, is unlikely to bounce back. The average education level of people moving to the United States has risen rapidly; immigrants are now considerably more likely than their native-born counterparts to have a bachelor’s degree. Salam mentions this trend but, strangely, gives it little consideration. If the problem of mass low-skilled immigration was a
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one-off, driven by temporarily high fertility rates and poverty in Latin America combined with the long, porous U.S.-Mexican land border, why worry about it now? Salam does not call for a Trump-style mass expulsion of undocumented immigrants; in fact, he wants a general amnesty. So why shouldn’t we regard the low-skilled immigration boom of the 1980s, 1990s, and early 2000s as a problem already solved? Salam could have made a case that rapid population growth in Africa will eventually create another wave of immigration pressure, but he misses this opportunity. As a result, an unanswered question hangs over the book: Why is immigration still worth worrying about at all? Another weakness of this book stems from its intended audience. Salam spends quite a lot of time rebutting the idea of “open borders.” But except for a few progressive firebrands, essentially no one on the political left is explicitly advocating for the abolishment of all immigration restrictions. The open borders case is instead a darling of intellectual libertarian circles. Much of Salam’s case seems directed toward these libertarians— for example, rebutting the idea that open borders are the best way to help the world’s poor. But although they might be common in Salam’s elite conservative circles, libertarian intellectuals are a nonfactor in national politics, marginalized on the right and almost unknown on the left. Thus, Salam’s message seems sometimes ill tailored to the broader immigration controversy. He occasionally gets lost in the weeds of complex economic arguments, spending a fifth of the book speculating about the impact of automation and another full chapter discussing alternative ideas for helping the developing world. This is stimulating stuff to a policy wonk but makes the book feel a bit less broadly relevant. A better approach would have been to argue that proimmigration activists on the left, despite not explicitly endorsing open borders, are creating a de facto open borders standard by opposing every concrete attempt to restrict low-skilled immigration. That case was certainly there for the making—after all, if every attempt to enforce borders falls before a moral outcry, do borders really exist?—but Salam misses the chance to make it.
FITTING IN Because Salam focuses so much on the economics of immigration, he also misses the chance to make a more subtle, cultural argument for closing the gates. The most poignant passage in the book comes in the introduction, when Salam, whose parents are Bangladeshi immigrants, recalls feeling ucomfortable and afraid after a terrorist attack by Akayed Ullah, a
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Bangladeshi radical in New York City. Although no one persecutes Salam because of his ethnic similarity to the terrorist, he nevertheless sees uneasy similarities between Ullah’s background and his own, and he worries that the problems in Ullah’s life reflect broader failures of integration. This anecdote hangs over the rest of the book, posing an unspoken question: If immigration were cut off, would people like Ullah find it easier to assimilate into American society? With continued Bangladeshi immigration, even of the high-skilled variety, Bangladeshis might always retain some connection to that ethnic expatriate community. That connection would be both a blessing and a curse, as it might result in some white Americans, or members of other more well-established groups, regarding Bangladeshi Americans as perpetual foreigners in their own land. But if immigration from Bangladesh ceased, then over time, Bangladeshis might become well established in their own right, just as Germans, Italians, Irish, and other groups once did after immigration from those countries trickled off—and the idea of associating them with Bangladeshi nationals would come to seem ludicrous. Salam doesn’t base his case for restriction on the notion of accelerating the melting pot for the descendants of skilled immigrants—indeed, he calls for continued high-skilled immigration. Still, the idea is always in the background. Would cutting off all immigration— not just the low-skilled variety—cause xenophobia and racism against Asian Americans, Hispanic Americans, and other such groups to fade, forging Americans of all races into a new, unified identity? Or would restrictions effectively declare Asians and Hispanics to be undesirables, forcing them to endure a painful, submissive half assimilation into a white mainstream that would never quite accept them? I don’t have an answer to that momentous and painful question. And it’s a shame that Melting Pot or Civil War? never attempts to tackle it, because without that cultural dimension, the book isn’t quite as bold or as personal as its subtitle implies. It’s the son of high-skilled immigrants making a complex economic argument that U.S. immigration should look more like his own family. There’s nothing wrong with that— indeed, Salam’s arguments for shifting to a more skills-based immigration policy are strong ones. But as the Trump administration takes steps to keep out skilled immigrants, it would be nice to know where Salam stands on the issue. This article was originally published on ForeignAffairs.com.
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Crocheting the Stress Away Egyptian crochet artist: “It’s not only the end result or the artwork that I am after; it’s the process itself” by Farah Hashem An artist is a person engaged in an activity related to creating art, practicing the arts, or demonstrating an art. As for Hagar, she is a crochet artist who uses yarn as her medium. The -28year-old Egyptian artist, Hagar Mahmoud, holds a diploma in Education and a love for wool, textile and colour. It was the void that Hagar’s sister left when she travelled that led Hagar to distract herself by learning the art of crochet. The person Hagar spent most of her time with shopping, going out, or venting out to before going to bed, now left to another country. Hagar had to find an activity that would not need her sister’s presence, and that would get her mind off the loneliness she now felt. Holding the crochet hook and the colourful yarns was what intrigued her at first.
Crochet is a process of creating fabric by interlocking loops of yarn, thread, or strands of other materials using a crochet hook. The name is derived from the French term crochet, meaning ‹small hook›. The Sahar Al Khan gallery was the first to display
“It (crochet) is what helped me when my sister travelled last year, and it continues to help through my bad days 42
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Hagar at the Tulip Hotel exhibition.
Hagar’s work and has proved a big success for the launch of her business network. “It was the first time I publicly displayed my work, my pieces were simple baby socks and hats.” Once her pieces were out there, she received requests for more complicated knitwear like scarves and rugs. With research and persistence, Hagar was able to develop her work and produce bigger, more complex pieces. “It took a lot of time and patience, so many times I’d have to undo the stitches and redo the entire work.” Beside the simple baby knitwear, the highlight of her display in the first exhibition was the few toys she had knitted. The success that they brought was more than expected. The first few toys she had ever made were all sold out. “The toys were something new, they were different than any crocheted products we would see in the market. Adults were buying them as gifts for their children or grandchildren and for different uses, they would put them as display in their house or office.” Hagar received call after call, with orders of customised
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Hagar had to find an activity that would not need her sister’s presence, and that would get her mind off the loneliness she now felt toys with the shape and colour of their desire. Fast forward a few months, Hagar’s network expanded, as well as the demand for not only baby knitwear, but also scarves, socks and hats for adults, and mostly for toys. The art of crochet requires some research and planning before the crocheting begins. For Hagar, it is a more spontaneous process that starts off with the hook and the colours of her mood. She patiently and attentively sits in her quite bedroom, away from any distraction
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Fast forward a few months, Hagar’s network expanded, as well as the demand for not only baby knitwear, but also scarves, socks and hats for adults, and mostly for toys and leaves her room with an eccentric piece crocheted with good-taste, style and dedication. In other times, some pieces would not require complete focus; Hagar would enjoy her favourite TV show, listen to music or sit with her family while her hands are crocheting. Hagar’s wide creativity and passion for fabric and colours is limited due to the availability at the market. “We have a fabrics crisis here in Egypt”, she said, “most threads I work with are imported from Turkey, so are overpriced.” In perfecting her products, Hagar
ensures working with quality materials and peculiar colours which the Egyptian market lacks. Yet this does not stop her from achieving quality knitwear and toys that are increasingly requested by family, friends and admirers of her artistic work. Hagar spends 7-6 hours a day working on her pieces. To her, it is about investing a lot of time and effort in an activity and seeing a beautiful outcome at the end. “I might not be able to sleep because of one piece that I’m very determined to finish,” she said. On other nights, however, it is what helps her have a good night’s sleep. Hagar told Majalla: “It’s not only the end result or the artwork that I am after; it’s the process itself. We all have our problems and are faced with daily stressors and pressures, crochet is known to relieve stress and even depression. It is what helped me when my sister travelled last year, and it continues to help through my bad days” Counting is one way proven to relieve anxiety and stress. It is a form of relaxation and distraction away from the real issue. And this is what crochet does to Hagar, it relieves her from the daily pressures. She adds, “crochet has changed a lot in me. I have become more patient and more focused. It feels great to have a place and a form of art in which I can invest my time and effort to take all my energy out.” Before, Hagar would get frustrated if she gets a wrong knot and would not want to continue her piece. Now she can sit there for hours, without minding to start over if one knot was slightly out of place. “I believe I’m very lucky to have had the enough patience to continue with crocheting,” she says. Since the beginning of her journey, Hagar has taken part in two exhibitions, and has sold tens of pieces of her artwork to the expanded network of clients she now has. She dreams of having a small shop in Alexandria where she can display her work and have the space to work. She also aspires for her work to be known and spread abroad. “I know there are plenty of talented crochet artists out there, and so I ensure the originality and uniqueness of my work.”
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