Day: December 10, 2023

The Ukrainian war can only end in a peace deal https://t.co/oEgMY1tohW

— Michael Novakhov (@mikenov) December 10, 2023

President Ilham Aliyev, President Aleksandar Vučić hold one-on-one meeting  Trend News Agency

President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev held one-on-one meeting with President of Bulgaria Rumen Radev  APA

Israel intensified its attacks across Gaza Saturday and expanded its evacuation orders in southern Gaza, a day after the United Nations Security Council failed to pass a proposed resolution calling for an immediate humanitarian cease-fire in the war between Israel and the U.S.-designated terror group Hamas.

Israel ordered residents Saturday to evacuate the center of Gaza’s main southern city, Khan Younis, while the dead and wounded are piling up at the overwhelmed Nasser hospital there.

So far, the vast majority of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents already have been forced from their homes, many fleeing several times. With fighting raging across the length of the territory, residents and U.N. agencies say there is effectively nowhere safe to go now. Israel disputes this.

The World Health Organization’s executive board is scheduled to meet Sunday to discuss the health situation in Gaza.

More than a dozen WHO member states already have expressed “grave concern” about the catastrophic humanitarian situation in the enclave. Gaza residents “are being told to move like human pinballs — ricocheting between ever-smaller slivers of the south, without any of the basics for survival,” U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said Friday.

“The people of Gaza are looking into the abyss,” Guterres said. “The international community must do everything possible to end their ordeal.”

U.S. veto

Israel’s expanded military operations come on the heels of Washington’s veto of the proposed Security Council resolution Friday, diplomatically isolating it from the rest of the group.

Turkey’s ministry of foreign affairs called the impasse a “complete disappointment.”

“Our friends once again expressed that America is now alone on this issue, especially in the voting held at the United Nations today,” Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said in an interview Friday with state broadcaster TRT, after he and his counterparts from the Organization of Islamic Cooperation and the Arab League met with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Washington.

Agnes Callamard, the secretary-general of the international rights advocacy group Amnesty International also disagreed with the U.S. veto, calling it “morally indefensible and a dereliction of the U.S. duty to prevent atrocity crimes and uphold international law.”

The U.S. reasoning against a cease-fire is that it would allow Hamas to regroup and carry out fresh incursions. Washington instead supports pauses in fighting to protect civilians and allow the release of hostages taken by the militants during the October 7 terror attack on Israel.

Israeli hostages

Several hundreds of families, friends and supporters of Israeli hostages held by Hamas militants in Gaza rallied Saturday in Tel Aviv at the “Hostages Plaza,” calling on the Israeli government to secure the hostages’ release.

Signs of trauma are evident in the small children who were among the hostages released by Hamas.

“They looked like shadows of children,” said Dr. Efrat Bron-Harlev of Schneider Children’s Medical Center in suburban Tel Aviv, who helped treat more than two dozen former captives, most of them youngsters.

Some had not been allowed to bathe during the entirety of their captivity. Many had lost up to 15% of their total weight but were reluctant to eat the food they were served.

Asked why, the answer came in whispers: “Because we have to keep it for later.”

One 13-year-old girl recounted how she’d spent the entirety of captivity believing that her family had abandoned her, a message reinforced by her kidnappers, Bron-Harlev said.

Hamas tunnels

Also Friday, Israel said it had discovered a new tunnel, weapons and Hamas facilities under Gaza — evidence, it says, that Hamas, carries out military operations through an extensive network running underneath civilian infrastructure.

The military did not provide video or photo evidence of the kilometer-long tunnel extending from the campus of Al-Azhar University in Gaza to a nearby school, but it released photos of weapons soldiers allegedly found at the university, including explosives and rocket parts.

The military said it also found a Hamas control room with cameras, phones, walkie-talkies and weapons near a hospital in northern Gaza, as well as an additional tunnel entrance. A photo released by the military showed an opening to an underground passageway with a ladder stretching downward.

Israel said such discoveries show that Hamas is entrenched in civilian areas — a claim central to its justification for intensifying its attacks on the enclave and calling for more mass evacuations on civilian areas there.

Meanwhile, Israel rounded up Palestinian men in northern Gaza for interrogation, the military said Friday. Video has emerged of the apprehended men in the town of Beit Lahiya, dressed only in their underwear and sitting on the ground. 

The death toll since the war started two months ago is 17,700, with thousands more missing and presumed buried under rubble. Seventy percent of the victims are women and children, according to the health ministry. 

Ninety-four Israeli soldiers have been killed fighting in Gaza since its ground invasion of the enclave began, according to the Israeli military.

U.S. ammunitions

Secretary of State Blinken has approved a possible Foreign Military Sale to Israel of 120 mm M830A1 High Explosive Anti-Tank Multi-Purpose with Tracer tank cartridges and related equipment for an estimated cost of $106.5 million, according to a statement.

The Defense Security Cooperation Agency delivered the required certification notifying Congress of this possible sale on December 8, 2023.

“The United States is committed to the security of Israel, and it is vital to U.S. national interests to assist Israel to develop and maintain a strong and ready self-defense capability. This proposed sale is consistent with those objectives,” the statement said. The ammunition would come from U.S. inventory.

The Biden administration asked Congress Friday to approve the sale of 45,000 shells for Israel’s Merkava tanks in the offensive against Hamas, according to a current U.S. official and a former U.S. official.

Washington’s request for tank shells has added to growing concerns about the supply of U.S. weapons in a war that has killed thousands of civilians in the Palestinian enclave since Hamas’ terror attack on Israel two months ago. 

VOA U.N. Correspondent Margaret Besheer contributed to this story. 

FacebookTwitterRedditEmail

’Tis the season for holiday sales. But on the other side of the planet, there’s a high cost for those low prices. This is especially true for “fast fashion,” the clothing equivalent of a Big Mac: attractive, affordable, and throwaway.

The Bangladeshi women who toil as underpaid garment workers so we can wear disposable outfits are making their voices heard loudly enough to reverberate across oceans. Mass protests for higher wages have roiled the South Asian country.

Bangladesh is the world’s second-largest exporter of apparel in the world, after China. Recognizable name brands like H&M, Zara, Calvin Klein, American Eagle, and Tommy Hilfiger, among others, rely on Bangladeshi garment factories.

The country’s 4 million garment workers, most of whom are women, until recently took home a meager pay of just $75 a monthand hadn’t gotten a raise in years. By one estimate, the cost of living for a single person in Bangladesh is about $360 a month, not including rent.

Workers have demanded a modest $205 a month, but pay increases offered by the country’s manufacturers totaled barely half that.

As protests intensified, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina — once hailed as a liberal leader — unleashed security forces that have intimidated and attacked union organizers. Police recently fatally shot a 23-year-old mother and sewing machine operator named Anjuara Khatun after firing at protesters.

On the surface, U.S. brands who purchase their inventories from Bangladesh’s factories appear to be on the right side of the fight. The American Apparel and Footwear Association (AAFA), an industry trade group, wrote a joint letter urging Hasina to “raise the minimum wage to a level… sufficient to cover workers’ basic needs.”

The AAFA even asked the government to avoid retaliating against unions and to respect “collective bargaining rights.” The U.S. State Department issued astatement saying, “We commend the members of the private sector who have endorsed union proposals for a reasonable wage increase.”

Further, global retailers are offering to eat into their profits by increasing the price they pay factories to help them offset increased wages. Currently, the cost of the labor to produce garments is a mere 10-13 percent of a product’s total manufacturing cost.

But are companies really committed to raising garment workers’ wages?

A survey of about 1,000 factories in Bangladesh, published in early 2023, revealed that companies like Zara and H&M underpaid factories for garment purchases, making it harder for them to pay their workers. And when the COVID-19 pandemic led to global shutdowns, large retailers canceled orders and delayed payments.

“Only when suppliers are able to plan ahead, with confidence that they will earn as expected,” one industry expert told The Guardian, “can they deliver good working conditions for their workers.”

It’s been more than 10 years since the deadly collapse of Bangladesh’s Rana Plaza, the world’s worst garment industry disaster. The eight-story compound in Dhaka was filled with thousands of workers when it crumbled under the weight of government neglect and worker exploitation in April 2013. More than 1,100 workers, most of them women, were killed.

In the wake of the disaster, North American brands refused to join other global companies in signing on to the Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh. Citing high costs, they chose instead to form their own alliance for inspecting factories, one that applied lower safety standards.

It was a stark indicator of where these companies’ priorities lay — and suggests their latest comments about higher wages are just lip service.

Fast fashion is expected to more than double its market size over six years, growing from $91 billion in 2021 to a projected $185 billion by 2027. Meanwhile, the workers who fuel the profits behind that expansion are facing starvation.

This holiday season, perhaps the best gift we can give is a commitment to force the industry to pay up.

I want to talk about a central myth of capitalism — one that has prevented a realistic conversation about it: the myth of the “free market.”

FEW IDEAS have more profoundly poisoned the minds of more people than the notion of a “free market” existing somewhere in the universe, into which government “intrudes.” 

In this view, your pay simply reflects what you’re worth in the market. If you aren’t paid enough to live on, the market has decided you’re not worth enough. If others rake in billions, the market has decided they must be worth it. 

If millions of people are unemployed or have no idea what they’ll earn next week, that’s also the outcome of market forces.

If corporations decide to lay off their workers and shift jobs overseas, or use computers and software to do what their workers did, that’s also just the market doing its thing. 

According to this view, whatever we might do to reduce inequality or economic insecurity runs the risk of distorting the market and causing it to be less efficient.

Although the government may need to intervene in the market on occasion — to prevent, say, pollution or unsafe workplaces, or provide public goods such as highways or basic research — these are thought to be exceptions to the general rule that the market knows best. 

The prevailing view is so dominant that it is now almost taken for granted. It is taught in almost every course on introductory economics. It has found its way into everyday public discourse. One hears it expressed by politicians on both sides of the aisle.

The only question left to debate is how much the government should intervene. Conservatives want a smaller government and less intervention in the free market. Liberals want a more activist government that intervenes more in the free market. 

BUT THE PREVAILING VIEW, as well as the debate it has spawned, is utterly false. 

There can be no “free market” without government. The “free market” does not exist in the wilds beyond the reach of civilization. 

Competition in the real wild is a contest for survival in which the largest and strongest typically win. As the 17th-century political philosopher Thomas Hobbes put it in his book Leviathan (chapter 13),

“[in nature] there is continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”

Civilization, by contrast, is defined by rules.

Rules create markets, and governments generate the rules. 

A market — any market — requires that government make and enforce the rules of the game. In most modern democracies, such rules emanate from legislatures, administrative agencies, and courts. 

Government doesn’t “intrude” on the “free market.” It creates the market.

The rules are neither neutral nor universal, and they are not permanent. Different societies at different times have adopted different rules. 

The rules partly mirror a society’s evolving norms and values, but also reflect who in society has the most power to make or influence them. 

Yet the interminable debate over whether the “free market” is better than “government” makes it impossible for us to examine who exercises this power, how they benefit from doing so, and whether such rules need to be altered so that more people benefit from them.

THE SIZE OF GOVERNMENT is not unimportant, but the rules for how the market functions have far greater impact on an economy and a society. While it’s useful to debate how much the government should tax and spend, regulate and subsidize, these issues are at the margin of the economy. The rules are the economy. 

It is impossible to have a market system without such rules and without the choices that lie behind them. 

Those who argue for “less government” are really arguing for a different government — often one that favors them or their patrons.

So-called “deregulation” of the financial sector in the United States in the 1980s and 1990s, for example, could more appropriately be described as “re-regulation.” It did not mean less government. It meant a different set of rules.

Those new rules initially allowed Wall Street to speculate on a wide assortment of risky but lucrative bets and permitted big banks to push mortgages onto people who couldn’t afford them. 

When the bubble burst in 2008, the government issued rules to protect the assets of the largest banks, subsidize them so they would not go under, and induce them to acquire weaker banks. At the same time, the government enforced other rules that caused millions of people to lose their homes. These were followed by additional rules intended to prevent the banks from engaging in new rounds of risky behavior (although in the view of many experts, these new rules are inadequate).

The critical things to watch out for aren’t the rare big events, such as the 2008 bailout of the Street itself, but the ongoing multitude of small rule changes that continuously alter the economic game. 

The bailout of Wall Street created an implicit guarantee that the government would subsidize the biggest banks if they ever got into trouble again. This gave the biggest banks a financial advantage over smaller banks and fueled their subsequent growth and dominance over the entire financial sector — which enhanced their subsequent political power to get rules they wanted and avoid those they did not.

The so-called “free market” is a myth that prevents us from examining these rule changes and asking whom they serve. The myth is therefore highly useful to those who do not want such an examination and who don’t want the public to understand how power is exercised and by whom. 

THESE UNDERLYING REALITIES are particularly well hidden in an economy where so much of what is owned and traded is becoming intangible and complex. 

Rules governing intellectual property, for example, are harder to see than the rules of an older economy in which property took the tangible forms of land, factories, and machinery. 

Likewise, monopolies and market power were clearer in the days of giant railroads and oil trusts than they are now, when a Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, or Microsoft can gain dominance over an entire network, platform, or communications system. 

At the same time, contracts were simpler to parse when buyers and sellers were on more or less equal footing, and could easily discover what the other party was promising. That was before the advent of complex mortgages, consumer agreements, franchise systems, and employment contracts, all of whose terms are now largely dictated by one party. 

Financial obligations were clearer when banking was simpler, and the savings of some were loaned to others who wanted to buy homes or start businesses. In today’s world of elaborate financial instruments, it is sometimes difficult to tell who owes what to whom, or when, or why.

***

Before we can understand the consequences of all of this for why American capitalism has become so rotten, it’s necessary to understand how the market has been reorganized in recent years — what interests have had the most influence on this process and who has gained and who has lost as a result. 

In other words, we need to understand how the exercise of power has altered the exercise of economic freedom.

This article was published at Robert Reich’s Substack

In August 2023, the administration of Philippine President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr released its National Security Policy (NSP). For the third consecutive time, the Philippine national government released such a document – the first was in 2011 under the late President Benigno S. Aquino III, and the second was in 2017 during the Rodrigo R. Duterte presidency. 

There are differences in the domestic and foreign circumstances around which the three NSPs were released. In this regard, how has the Philippine national security policy evolved over the years? What are the areas of continuity and change in these documents?

Comprehensive Understanding of National Security

The three NSPs all adopt a comprehensive understanding of national security. The 2011 NSP defined national security as the “state or condition wherein the national interests, the well-being of our people and institutions, and  our  sovereignty  and  territorial  integrity  are  protected and enhanced.” This was slightly revised in the two succeeding documents which both defined national security as: “a state or condition wherein the people’s welfare, well-being, ways of life; government and its institutions; territorial integrity; sovereignty; and core values are protected and enhanced.”

Indeed, the three NSPs discuss a whole range of traditional and non-traditional security issues. Apart from protecting the country’s territorial integrity and national sovereignty, the documents also discuss and provide guidance on addressing issues as health, environment, food, culture, among others. 

From “Elements” to “Interests”

The 2011 NSP specifically identified “national interests” as part of the definition of national security. However, the said document did not further elaborate what those interests are. Instead, the 2011 NSP identified seven “elements” of national security, which are socio-political stability, territorial integrity, economic solidarity, ecological balance, cultural cohesiveness, moral-spiritual consensus, and peace and harmony. 

The 2017 and 2023 NSPs removed the word “national interest” in its definition of national security. Ironically, despite omitting the term, the two documents reframed the “elements of national security” as “national security interests.” The 2017 NSP articulated eight such interests: public safety, law and order and justice; socio-political stability; economic solidarity and sustainable development; territorial integrity; ecological balance; cultural cohesiveness; moral and spiritual consensus; and international peace and cooperation. 

The 2023 NSP unveiled seven national security interests: national sovereignty and territorial integrity; political stability, peace, and public safety; economic strength and solidarity; national identity, harmony, and culture of excellence; ecological balance and climate change resiliency; cyber, information, and cognitive security; and regional and international peace and stability. 

Shifting Priorities, Changing Threat Perceptions? 

Unlike other countries, the Philippines faces not only external security challenges but also internal security threats, primarily from insurgency movements. The Aquino III administration came into power at a time when the country was still trying to bring the peace process with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) back on track, following the Philippine Supreme Court’s decision to declare the proposed Memorandum of Agreement on Ancestral Doman (MOA-AD) with the insurgent group as unconstitutional. President Aquino III also succeeded an administration that was marred by corruption allegations, and failed military coups. 

It is therefore no surprise that under the 2011 NSP, the top national security priority of the Aquino III administration was “to promote internal socio-political stability” by promoting the “peace process as the centerpiece of [the government’s] internal security program.” In this context, the security sector was tasked to “assist in creating the enabling environment to win the hearts and minds of those with valid grievances and retain the allegiance of the rest of the citizenry.” The Aquino III administration succeeded in negotiating the Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro (CAB) with the MILF in 2014. 

However, developments during its term in office would eventually change the threat perceptions of the Aquino III administration. China’s efforts to advance its massive territorial and maritime claims in the South China Sea (SCS) became more apparent during President Aquino III’s term. The 2011 NSP, which noted that the rise of China has “generate[d] policy considerations” in the region, called for ways to “capacitate the Philippines to exercise full sovereignty over its territory.”

It was not until the 2012 Scarborough Shoal incident that the prioritization of the security threats appeared to have change. The incident, in which the Philippines effectively lost control of Scarborough Shoal to People’s Republic of China (PRC), led the Aquino III administration to push for the Revised Armed Forces of the Philippines Modernization Program (RAFPMP), with the aim of transitioning the orientation of the military from internal security to territorial defense. The Aquino III administration also filed an arbitration case against Beijing in The Hague, and forged closer security relations with the US, the presence of which in the region was described by the 2011 NSP as a “positive stabilizing force.” 

Following PRC’s creation of artificial islands in the SCS, the then-National Security Advisor Cesar Garcia declared in 2015 that: “it is now very clear that our territorial disputes in the West Philippine Sea has in fact overtaken all security issues in our hierarchy of national security issues.” Thus, coming into office with the primary agenda centered on internal security, the Aquino III administration increasingly focused on external threats. 

The election of Rodrigo R. Duterte as successor to President Aquino III seemingly marked a significant change in the Philippines’ national security policy, particularly with respect to priorities. While the Aquino III administration focused on external security, the Duterte administration shifted its priority to domestic law and order concerns. Indeed, the top national security interest articulated by the 2017 NSP is public safety, law and order and justice. This is in line with the Duterte government’s campaign against illegal drugs and criminality. 

Nonetheless, I have argued elsewhere that despite President Duterte’s efforts to shakeup Philippine strategic policy, the 2017 NSP nevertheless included the identification of the SCS dispute as the “the foremost security challenge to the Philippines’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.” Seemingly echoing the 2011 NSP, the 2017 NSP also declared that – notwithstanding Duterte’s anti-U.S. sentiments – the U.S. presence in the region is a “stabilizing force.” Such efforts at policy continuity may be credited to other elements of the Philippine polity, such as the defense establishment which, as one observer pointed out, “managed to preserve the foundations of its full-spectrum military cooperation with Washington, while continuing to monitor and oppose China’s creeping presence across Philippine-claimed waters.”

Early in his administration, President Duterte sought to forge a closer geopolitical confluence with Beijing and to “separate” the Philippines from the U.S. Despite President Duterte’s efforts to end the military exercises with the U.S., withdraw from the 2014 Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA), and terminate the 1998 Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA), such initiatives were never fully implemented. Indeed, by the time Duterte left office, the Philippines-U.S. alliance remained intact. 

President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr came into office when the U.S.-China strategic competition has intensified, and with China becoming more assertive in the SCS. Initially expected to share President Duterte’s foreign policy views, the Marcos Jr administration appears to have recalibrated Philippine strategic policy. Indeed, the 2023 NSP clearly prioritizes national sovereignty and territorial integrity as the top national security interest. The current security policy of the Philippines underscores the “[w]idening polarities and the sharpening strategic competition between the United States and China are realities permeating the global landscape.”

In the 2011 NSP, the Aquino III administration declared that Manila is “committed to…the preservation of world order.” In the 2023 NSP, because of the “[h]eightened rivalries among the major powers” as can be seen with the potential flashpoints in the SCS, Taiwan, and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Marcos Jr administration observes that there appears to be the “weakening of the rules-based international order that has served as a guarantor of peace and continued economic growth and development despite the creation of even more lethal weapons since World War II.” Indeed, the threats to the rules-based order can be seen in virtually all domains of warfare, including cyber, which has now been articulated as a national security interest. The 2023 NSP also emphasizes that the Manila needs to focus on threats that “seek to alter the status quo in ways that harm Philippine national interests below the threshold of armed conflict.” 

To note, the three most recent Philippine Presidents have all released NSPs shortly before or after they enter their second year in office. As pointed out earlier, all documents espouse a comprehensive view of national security. Indeed, all NSPs discuss a whole range of traditional and non-traditional security issues. The main difference in the NSPs is the prioritization of security issues across administrations.   

Quo Vadis?

The NSP is a major policy guidance for the defense and security establishment of the country. To its credit, the Duterte administration has used the 2017 NSP as a key basis for the formulation of the 2018 National Security Strategy (NSS), 2018 National Defense Strategy (NDS), and the 2019 National Military Strategy (NMS). The NSP is also a communications tool which the Philippine government has used and continues to use to convey to the international community its assessment of strategic environment and its security objectives. Indeed, it is also an instrument for diplomatic signaling. 

Moreover, the NSP also offers a window as to the world view of the current administration and its aspirations for the country. Mindful of the economic and political conditions of the country at the time, the 2011 NSP described the Philippines as “developing country” with minimal resources for it “to assert itself in the international community.” Although relatively silent on this matter, the 2017 NSP nevertheless stated that Manila is “committed to the promotion of global peace, development, and humanitarianism.” The 2023 NSP sets a rather different aspiration for the country compared to its two predecessors: “to become a Middle Power in a multi-polar world.” In other words, the three NSPs have continuously recognized the Philippines’ vulnerability as a relatively small power, with the most recent iteration of the document advancing a goal in which the country could play a greater role in the region. 

Efforts to draft and publish an NSP is an important initiative. However, implementing the NSP by ensuring that government resources are aligned with the priorities set forth in the strategic policy document is another matter. Indeed, as one Southeast Asian diplomat pointed out: “Policy is implementation and implementation is policy.” 

Outrage, anger and shock have greeted the killing of 85 persons including women and children in Tudun Biri, Igabi Local Government Area of Kaduna State by Army drone strikes targeting suspected terrorists but which accidentally hit innocent persons celebrating Maulud, the birth of Prophet Mohammed. Death came in the daytime sending them to their untimely deaths and leaving scores injured and nursing their wounds. The drone strike was the equivalent of Nakbah, which is to say a catastrophe. Palestinians describe Nakbah as a catastrophe, mainly the death and destruction that accompanied the 1948 Israeli War of Independence, which led to the expulsion of Palestinians from their homeland and the subsequent Israeli occupation of the West Bank, the Golan Heights, the Gaza Strip and the Sinai Peninsula. More than 10,000 Arab soldiers and civilians were killed in that war. 

December 3, 2023, was Nakbah for the good people of Tudun Biri. That was a day of death and destruction. It was as though Armageddon came on visitation as drones rained fire and brimstone on the unsuspecting villagers. Yet this is not a war against the people but a war on terror. Regretably it was a war that picked the wrong target. According to recent reports, the death toll has climbed to 120. Initial reports claimed the Nigerian Air Force had carried out air strikes to neutralize suspect bandits. Later, NAF spokesperson Edward Gabkwet dismissed the claim, saying the agency had not carried out any air operations within Kaduna in the previous 24 hours.

“Also, note that the NAF is not the only organisation operating combat armed drones in the Northwestern region of Nigeria,” Gabkwet said. 

Then, a statement from the Kaduna State government clarified that the Nigerian Army had claimed responsibility for the drone attack in a meeting with some stakeholders. 

“The General Officer Commanding One Division Nigerian Army, Major General V.U Okoro, explained that the Nigerian Army was on a routine mission against terrorists but inadvertently affected community members,” said Samuel Aruwan, the state’s commissioner for internal security.

Well, it is a good thing the Army authorities have owned up to this tragic incident, admitting that the drone strike was ordered by the Army who received intelligence that terrorists were on the prowl in that location. The Chief of Army Staff, Lt General Taoreed Lagbaja has admitted the tragic error by the army and expressed grief and sadness over the unfortunate incident. Lagbaja has done the right thing by visiting Tudun Biri and commiserating with people while at the same time assuring them that there would be no recurrence of such an incident.

On his part, the Chief of Defence Staff (CDS), Gen. Christopher Musa has apologised for the bombing of civilians at Tudun Biri. Musa said the army acted on intelligence but missed, and described the incident as highly regrettable.

Speaking on Arise Television, the defence chief noted that going forward, the military would fine-tune its operations and ensure that such incidents do not reoccur.

In a similar vein, the Defence Headquarters (DHQ) explained that the targets hit by the military drone in the Kaduna bombing were acquired by air surveillance and subsequently eliminated, presuming that terrorists, who were in the habit of using civilians as shields, were operating at the time.

The DHQ regretted the civilian casualties and claimed it always did its best to distinguish between civilians and terrorists. It said the suspicious movement of the allegedly celebrating crowd, had posed a major threat in an area notorious for terrorist activities, thus propelling the drone attack.

Still, the accidental bombing has attracted widespread condemnation across the broad spectrum of society. There have been more condemnations from Civil Society organisations, Amnesty International and other socio-cultural organizations as well as the Christian Association of Nigeria. Expectedly the pan-Northern political and cultural association, the Arewa Consultative Forum, and the Jama’tu Nasril Islam have stressed that those found culpable should be punished.

Undoubtedly, the Nigerian Armed Forces have made supreme sacrifices in the battle against terrorism which has blighted most of the north in the last decade. The supreme sacrifices made by the military are widely acknowledged by all and sundry. Indeed scores of officers and men have paid the supreme price while in the line of duty.

However, the Tudun Biri incident is one accident too many. Since the war on terror started there have been several incidents where innocent civilians have ended up as collateral damage in the military‘s pursuit of terrorists. As President Bola Tinubu said while sympathising with the dead and injured, this accidental bombardment is disturbing and extremely worrying. Already Tinubu has ordered a probe into the unfortunate incident vowing that whoever was responsible for that tragic error will be reprimanded and punished. 

A timeline of attacks on the civil populace compiled by Premium Times shows that the Kaduna attack was the second military airstrike on the civilian populace in the north this year.

The report indicates that like the attack in Nasarawa State in January, it was believed to be carried out by a drone. The police confirmed that at least 27 herders, mainly ethnic Fulani, were killed in the Nasarawa incident.

However, Fulani groups claim 40 people were killed and scores of other civilians were injured.

Another military airstrike claimed scores of civilian lives in December 2022 while soldiers were repelling attacks by non-state actors on some communities in the Dansadau District of Maru Local Government Area of Zamfara State. 

Residents said armed bandits had targeted Malele, Yan Sawayu, Yan Awaki Maigoge, and Ruwan Tofa communities before the attacks were foiled by the air raids which forced the rampaging gunmen to flee into the neighbouring Mutunji community for safety.

However, the terrorists were not the only victims of the air raid in Mutunji. Civilians, including women and children, were also killed. The community leader of Mutunji, Umar Mutunji, put the civilian casualties at over 70.

The Zamfara State government confirmed the strike claimed several lives in the Mutumji community but did not state the number of casualties from the operations.

In July 2022, at least six people were reported killed by an Air Force jet in the Kunkunna community of Safana Local Government of Katsina State. Like in Zamfara, the victims of the Katsina attack, were hit by bombs targeted at bandits.

Again in April 2022, six children were killed when a Nigerian Air Force jet bombed their residence in Kurebe, Shiroro Local Government of the state. Ironically, the parents of two of the six children who were killed in the airstrike were killed by bandits in 2020.

Their families were left with the trauma of losing their loved ones to both state and non-state actors.

Salis Sabo, the spokesperson of the Coalition of Shiroro Association (COSA), said the incident happened on the morning of Wednesday 13 April, as the children were returning from a motorised borehole in the community where they had gone to fetch water.

In January 2017, the Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) also known as Doctors Without Borders, said at least 52 people were killed after a Nigerian fighter jet ‘accidentally’ dropped a bomb on an internally displaced persons, IDP, camp in Rann, headquarters of Kala-Balge local government area, Borno State.

The international humanitarian organisation, whose officials were present at the Rann camp when the incident occurred, said another 120 people were injured from the incident.

Since 2017, military airstrikes on civilians have continued and the outcome of the investigations into them has never been published, reports Premium Times. 

Meanwhile, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has assured the nation that whoever is found culpable of the bombardments of Tudun Biri village that killed over 90 villagers will be punished accordingly.

Tinubu was represented by Vice President Kashim Shettima who made the statement on Thursday shortly after visiting the victims at Barau Dikko Teaching Hospital, Kaduna to condole them over the unfortunate incident.

He explained that the federal government remain committed to the fight against banditry across the region.

“The victims will be well taken care of under the Fulako Initiative which will commence by this month and this community will be the first to be rebuilt in the northwest zone.

“All measures will be taken to ensure that future occurrences are averted. Government will go to the root of the issue and anyone found culpable will be punished accordingly,” the Vice President said.

On the other hand, the pan-Northern socio-political organisation, ACF, and Sultan Sa’ad Abubakar-led Jama’atu Nasril Islam have condemned the bombardment of Tudun Biri and called for a thorough investigation into the circumstances surrounding the military bombing. The Sultan of Sokoto called for justice over the death of more than 100 villagers of Tudun Biri. 

Reacting to the incident, the ACF described it as “horrific”, noting that the northern organisation was highly disturbed that such an operation could be contemplated and executed in the densely populated area, “suggesting an inexcusable, scandalous and plausibly incompetent failure of intelligence.”

In a statement by the National Publicity Secretary, Prof. Tukur Muhammed-Baba, on Tuesday, the forum commiserated with the state government and families of victims, praying that “God grant the dead peace.”

The forum noted that efforts must be put in place to avert such “avoidable” loss of lives and property in the future, adding that communities in the Northern states had had enough problems with banditry and should not in any way be further inflicted with more pains.

Consequently, the ACF demanded an apology from the Nigerian Army as well as a full, thorough, honest, and open investigation of the incident, to establish what exactly happened.

According to the ACF, those found guilty of professional or operational incompetence must be severely disciplined, and transparently so.

All said, the horrific accidental bombardment of Tudun Biri remains a dark spot in the military’s campaign against terror. The Tudun Biri incident was a colossal failure of intelligence gathering. In short, it was an unmitigated disaster. This was a classic case of both man and machine gone awry. It is pertinent to state that it is far better for hundreds of terrorists to escape than to put innocent civilians in harm’s way. Still, the military should keep its eye on the ball and must not lose focus.

Going forward, it is quite reassuring that the military high command has declared that extraordinary care would be taken while targeting bandits and terrorists to avoid a recurrence of the Tudun Biri tragedy. The military should do everything possible to put an end to the accidental bombardment of civilians by ensuring that they train their guns on terrorists and not the civil populace. The military cannot afford to compound the pain of a harried and harassed populace. Yet the war on terror is not conventional warfare, hence the likelihood of wrong intel can not be ruled out, which explains why the military should apply utmost care and caution in the pursuit of terrorists. Besides the Army should concentrate on its area of core competence, leaving aerial bombardment for the Air Force. 

Nevertheless, it is apt that President Tinubu has promised there would be an investigation into the Tudun Biri incident. It is our earnest hope that the investigation will be thorough and those found culpable appropriately sanctioned. The findings should not be swept under the carpet. Once appropriate measures are taken to curb this cycle of accidental bombardment, then this will signal to the military that from now on there will be consequences for any act of omission or commission. 

In conclusion, the deterrent effect of official sanctions and the eventual serving of justice to the people could go a long way to start the healing process and possibly bring closure to the tragic incident arising from the gaping wound created by the accidental bombardment of Tudun Biri. May the souls of the departed rest in perfect peace.

Fierce Competition Continues Between Iran’s President And Speaker  ایران اینترنشنال