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Asian countries riven by war and disaster face some of steepest Trump tariffs

by Evelyn Reynolds 3 April 2025, 09:13

Developing nations in south-east Asia, including wartorn and earthquake-hit Myanmar, and several African nations are among the trading partners facing the highest tariffs set by Donald Trump.Upending decades of US trade policy and threatening to unleash a global trade war, the US president announced a raft of tariffs on Wednesday that he said were designed to stop the US economy from being “cheated”.“This is one of the most important days, in my opinion, in American history,” said Trump on Wednesday. “It’s our declaration of economic independence.”He hailed the moment as “liberation day”, but the tariffs are likely to be met with loud protests from some of the world’s weakest economies. One expert said Trump was likely to be targeting countries that received investment from China, regardless of the situation in that country. Chinese manufacturers have previously relocated to countries such as Vietnam and Cambodia not only due to lower operating costs, but also to avoid tariffs.The tariffs come as many countries in south-east Asia are already grappling with the fallout from the cuts to USAID, which provides humanitarian assistance to a region vulnerable to natural disasters and support for pro-democracy activists battling repressive regimes.Cambodia, a developing economy where 17.8% of the population live below the poverty line, according to the Asian Development Bank (ADB), is the worst-hit country in the region with a tariff rate of 49%. More than half of the country’s factories are reportedly Chinese-owned, with the countries exports dominated by garments and footwear.Next worse-hit is the landlocked south-east Asian nation of Laos, a country heavily bombed by the US during the cold war, with 48%. According to the ADB, Laos has a poverty rate of 18.3%.Not far behind is Vietnam with 46% and Myanmar, a nation reeling from a devastating earthquake on Friday, and years of civil war following a 2021 military coup, with 44%.Indonesia, the biggest economy in south-east Asia, faces a 32% tariff rate, while Thailand, the second-largest, has been hit with a rate of 36%.Major US rival and trading partner China has been hit with a 34% reciprocal tariff, on top of the 20% levy already imposed.Dr Siwage Dharma Negara, a senior fellow at the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore, said the tariffs on south-east Asian nations were intended to hurt China.“The administration thinks that by targeting these countries they can target Chinese investment in countries like Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Indonesia. By targeting their products maybe it will affect Chinese exports and the economy,” he said.“The real target is China but the real impact on those countries will be quite significant because this investment creates jobs and export revenue.”Tariffs on countries such as Indonesia, he said, would be counterproductive for the US, and the detail of how they would be applied remained unclear.“Some garments and footwear [companies] are American brands like Nike, or Adidas, US companies that have factories in Indonesia. Will they face the same tariffs as well?” he said.Stephen Olson, a former US trade negotiator, said countries in south-east Asia would be forced to reconsider their relationships with Washington. “A closer tilt towards China could be the result. It’s hard to have constructive, productive relations with a country that has just dropped a ton of bricks on your head,” said Olson, a visiting senior fellow at the ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute.“The world’s largest importer has now essentially hung a sign on its border saying ‘closed for business’,” he added. “We are now faced with two plausible scenarios: Either the impacted trade partners hold firm and retaliate in the hope that Trump will be forced to back down, or they look to cut deals with Trump in order to avoid the tariffs. It is unlikely that either scenario will end well.”Other nations among the hardest hit are several nations in Africa, including Lesotho – a country that Trump claimed “nobody has ever heard of” – with 50%, Madagascar with 47% and Botswana with 37%. Lesotho, a small mountainous kingdom surrounded by South Africa, has the second-highest level of HIV infection of the world, with almost one in four adults HIV-positive.In south Asia, Sri Lanka is facing a 44% tariff. In Europe, Serbia faces a 37% rate.In addition to the reciprocal tariffs on a few dozen countries, Trump will impose a 10% universal tariff on all imported goods. That tariff will go into effect on 5 April, while the reciprocal tariffs will begin on 9 April.The US president has justified the changes by saying they are retribution for countries that have long “cheated” America, and the levies will bring jobs back to the US.But economists have warned the sweeping changes will raise costs, threaten jobs, slow growth and isolate the US from a system of global trade it pioneered, and furthered over several decades.“This is how you sabotage the world’s economic engine while claiming to supercharge it,” said Nigel Green, the CEO of global financial advisory deVere Group.“The reality is stark: these tariffs will push prices higher on thousands of everyday goods – from phones to food – and that will fuel inflation at a time when it is already uncomfortably persistent.” More

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View image in fullscreenThe 24-year-old Afghan woman wants to become a surgeon – and she had set her sights on training in the US.She wants to care for other women and girls, so they don’t have to be afraid to visit the doctor – so at least in one crucial aspect of their lives they won’t have to endure the unwanted advances, dismissive comments and blatant disrespect that she’s experienced from many of the men who have always surrounded her, first in her native Afghanistan and now in legal limbo in Pakistan.“I hope a lot that I will be a doctor in the future. I don’t know it will happen, but I hope,” she said. “It means that a woman is powerful, that if she wants to do something, she can.”Yet for the moment, she has no way to attend medical school anywhere. She can barely step outside the apartment in Islamabad where she and her two sisters, her teenage brother, and their mother spend each day terrified that police will arrest and deport them back to face Taliban rule.Simply as a woman in the Taliban’s Afghanistan her lifestyle would be severely restricted, but as Christians the whole family would literally be in mortal danger.Her family has documents from the United Nations Refugee Agency proving that they’re certified asylum seekers, and they were on the verge of getting the green light to come to the US.But to the Trump administration right now, these plans don’t matter – despite volunteer groups in Texas preparing for months to welcome them.To the police in Pakistan, where they are in exile, those UN documents don’t matter either. What matters is that the family is Afghan and is no longer wanted there.“Everywhere is policed. Every day, police come to our house. It’s too difficult for us,” said the woman in an interview over Zoom. The Guardian is withholding the family’s identity while they remain at risk.“In these days, we awake with a fear,” she said of her family. They have already been lying low in Pakistan for three years after fleeing Afghanistan.View image in fullscreenA few months ago, it seemed as though the family was finally on the cusp of relief, soon to fly to east Texas.“They were nearing the finish line. We didn’t have any certainty, they hadn’t actually been approved and travel wasn’t being scheduled yet. But we were right there – everything, all the screening, was done,” said Justin Reese, one member of a group of Texas volunteers who were getting ready to welcome the family.Then, on the first day of Donald Trump’s second term as president, one of his many immigration-related executive orders indefinitely suspended the US Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP) – and with it, the family’s chance at reaching imminent safety.“By every metric, they have played by the rules and they are being treated like this,” said Reese. “It’s very damaging to them individually, and it’s damaging, I think, to the future security of the US, for us to be seen as this mercurial, as this incoherent.”A federal district judge temporarily blocked Trump’s effective ban on refugees coming to the US, offering those on the brink of resettlement a flicker of hope, but a circuit panel has now rolled back that decision, saying only people already approved must be allowed to come. And whether an administration ideologically opposed to refugee resettlement will resume the program at scale – or in any meaningful way – remains an open question, particularly after the state department has tried to terminate essential funding agreements with all of the US’s resettlement agencies for the entire fiscal year. That was even before the prospect of new Trump travel restrictions on Afghans entering the US, and before immigration officials suddenly paused green card processing for refugees already here.“I don’t know how you get to a place of suspending refugee resettlement as policy without a series of ideological turns that I don’t understand how to unwind,” Reese said.Before the ascent of Trumpism, USRAP enjoyed widespread bipartisan support for myriad reasons: its protection of American allies and related benefits to national security; its solidarity with “frontline states” such as Turkey and Colombia that are taking in so many of the world’s displaced people; its signal to other nations that the US cares about human rights.In fact, even before the refugee resettlement program was written into US law, organizations cropped up across the nation in response to the atrocities of the second world war – and the US’s role in rejecting refugees early on who then became victims of the Holocaust. These agencies welcomed displaced people from around the world, many fleeing communism from the Baltic states, Hungary or Vietnam.After Congress established a more universal, standardized refugee framework, general support for resettlement continued, even following the 11 September 2001 attacks that reshaped much of the US immigration system. Sometimes, scandals would arise within the program, but administrations would address them and move on.Then, in 2015, Trump ran for president and soon started trumpeting a narrative that refugees posed a security threat to American communities, despite them being some of the most thoroughly vetted newcomers in the country.“There [was] already a kind of deteriorating bipartisan support,” Yael Schacher, director for the Americas and Europe at Refugees International, the humanitarian organization, recalled of that moment.By fiscal year 2020, the first Trump administration had gutted the US’s refugee resettlement infrastructure and set the annual ceiling on refugee admissions at 18,000 – the lowest cap on record.When Joe Biden took office, his administration eventually rebuilt resettlement capacity in the US, with more than 100,000 people welcomed in his last full fiscal year in office.To do so, Biden made innovations, such as an initiative called the Welcome Corps, which invited Americans and green card holders to form private groups and financially sponsor refugees for resettlement in the US.“I think the idea of the Welcome Corps was that it was politically foolproof,” said Schacher, and that “because it relied on private funds and private individuals to step up … that these folks would push back against the Trump administration and make sure that folks still come. And they would step in if government funding was withdrawn. I think it remains to be seen if that’s actually going to work politically.”Reese and his family knew that they wanted to participate in the Welcome Corps. A software developer by trade, he had spent the better part of a decade learning about the politics and policy of offering refuge.Just before the coronavirus pandemic gripped the US, he traveled to Greece to serve in a refugee camp with 20,000 residents representing 40 different nationalities. The corner of camp where he volunteered hosted mostly Afghans, and he returned home to east Texas with new friendships and phone numbers from within that community.So when Kabul fell to the Taliban and the US withdrew troops from Afghanistan in 2021, his phone started buzzing with alerts from worried Afghans whose loved ones were still stranded in danger. He sprang into action, attempting to cut through red tape to try to get desperate families in Afghanistan on US evacuation flights. It was frantic and exhausting.View image in fullscreen“Everything felt like an inch away and then a mile away at the same time, because you just knew if you just were smart enough or well-resourced enough, then you could make this happen,” he remembered.Simultaneously, the Afghan family of five he would eventually try to resettle through the Welcome Corps was fleeing Afghanistan for Pakistan. The Taliban’s return to power was the final straw that dashed any hope they had for stability in their homeland, though it was hardly their first brush with persecution.As members of the Hazara ethnic community, their people had long been victims of massacres and genocides, including by the Taliban at the turn of the 21st century. Having converted from Shia Islam to Christianity, the family had been targeted by their neighbors, beaten and forced to move many times. And as a household in which the patriarch died about a decade ago, the women had been subject to constant unwanted attention and harassment from unscrupulous men.“We miss, a lot, our country,” one of the daughters said. “We miss our memories that we had. But unfortunately we can’t go back because I have lots of bad memories from Taliban … situations, and it makes me sad.” As she described the family’s experience, she wept.Her family met Reese in person when they were all in Islamabad in late 2023. Until then, they had been names on a list for Reese, names he was still trying to help find refuge. After getting to know the family face to face, he wanted to bring them to his own community, where he thought their life experiences would resonate with people.He found willing volunteers back in east Texas. With 10 members, Reese’s Welcome Corps group is far larger than required and includes a veteran who served in Afghanistan, a missionary’s kid who grew up in Afghanistan and Pakistan, a couple whose children work with Afghans abroad, and others uniquely equipped to help.Offers of housing and other support flowed in. And Reese’s commitment to sponsor the Afghan family made a huge difference in their lives, even as they remained in a precarious situation abroad. They suddenly felt as though they were waiting in Pakistan for a reason, and they stopped worrying as much about their future while imagining safety together in the US.“It made my family so happy,” one of the daughters said. In Texas, she hoped, “we can continue our studies and we can continue our lives without any worries”.Now Reese’s garage is full of donated household items from an online wishlist to outfit what would have been the family’s new home in Tyler, Texas. It’s unclear when or if the family will ever arrive – news Reese had to deliver personally.“I have a hard time talking about how it made us feel without being angry because I do feel that it’s not just unnecessary and harmful, but strategically incompetent,” he said. “I don’t believe that anybody involved in turning [USRAP] off had to deliver phone calls like the ones that we had to over the last few weeks.”Despite the setback and the increasingly serious threats of deportation the family faces in Islamabad, one of the daughters expressed gratitude for “brother Justin”, as she calls Reese, and appreciates at least hearing an update on their case.Trump’s actions have made her “sad, but I hope”, she said, adding: “I have hope in my heart that this program will open again.” More
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Village in India where Harris is ‘daughter of the land’ on edge as US election looms
by Evelyn Reynolds 31 October 2024, 09:00
Kamala Harris may never have visited Thulasendrapuram, a sleepy village in south India, but its residents claim to be some of her most devoted fans.It was here, in among the verdant rice paddies and groundnut farms of rural Tamil Nadu, that Harris’s grandfather PV Gopalan was born. Though more than a century has passed since then, residents have proudly claimed Harris as a “daughter of the land”.The outcome of the US election next week, where Harris is running as the Democrat party’s presidential nominee, has the community on edge. At the local tea shop, local gossip has been pushed to one side to make way for chatter over the challenges posed by Harris’s opponent Donald Trump and the trends from crucial swing states.Banners and billboards bearing Harris’s face and wishing her good luck in Tamil, the local language, have also been erected across the village and daily pujas [prayers] are held at the local temple to ensure her victory.“Whether she wins or not is irrelevant to us. The fact that she is contesting is historic and makes us proud,” said M Murukanandan, a local politician.Harris has often spoken about the formative influence of her mother Shyamala Gopalan Harris’s Indian roots. Gopalan Harris was born in the south Indian city of Chennai, and went to university in Delhi but moved to the US at 19, after getting accepted to the University of California, Berkeley for her masters. She would go on to become a celebrated breast cancer research scientist and her success – overcoming the racism she regularly faced as “a brilliant 5-foot-tall brown woman with an accent” – is often cited by Harris as a great source of inspiration.View image in fullscreenDefying expectations to return to India for an arranged marriage, in 1963 she married Donald Harris, an economics graduate from Jamaica, and remained living in the US till her death from cancer in 2009. However, as Harris wrote in her memoir, “we were raised with a strong awareness of and appreciation for Indian culture. All of my mother’s words of affection or frustration came out in her mother tongue.”It was Harris’s passing reference to a phrase she said was often used by her mother “You think you just fell out of a coconut tree?” that came to be one of the defining moments of her presidential campaign, setting the internet alight with memes.Harris has also spoken of the south Indian food she grew up eating at home, with a particular fondness for idli and dosa, and said as a child they would visit both the Black baptist church and the Hindu temple. She was also taken for several trips to her Indian family in Chennai. It was here that Harris recalled long walks with her grandfather Gopalan, along Chennai’s famous beach, where he would speak to his young granddaughter of the importance of fighting for civil rights and equality. Harris last returned to Chennai beach to scatter her mother’s ashes in 2009.There are no relatives of Harris’s family left living in Thulasendrapuram and all that’s remaining of the ancestral house where her grandfather was born is a vacant plot of land. However, he is still remembered fondly in the village as a well-read man with progressive values and a passion for activism that he passed down to his daughters, Shyamala and Sarala.Villagers were keen to emphasise how her family’s ancestral ties to the village remained present. “We all still feel a connection to Kamala,” said 80-year-old N Krishnamurthy, a retired bank officer.Harris’s aunt Sarala still lives and works in Chennai and has visited Thulasendrapuram several times, where villagers refer to her as chithi, an affectionate term meaning younger sister. The wall of the local Dharmasastha Temple are inscribed with Harris’s name after her aunt donated 5000 rupees (£45) towards its renovation a decade ago in her honour.Murukanandan, the local politician, said he and several others in the village had recently contacted Sarala to convey good luck messages from the residents of Thulasendrapuram and express their hopes that one day Harris would finally visit them. “She agreed to pass on our wishes,” he said. “We also asked her to encourage Harris to visit our village after winning the election. We hope everything will be possible.”View image in fullscreenHarris’s presidential campaign has also inspired a flurry of village development in her honour. A new water tank, to collect and harvest rainwater for the village, is under construction which will have a plaque bearing Harris’s name. A new village bus stop, named after Harris, is also being built.N Kamakodi, chairman of a local bank that is helping fund the renovation, said Harris’s rise to prominence thousands of miles away in the US was helping to uplift the local village. “We need to celebrate our daughter’s rise to power in any way we can,” he said. “If she wins the election, we will install more public utilities to honour her achievements and legacy. She is a source of pride and a lasting identity for us.”Yet in the US, the impact of Harris’s Indian heritage among the Indian American diaspora – now the second largest immigrant group in the states – remains more debatable, with her Black identity widely seen as much more significant. Historically Indian American voters have overwhelmingly been Democrat but a survey released this week by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace indicates that support for the Democrats is on the decline from 2020, even with Harris on the ticket.According to the survey, 61% of registered Indian American voters intend to vote for Harris, but since 2020 there has also been a slight increase in those who intend to vote for Trump. The gender difference was particularly notable: 67% of Indian American women intend to vote for Harris, compared with 53% of men.Yet as the villagers of Thulasendrapuram were keen to point out, around 250 families from the village had emigrated to the US for jobs in recent years, many for work in the software industry, and several were now registered to vote in the upcoming elections.“These families likely have at least 10 votes in favour of Harris,” said local farmer Jancy Rani. “So, the village is contributing modestly to her success.” More
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Biden ‘privately defiant’ over chaotic 2021 Afghanistan withdrawal, book says
by Evelyn Reynolds 16 February 2024, 14:42
Joe Biden is “privately defiant” that he made the right calls on the US withdrawal from Afghanistan in summer 2021, a new book reportedly says, even as the chaos and carnage that unfolded continues to be investigated in Congress.“No one offered to resign” over the withdrawal, writes Alexander Ward, a Politico reporter, “in large part because the president didn’t believe anyone had made a mistake. Ending the war was always going to be messy.”Ward’s book, The Internationalists: The Fight to Restore Foreign Policy After Trump, will be published next week. Axios reported extracts on Friday.Ward adds: “Biden told his top aides, [national security adviser Jake] Sullivan included, that he stood by them and they had done their best during a tough situation.”Ward quotes an unnamed White House official as saying: “There wasn’t even a real possibility of a shake-up.”The US invaded Afghanistan in October 2001, a month after the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington. The Taliban, which had sheltered the leader of al-Qaida, Osama bin Laden, was soon ousted but fighting never ceased.Figures for the total US death toll in the country since 2001 vary. The United States Institute of Peace, an independent body established by Congress, says that 2,324 US military personnel, 3,917 US contractors and 1,144 allied troops were killed during the conflict. More than 20,000 Americans were wounded.“For Afghans,” the institute goes on, “the statistics are nearly unimaginable: 70,000 Afghan military and police deaths, 46,319 Afghan civilians (although that is likely a significant underestimation) and some 53,000 opposition fighters killed. Almost 67,000 other people were killed in Pakistan in relation to the Afghan war.”Hundreds of thousands were displaced. Furthermore, according to the Watson Institute of International and Public Affairs at Brown University, “four times as many [US] service members have died by suicide than in combat in the post-9/11 wars [including Iraq and other campaigns], signaling a widespread mental health crisis”.Biden entered office determined to withdraw, and in late summer 2021 US forces pulled out, leaving the defense of the country to US-trained Afghan national forces.The Taliban swiftly overran that opposition, and soon scenes of chaos at Kabul airport dominated world news. Tens of thousands of Afghans who sought to leave, fearing Taliban reprisals after a 20-year US occupation, were unable to get out. More than 800 US citizens were left behind, notwithstanding Biden’s promise on 18 August that troops would stay until every US citizen who wanted to leave had done so.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionWard, Axios said, quotes a senior White House official as saying: “There’s no one here who thinks we can meet that promise.”On 26 August, 13 US service members were killed in a suicide attack. Three days later, a US drone strike killed 10 Afghan civilians, seven of them children. No Americans faced disciplinary action over the strike, which a US air force inspector general called “an honest mistake”.According to Axios, Ward also details extensive infighting over the withdrawal between the Departments of State and Defense.Biden, Ward says, tended to favour the state department, having been chair of the Senate foreign affairs committee, and to be wary of the Pentagon, having been vice-president to Barack Obama through eight years of inconclusive war. More
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Henry Kissinger’s role in Bengali massacre | Letter
by Evelyn Reynolds 4 December 2023, 17:28
Jonathan Steele’s obituary of Henry Kissinger (29 November) omits reference to his part in what the author Gary J Bass calls “one of the worst moments of moral blindness in US foreign policy”, when in 1971 he advised President Richard Nixon to side with Pakistan’s military dictator, Gen Yahya Khan, in his war with Bangladesh, then East Pakistan.In his Pulitzer prize-finalist book on this “forgotten genocide”, The Blood Telegram, Bass describes how Kissinger and Nixon repeatedly ignored the pleas from the US consul general in Dhaka, Archer Blood, who was desperately cabling his superiors with reports of the massacre of thousands of civilians in the city. Pakistan was using US-made tanks, weapons and ammunition to crush the Bengalis.Senator Edward Kennedy declared this “one of the greatest nightmares of modern times”, but Kissinger used every power he (and Nixon) possessed to cover up their role. To this day, most Americans are oblivious to the appalling stain on their country’s history, in which as many as 3 million lives were lost.Robert EvansFormer MEP and chair of European parliament South Asia delegation More
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Joe Biden calls for stable US-China relationship during south-east Asia tour
by Evelyn Reynolds 10 September 2023, 17:05
Joe Biden’s national security tour of south-east Asia reached Hanoi, Vietnam, on Sunday, where the president called for stability in the US-China relationship against an increasingly complex diplomatic picture in the region for his country.“I don’t want to contain China,” Biden said. “I just want to make sure that we have a relationship with China that is on the up and up, squared away, everybody knows what it’s all about.”Biden also said that China’s recent economic downturn may limit any inclination to invade Taiwan.“I don’t think it’s going to cause China to invade Taiwan – matter of fact the opposite, probably doesn’t have the same capacity as it had before,” he said on Sunday during a press conference in Hanoi.He added that the country’s economic woes had left President Xi Jinping with “his hands full right now”.The president’s remarks came after a meeting with Nguyen Phu Trong, the general secretary of Vietnam’s ruling Communist party, in the nation’s capital designed to secure global supply chains of semiconductors and critical minerals, which would offer a strategic alternative to China.“I think we have an enormous opportunity,” Biden said of the visit. “Vietnam and the United States are critical partners at what I would argue is a very critical time.”The meeting came during a multi-front diplomatic push to shore up international support for Ukrainian resistance to Russia’s invasion and enunciate a policy toward China that both encourages trade and reduces the potential for US-Chinese conflict.The complexities of the administration’s approach were illustrated on Saturday, a day before Biden landed in Hanoi, when the New York Times reported that Vietnam is in talks with Russia over a new arms supply deal that could trigger US sanctions.Reuters said it had seen – but could not authenticate – documents describing talks for a credit facility that Russia would extend to Vietnam to buy heavy weaponry, including anti-ship missiles, anti-submarine aircraft and helicopters, anti-aircraft missile systems and fighter jets.Earlier, at the G20 summit in New Delhi, India, western leaders failed to reiterate an explicit condemnation of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The summit declaration referred only to the “war in Ukraine” and lamented the “suffering” of the Ukrainian people – an equivocation that indicates a growing lack of international consensus.Less than a year ago, G20 leaders still issued a strong condemnation of the Russian invasion and called on Moscow to withdraw its forces.Biden’s secretary of state, Antony Blinken, attempted to smooth over the disparity, telling ABC’s This Week that world leaders meeting in New Delhi had “stood up very clearly, including in the statement, for Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity”.Blinken said that virtually every meeting participant “is intent on making sure there is a just and durable end to this Russian aggression”.It was clear in the room, he said, that “countries are feeling the consequences and want the Russian aggression to stop”.White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said: “The vast majority of G20 countries have supported multiple UN resolutions that call out Russia’s illegal aggression.”Jean-Pierre said the New Delhi communique “builds on that, to send an unprecedented, unified statement on the imperative that Russia refrain from using force for territorial acquisition, abide by its obligations in the UN charter, and cease attacks on civilians and infrastructure”.The comments came as a CBS News poll found only 1 in 4 Americans think Biden is improving the US’s global position. According to the survey, 24% thought Biden was making the US stronger, 50% said weaker and 26% that he was not having much effect.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionJust 29% said they were optimistic for the prospects of world peace and stability in the world, and 71% said they were increasingly pessimistic. Asked if the Biden administration was being “too easy” on China, 57% agreed.On CNN, Republican presidential hopeful Nikki Haley slammed the Biden administration’s policy toward China, describing the country as an “enemy”.“China has practically been preparing for war with us for years,” Haley said. “Yes, I view China as an enemy.”Haley said China had bought 400,000 acres (162,000 hectares) of US soil and the largest pork producer in the country, and continues to steal $600bn a year in intellectual property while spreading propaganda. She pointed to Chinese drones used by US law enforcement and to the crisis caused by Chinese-sourced fentanyl that “had killed more Americans than the Iraq, Afghanistan and Vietnam war combined”.“How much more has to happen for Biden to realize you don’t send cabinet members over to China to appease them?” she said, referring to the recent visit of the US commerce secretary, Gina Raimondo, to Beijing.The administration’s effort to present a coherent picture of US foreign policy toward its two most vexing issues – China and Russia – continued Sunday with vice-president Kamala Harris telling CBS News that a planned meeting between North Korea’s Kim Jong-un and Russia’s Vladimir Putin “would be a huge mistake”.“When you look at Russia’s unprovoked war on Ukraine, and the idea that they would supply ammunition to Russia – well, it’s predictable where that ends up,” Harris said. “I also believe very strongly that for both Russia and North Korea, this will further isolate them.”Harris also spoke to an emerging concern that China’s president, Xi Jinping, who skipped the G20, may decline to attend the Asia-Pacific economic cooperation leaders’ meeting in San Francisco, California, in November.Last week, China’s security agency hinted that a meeting between Xi Jinping and Joe Biden in San Francisco will depend on the US “showing sufficient sincerity”.China’s ministry of state security said that the country “will never let its guard down”.The comments came after Raimondo said the US did not want to decouple from China but that American companies had complained to her that China had become “uninvestible”.Asked how important it is for Xi Jinping to come to America, Harris remarked that “it is important to the … stability of things that we keep open lines of communication”. 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Revealed: how world’s biggest fossil fuel firms ‘profited in Myanmar after coup’
by Evelyn Reynolds 1 February 2023, 05:00
Revealed: how world’s biggest fossil fuel firms ‘profited in Myanmar after coup’Leaked tax records suggest subsidiaries of international gas field contractors continued to make millions after the coup In the two years since a murderous junta launched a coup in Myanmar, some of the world’s biggest oil and gas service companies continued to make millions of dollars from operations that have helped prop up the military regime, tax documents seen by the Guardian suggest.The Myanmar military seized power in February 2021 and according to the United Nations special rapporteur on Myanmar, it is “committing war crimes and crimes against humanity daily”. More than 2,940 people, including children, pro-democracy activists and other civilians have been killed, according to Assistance Association for Political Prisoners.Amid this violence, leaked Myanmar tax records and other reports appear to show that US, UK and Irish oil and gas field contractors – which provide essential drilling and other services to Myanamar’s gas field operators – have continued to make millions in profit in the country after the coup.The documents were obtained by transparency non-profit Distributed Denial of Secrets and analysed by Myanmar activist group Justice For Myanmar, investigative journalism organisation Finance Uncovered and the Guardian.The documents suggest that in some cases the subsidiaries of major US gas field service firms continued working in Myanmar – even after the US state department warned in January last year there were significant risks in doing business in the country – including with state-owned entities that financially benefit the junta, such as the national oil and gas company Myanma Oil and Gas Enterprise (MOGE).On Tuesday the US, UK, Australia and Canada announced more Myanmar sanctions, including on the managing director and deputy managing director of MOGE. But they stopped short of sanctioning MOGE itself.Last February the European Union became the first jurisdiction to announce sanctions against MOGE itself in light of the “intensifying human rights violations in Myanmar” and the “substantive resources” MOGE provides the junta.The EU sanctions prohibit European companies from working on Myanmar’s oil and gas field projects. But the US and UK have not yet introduced similar measures and such work – which may involve direct or indirect dealings with MOGE – is not prohibited.Among the findings, the leaked tax documents show that:
US oil services giant Halliburton’s Singapore-based subsidiary Myanmar Energy Services reported pre-tax profits of $6.3m in Myanmar in the year to September 2021, which includes eight months while the junta was in power.
Houston-headquartered oil services company Baker Hughes branch in Yangon reported pre-tax profits of $2.64m in the country in the six months to March 2022.
US firm Diamond Offshore Drilling reported $37m in fees to the Myanmar tax authority during the year to September 2021 and another $24.2m from then until March 2022.
Schlumberger Logelco (Yangon Branch), the Panama-based subsidiary of the US-listed world’s largest offshore drilling company, earned revenues of $51.7m in the year to September 2021 in Myanmar and as late as September 2022 was owed $200,000 in service fees from the junta’s energy ministry.
The services provided to Myanmar’s Asia-owned gas field operators by these companies gave vital support to MOGE, which is a major shareholder in all of the country’s most important oil and gas projects.MOGE collects taxes and royalties for the state on gas field projects, ensuring that the junta gets lucrative tax and royalty payments, as well as a vast share of profits. According to the junta’s own figures the oil and gas industry is its biggest source of foreign-currency revenue, bringing in $1.72bn in the six months to 31 March 2022 alone.Yadanar Maung, Justice For Myanmar spokesperson, called the situation “deplorable”.“Oilfield service companies in Myanmar have blood on their hands for operating in an industry that bankrolls the illegal Myanmar military junta, as it wages a campaign of terror against the people,” Maung said.“These companies have breached their international human rights responsibilities and may be complicit in the junta’s war crimes and crimes against humanity by servicing oil and gas projects that fund the junta’s atrocities.”Maung welcomed the latest sanctions but said “far more needs to be done.“So far, only the EU has sanctioned MOGE, which bankrolls the junta. We call on the US, UK, Canada and Australia to follow the EU and also sanction MOGE,” Maung said.Myanmar is one of the poorest countries in Asia but is also rich in oil and gas deposits. The country’s major projects export gas to China and Thailand, with around 20% of the gas retained for domestic use.The major gas projects in which MOGE has significant shareholdings are run by the South Korean corporation Posco International, Thailand’s PTTEP and Gulf Petroleum Myanmar, also from Thailand. Gulf Myanmar Petroleum, PTTEP and Posco were contacted for comment.Map of major oil and gas fields in MyanmarActivists argue that any role played by western gas field contractors in Myanmar’s gas and oil industry after the coup makes them complicit in the junta’s war of aggression. Some legal experts argue the contractors could face future legal issues from their activities in the country.Baker Hughes told the Guardian its contracts were signed before the coup and completed in early 2022. The company said it had not signed new contracts since the coup and had “a very limited number of personnel in the country to support critical safety and operations needs”.Halliburton, Schlumberger and Diamond Offshore Drilling did not respond to repeated requests for comment.Last January, France’s Total and US’s Chevron – which have long been criticised for their roles as gas project operators in the country – announced plans to exit Myanmar.Chevron told the Guardian that it had now sold its 41.1% interest in the Yadana Project to Et Martem Holdings, a wholly owned subsidiary of MTI Energy, a Canadian company.The situation is complicated by the US’s ambiguous stance on MOGE. Myanmar’s state-owned gems, pearl and timber industries have been sanctioned by the US but Washington has not yet tackled MOGE, the linchpin in the junta’s largest single source of foreign revenue.In 2021 the New York Times reported that the oil giant Chevron had led an intense lobbying effort against sanctions that would disrupt oil operations in the country. That report came after the UN’s special rapporteur on Myanmar, Tom Andrews, had told Congress that MOGE was “now effectively controlled by a murderous criminal enterprise” and called on it and other state entities to be sanctioned in order to “meaningfully degrade the junta’s sources of revenue”.Last January, the state department did specifically warn of the dangers of doing business in the country and cited MOGE as particularly problematic. MOGE and other state-owned enterprises “not only generate revenue for a military regime that is responsible for lethal attacks against the people of Burma, but many of them also are subject to allegations of corruption, child and forced labor, surveillance, and other human and labor rights abuses”, it warned.But while the US has put sanctions on the State Administration Council – the junta’s ruling body which controls MOGE through the ministry of energy – it has stopped short of imposing tougher sanctions on MOGE itself. And the US commerce department’s country commercial guide for Myanmar, last updated in July 2022, describes the “dynamic” oil and gas sector as a “best prospect industry” with “significant opportunities for US investors”.The Biden administration is understood to be struggling with a desire to implement stronger sanctions while maintaining good relations with Thailand, a strategic partner, and also a major buyer of Myanmar’s natural gas.Justice for Myanmr’s Maung said the Biden administration’s contradictory approach to Myanmar “has allowed US oil and gas corporations to continue business as usual in Myanmar, enabling the junta’s international crimes”.“While the Department of State has warned that dealing with MOGE risks money laundering, furthering corruption and contributing to serious human rights violations, the US Department of Commerce is advising US companies to seek profits in the oil and gas sectors in Myanmar and to compete for MOGE tenders,” Maung said. “We call on the US to stand with the people of Myanmar by imposing sanctions on MOGE and helping to cut the flow of funds to the junta.”Pressure is mounting on the Biden administration to act. Last year, the Democratic senators Jeff Merkley, Cory Booker, Dianne Feinstein, Edward Markey and Gary Peters wrote to the US treasury urging the Biden administration to impose sanctions to help stem the junta’s brutality, especially by cutting off revenues from MOGE. “MOGE sanctions are one of the most significant actions the United States could take to degrade the junta’s ability to operate,” they wrote.In December, the US House passed the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which included a section outlining action on Myanmar that raised the possibility of Joe Biden imposing sanctions on MOGE but stopped short of issuing a stronger ruling.“At the end of last year, Congress made great progress in authorizing sanctions on Burma’s energy sector, which represents nearly half of the junta’s foreign currency income. The administration must use these authorities and work with regional partners to cut off the junta’s ability to fuel its brutal campaign against civilians,” Merkley told the Guardian.The European Union toughened its stance on MOGE in February 2022, expanding its sanctions against the junta, becoming the first jurisdiction to sanction MOGE itself and prohibiting the provision of technical assistance that directly or indirectly benefits the state-owned entity, with a narrow exemption for decommissioning a project.One European company, Dublin-based Gavin & Doherty Geosolutions, a specialist geotechnical engineering consultancy, secured a contract to work on Thai-owned PTTEP International’s Zawtika development project off the coast of Myanmar, according to August 2021 reports. The contract was announced before EU sanctions were imposed on MOGE but seven months after the coup. Gavin & Doherty declined repeated inquiries about the nature of the contract or whether it was still working in the country.MOGE owns a 20% of Zawtika and profits from the project flow directly to the junta.The tax documents suggest Intermoor, a subsidiary of UK-based Acteon, a subsea services company, also continued to profit from work in Myanmar until at least February 2022. The UK has issued sanctions against some individuals and entities in Myanmar. But like the US, it has so far stopped short of sanctioning MOGE and no UK sanctions prohibit working directly or indirectly with the junta-controlled entity.Filings to Myanmar’s tax authority by Diamond Offshore Drilling indicate it made repeated payments to Intermoor between October 2021 and February 2022 for work done on behalf of Posco International. Posco runs the Shwe gas project, which in 2020 Intermoor had publicly announced it was working on. MOGE has a 15% stake in Shwe, in addition to the revenue it gets from taxes and royalties.A Justice For Myanmar source, verified by the Guardian, has confirmed the presence of InterMoor personnel in Myanmar in 2021 and 2022.Neither Intermoor nor its parent company, Acteon Group responded to repeated requests to comment on this story.Despite US and UK reluctance to target MOGE, environmental lawyers claimed companies working on gas projects in Myanmar still faced legal risks from their activities.Ben Hardman, Myanmar policy and legal adviser at Earthrights, a Washington-based human rights and environmental non-profit, said: “Oil field service companies are not just working with international oil majors, they are supporting joint ventures with MOGE, a government agency that has effectively been taken hostage by the junta. When the companies submit an invoice, the junta ultimately pays a share of them and the support of these companies ensures that the junta can keep seizing revenues that flow through MOGE.“If these companies have an EU presence, they are at severe risk of breaching EU sanctions on MOGE. Companies in the US and the UK also face risks because both governments have sanctioned the junta’s State Administration Council, which controls MOGE’s management and revenues.”TopicsMyanmarMyanmar coupOil and gas companiesSouth and central AsiaUS politicsIrelandThailandnewsReuse this content More
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Leon Panetta on the Afghanistan withdrawal, a year on: Politics Weekly America podcast
by Evelyn Reynolds 2 September 2022, 04:00
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A year ago, American troops withdrew from Afghanistan after a 20-year war. The Taliban quickly returned to power and the country has since experienced famine, economic collapse and a widespread erosion of women’s rights.
This week, Jonathan Freedland speaks to the former US defense secretary Leon Panetta, who was at the heart of the Obama administration’s Afghanistan policy, about what he thinks of the Afghan withdrawal and what the future holds for Joe Biden and the Democrats
How to listen to podcasts: everything you need to know
Archives: MSNBC, CNN, the Guardian Send your questions and feedback to podcasts@theguardian.com Help support the Guardian by going to theguardian.com/supportpodcasts More
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How Ayman al-Zawahiri’s ‘pattern of life’ allowed the US to kill al-Qaida leader
by Evelyn Reynolds 2 August 2022, 15:01
How Ayman al-Zawahiri’s ‘pattern of life’ allowed the US to kill al-Qaida leader After a decades-long hunt the simple habit of sitting out on the balcony gave the CIA an opportunity to launch ‘tailored strike’ In the end it was one of the oldest mistakes in the fugitive’s handbook that apparently did for Ayman al-Zawahiri, the top al-Qaida leader killed, according to US intelligence, by a drone strike on Sunday morning: he developed a habit.The co-planner of the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington in 2001 had acquired a taste for sitting out on the balcony of his safe house in Sherpur, a well-to-do diplomatic enclave of Kabul. He grew especially fond of stepping out on to the balcony after morning prayers, so that he could watch the sun rise over the Afghan capital.According to a US official who briefed reporters on Monday, it was such regular behavior that allowed intelligence agents, presumably CIA, to piece together what they called “a pattern of life” of the target. That in turn allowed them to launch what the White House called a “tailored airstrike” involving two Hellfire missiles fired from a Reaper drone that are claimed to have struck the balcony, with Zawahiri on it, at 6.18am on Sunday.It was the culmination of a decades-long hunt for the Egyptian surgeon who by the time he was killed had a $25m bounty on his head. Zawahiri, 71, was held accountable not only for his part as Bin Laden’s second in command for 9/11, with its death toll of almost 3,000 people, but also for several other of al-Qaida’s most deadly attacks, including the suicide bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen in October 2000, which killed 17 US sailors.The mission to go after the al-Qaida leader was triggered, US officials said, in early April when intelligence sources picked up signals that Zawahiri and his family had moved off their mountainside hideaways and relocated to Kabul. Following the Taliban’s return to power in Afghanistan last August, and with the support of the Haqqani Taliban network, Zawahiri and his wife, together with their daughter and grandchildren, had moved into the Sherpur house.MapIn their telling of events, US officials were at pains to stress that under Joe Biden’s instructions the mission was carried out carefully and with precision to avoid civilian casualties and US officials said no one else was killed or wounded in the attack.Social media images of the strike suggested the use of a modified Hellfire called the R9X with six blades to damage targets, sources familiar with the weapon told Reuters. They caused surprisingly little damage beyond the target, suggesting they may be a version of the missile shrouded in secrecy and used by the US to avoid non-combatant casualties.The US president was first apprised of Zawahiri’s whereabouts in April, and for the next two months a tightly knit group of officials delved into the intelligence and devised a plan. A scale model of the Sherpur house was built, showing the balcony where the al-Qaida leader liked to sit. As discussions about a possible strike grew more intense, the model was brought into the situation room of the White House on 1 July so that Biden could see it for himself.The president “examined closely the model of al-Zawahiri’s house that the intelligence community had built and brought into the White House situation room for briefings on this issue”, a senior administration official told reporters.The White House made further claims to bolster its argument that the attack was lawful, flawless and with a loss of life limited to Zawahiri alone. Officials said that engineers were brought in to analyse the safe house and assess what would happen to it structurally in the wake of a drone strike.Lawyers were similarly consulted on whether the attack was legal. They advised that it was, given the target’s prominent role as leader of a terrorist group.Biden, by now quarantined with Covid, received a final briefing on 25 July and gave the go-ahead. It was a decision in stark contrast to the advice he gave Barack Obama in May 2011 not to proceed with the special forces mission that killed Bin Laden in a raid on his safe house in Abbottabad, Pakistan.On Monday evening, Biden stood on his own balcony – this one in the White House with the Washington Monument and Jefferson Memorial as his backdrop – to address the nation.“I authorized the precision strike that would remove him from the battlefield once and for all,” Biden said. “This measure was carefully planned, rigorously, to minimize the risk of harm to other civilians.”Biden’s insistence that no one other than the al-Qaida leader was killed in the attack was amplified repeatedly by US officials. The narrative given by the White House was that Zawahiri was taken out cleanly through the application of modern technological warfare.Skepticism remains, despite the protestations. Over the years drone strikes have frequently proved to be anything but precise.In August last year one such US drone strike in Kabul was initially hailed by the Pentagon as a successful mission to take out a would-be terrorist bomber planning an attack on the city’s airport. It was only after the New York Times had published an exhaustive investigation showing that the strike had in fact killed 10 civilians, including an aid worker and seven children, that the US military admitted the mission had gone tragically wrong.Perhaps mindful of the doubts that are certain to swirl around the Zawahiri killing for days to come, the White House said that the Sherpur safe house where the drone strike happened had been kept under observation for 36 hours after the attack and before Biden spoke to the nation. Officials said that Zawahiri’s relatives were seen leaving the house under Haqqani Taliban escort, establishing that they had survived the strike.TopicsAyman al-ZawahiriAfghanistanTalibanSouth and central AsiaJoe BidenBiden administrationUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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