Chinese President opens pipeline for Turkmen Natural Gas

REUTERS - China extended its reach into Central Asia's natural resources on Monday as its leader Hu Jintao opened a pipeline linking a gas field in Turkmenistan with China's restive Xinjiang region.

The leaders of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan joined Hu in a remote location near the Turkmen-Uzbek border to commission the 1,833-kilometre (1,139-mile) pipeline that snakes across Central Asia through their countries.

Starting near a Chinese-developed gas field in eastern Turkmenistan, the pipeline is expected to reach full annual capacity of 40 billion cubic metres by 2012-13 and help Beijing propel its explosive economic growth.

In the windswept settlement of Saman-Tepe, festooned with Chinese and Central Asian flags, officials cheered and hugged after the four presidents symbolically turned the pipeline tab.

A nearby gas plant, its metal chimneys sparkling in the sun, was adorned with huge portraits of Hu and Central Asian leaders.

China's aggressive foray into Central Asia represents a snub to Russia which still sees the Muslim region as part of its sphere of influence. It is also a worry for Europe, which sees the energy-rich region as an alternative new supplier of gas.

Lying on some of the world's biggest oil, gas and metals reserves, Central Asia is at the centre of a geopolitical tug-of-war between Russia, China and the West, all seeking to grab a share of its untapped riches.

The pipeline is a success for China since it is Central Asia's biggest export route that reaches markets outside Russia and bypasses it territory.

The West has also watched with unease as years of quiet diplomatic manoeuvring have helped China step up its presence in the region by handing out billions of dollars in loans, snapping up energy assets and building an oil pipeline from Kazakhstan.

On a visit to neighbouring Kazakhstan, Robert Blake, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State, was asked about Washington's stance on the pipeline.

"The United States has always supported multiple pipelines to export oil and gas from Central Asia," he said. "We recognise that China has big interest in the region and growing energy demand."

Welcome China

Hu's visit acted as a rare unifying force for Central Asian leaders who, ridden by internal rivalries and rows over cross-border use of natural resources, rarely assemble to discuss regional cooperation.

They have in the past tentatively attended Russia-dominated regional summits, but their willingness to travel to a remote location underscores the extent to which they want to forge closer ties with their giant eastern neighbour.

"This project has not only commercial or economic value. It is also political," President Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov told Hu on Sunday. "China, through its wise and farsighted policy has become one of the key guarantors of global security."

Russia ruled Central Asia, a thinly populated region of steppes and mountains, for centuries, first during tsarist-era conquests and later under 70 years of Soviet dominance.

After the Soviet fall, Central Asia's mineral riches and strategic proximity to Afghanistan and Iran prompted the West and China to seek closer ties there.

Russia's Gazprom stopped buying Turkmen gas in April after a pipeline explosion sparked a broader diplomatic row over gas. The move has cost Turkmenistan about $1 billion a month and prompted it to form closer links with other nations.

As diplomacy heats up, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev is also due to travel to Turkmenistan this month for energy talks.

http://www.france24.com/en/20091214-chinas-hu-opens-pipeline-with-turkmenistan

To help climate migrants, Bangladesh takes back land from the sea

DHAKA, Sept 9 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Bangladesh is going ahead with an ambitious plan to reclaim land from the sea to help relocate people who have lost their homes to sea level rise, erosion and extreme weather.

Climate change-linked natural disasters are common in Bangladesh, with cyclones and storm surges displacing huge numbers of people.

"River erosion alone claims about 20,000 acres of land in Bangladesh every year," said Water Resources Minister Anisul Islam Mahmud.

That leaves up to 200,000 people homeless each year, according to a 2013 study by the Refugee and Migratory Movements Research Unit at the University of Dhaka and the Sussex Centre for Migration Research at the University of Sussex in Britain.

Now Bangladesh is taking back some of that land. The government plans to use the natural movement of sediment through the country's rivers to build new land on which to house displaced communities.

In June, the government signed a deal with the government of the Netherlands - another low-lying nation - to cooperate on land reclamation efforts. Under the partnership, the Netherlands will conduct a feasibility study, and develop and implement land reclamation programmes in Bangladesh.

Bangladesh's three major rivers - the Padma, the Brahmaputra and the Meghna - carry large amounts of silt with their water.

According to a study by the Dhaka-based Center for Environmental and Geographic Information Services (CEGIS), about 1 billion tonnes of silt flow through the country's river channels every year, most of it eventually settling in the southern coastal area of the Bay of Bengal.

According to Malik Khan, the CEGIS deputy executive director, if sediment can be directed into low-lying areas of the coastal Noakhali district through a system of cross dams - walls constructed between islands - and polders - land surrounded by embankments - new land will emerge from the sea.

"There is a potential for land reclamation through the displacement of the sediment the rivers carry," he said.

Cross dams catch sediment as it travels downstream, holding it back before it reaches the Bay of Bengal. As it collects behind the dams, sediment can build up into solid landmasses large enough to live on, experts say.

Zahirul Haque Khan, director of the Coast, Port and Estuary Division at the Dhaka-based Institute of Water Modelling (IWM), notes that many small islands, called chars, have already emerged naturally in the coastal areas near Nijhum Dwip and Monpura islands.

With the tide bringing large sediment deposits to the areas around Urir Char in Noakhali and Sandwip in the Chittagong district, hundreds of square kilometres of land could be reclaimed from those areas through the construction of cross dams, he said.

LEARNING FROM THE PAST

Bangladesh has worked for over two decades to reclaim land from the sea. One of the first systematic efforts to study the potential for land reclamation was the Netherlands-supported Land Reclamation Project launched in 1977.

Since then, the Bangladesh Water Development Board has carried out a number of projects using cross dams to accelerate the build-up of land, several with support from the Netherlands. As a result, the country has so far reclaimed over 1,000 square kilometres of land from the sea south of Noakhali.

Inspired by the construction of the Bestin cross dam, a project which was completed in 2010 and connects Char Montaz with Char Khalifa in Noakhali District, the World Bank is now carrying out studies on the possibility of connecting Urir Char and Noakhali using a cross dam.

In addition the government has identified 18 other potential cross dams to accelerate the building of land at the coast. Together they could help reclaim about 600 square kilometres of new land, said M. Shamsuddoha, the director engineer with the Bangladesh Water Development Board.

The government has not yet said what the project would cost. Government officials have declined to give an estimate, instead saying they hope to add to the country's own funds with donor support and by encouraging private companies to promote tourism and set up industries on the reclaimed land.

Over the next 20 years Bangladesh hopes to reclaim a total of 10,000 square kilometres of land, according to Water Resources Minister Anisul Islam Mahmud.

"As siltation is a natural process in the Meghna estuary, (a cross dam) would be a cost-effective way to reclaim land from the sea to help deal with migration and rehabilitate climate victims," he said.

And if sea level continues to rise at its current rate, the numbers of families needing new homes in Bangladesh will escalate, experts say.

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, global sea levels could rise by as much as 98 centimeters (more than 3 feet) by 2100. And a 2012 report by Unnayan Onneshan, a Bangladesh think-tank, states that sea level rise in Bangladesh's coastal region could exceed that estimate and hit one meter by 2100.

That would affect 25,000 square kilometre of land (17.5 percent of the country's total land) and displace an estimated 31.5 million people, the report said.

"Bangladesh is experiencing adverse impacts of climate change," said Khan of the CEGIS. "Land reclamation would being a good solution in dealing with future climate migrant crises."

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/09/09/bangladesh-clmate-land-idUSL5N11E3R520150909

US asks Uzbekistan to join anti-ISIL coalition

The United States on Thursday asked Uzbekistan to join the multinational coalition it leads against the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), saying Central Asia's most populous state was free to choose how to the fight against the armed group.

"We have asked Uzbekistan ... to join the coalition," Daniel Rosenblum, U.S. deputy assistant secretary of state for Central Asia, said during a visit to the Uzbek capital.

Uzbekistan, a majority Muslim nation with a population of 31 million, has been a strategic NATO partner in post-Soviet Central Asia, assisting a U.S.-led war on the Taliban in neighboring Afghanistan.

The U.S.-led coalition hitting ISIL force has a military component, apart from efforts to stop a flow of financing to ISIL, Rosenblum said.

The coalition also gathers information about the movement of people across borders and has five or six other "lines of efforts," Rosenblum said.

"Uzbekistan or any other country can choose to contribute to one or more of those elements," he said.

Uzbek officials could not be reached for comment.

Uzbekistan, a gold and cotton producer whose 78-year-old strongman president, Islam Karimov, has been in power since Soviet days, has been criticized by Western governments and human rights bodies for clampdowns on dissent and basic freedoms.

The authorities have cited a need to prevent any advent of armed groups in the volatile region for their tough methods.

While noting the need for "closer ties and better sharing information between our security establishments," Rosenblum lauded Uzbekistan for progress in eliminating child labor in cotton fields, for which Uzbekistan had also been strongly criticized.

He said, however, that more needs to be done in eliminating involuntary adult labor in cotton production.

Before joining the State Department, Rosenblum was an American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) spokesman on labor rights in the former Soviet Union’s transition to a market economy.

http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2015/8/28/us-asks-uzbekistan-to-join-anti-isil-coalition.html

Upsetting the apple cart: A crackdown on gangs in the country’s most populous city threatens to upend national politics

A YEAR or two ago only a handful of customers would brave a trip to Muhammad Arshad’s shop in Karachi’s jewellery quarter. They were highly likely to be robbed of cash on the way in or of purchases on the way out. Now, Mr Arshad says, business is up by 70% thanks to an army-directed crackdown in Pakistan’s commercial hub by a paramilitary force, the Rangers, who are not shy of brutal tactics. Their operations have led to a sharp fall in serious crime. But not only kidnappers and murderers are feeling the heat in a city rife with criminality. So are two of the country’s biggest political parties.

The Rangers launched their operations in September 2013, but have recently shifted focus. Scores of people from the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), which holds nearly all the parliamentary seats in Karachi, have been arrested, have disappeared, or have been bumped off in extra-judicial killings. The party headquarters has twice been raided this year. Attention is now turning to the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), in national office until 2013. On August 26th Asim Hussain, a former minister who owns one of Karachi’s best hospitals and is a close associate of a former president, Asif Ali Zardari, was arrested under new terror laws.

The Rangers’ actions are popular; Karachi has long needed cleaning up. The MQM has run a huge and violent criminal racket in the city alongside its political wing. Mr Arshad dares not name the heavies who would demand payments of up to $10,000 from shopkeepers every few months. But, operating street by street, the MQM had become a master of the extortion game. The PPP too has links to the underworld through its fief in Lyari, a troubled slum in the heart of the city where both politics and business are dominated by a gang allied to the party. Public anger is strong over allegations that PPP leaders have used control of the Sindh provincial government to enrich themselves.

Both parties are grappling with long-term decline. The MQM’s once-unassailable grip on urban Sindh is melting as its base of “Mohajirs”—descendants of Muslims who moved from India in 1947—is being challenged by a fast-rising Pushtun population with their own political leaders. Altaf Hussain, who rules the MQM from self-imposed exile in London, is a subject of inquiry in investigations into alleged money-laundering and murder being carried out by British police. Some within the party regard him as a liability. As for the PPP, it has a well-deserved reputation for incompetence and no charismatic leader to compare to Benazir Bhutto, Mr Zardari’s wife, who was assassinated in 2007. Since its electoral defeat in 2013 the party has shrunk from a national movement to being the voice of rural Sindh.

Crackdowns on political parties are not new: in the 1990s the MQM weathered an operation that at times descended into urban warfare. But the politicians are cornered as never before. The Rangers, unlike the police, are not under their control, but the army’s. The corruption probes cannot be dismissed as partisan politicking.

Both Mr Zardari and Mr Hussain have lashed out at the army, threatening to expose its corruption. But its head, General Raheel Sharif, is wildly popular—not just for actions in Karachi but because he has declared war on the abhorrent Pakistani Taliban. The two men are now turning their ire on the prime minister, Nawaz Sharif (no relation of the general).

On August 31st Mr Zardari threatened to renounce his party’s informal mutual non-aggression pact with Mr Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League-N (PML-N), in place since the two parties joined hands a decade ago against the former military rule of General Pervez Musharraf. A return to the partisanship of the 1990s could imperil Mr Sharif’s position. As it is, he is being harassed by the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, a rising opposition party led by Imran Khan. His attempt last year to topple the government through street protests in Islamabad, the capital, was thwarted by other opposition parties that feared the country was slipping back towards military rule. The former cricketer now senses a fresh opportunity.

As for the MQM, last month it announced the resignation of all its MPs. It is now negotiating with the government to withdraw the resignations in return for a let-up in the Rangers’ campaign—even though the general, not the prime minister, is the Sharif with sway over them. Nasreen Jalil, a veteran MQM senator, says that although her party has nothing to do with extorting men like Mr Arshad, it is not above threatening to overturn the “apple cart” of Pakistani politics in the hope of getting what it wants.

http://www.economist.com/news/asia/21663292-crackdown-gangs-countrys-most-populous-city-threatens-upend-national

Nepal constitution protests leave five dead

Those killed belong to the Madhesi ethnic community, who are culturally close to Indians across the border.

Police told the BBC they were forced to open fire after they were attacked with guns and knives.

The new constitution will see Nepal divided into federal states, but the Madhesi and other groups fear they are being marginalised.

Of the five killed, officials said four were shot dead after protesters vandalised police posts and government offices in Birgunj, about 90km (55 miles) south-west of the capital, Kathmandu.

Another man was killed in the nearby town of Kalaiya.

The latest deaths bring the total killed in political violence in recent weeks to at least 20 people.

Nepal has been governed by an interim constitution since the monarch was abolished in 2008.

After years of wrangling, political parties only agreed on the draft this year after being given fresh impetus from April's devastating earthquake.

Its supporters hope the new constitution will boost economic development and cement peace with Maoist rebels who fought a decade-long insurgency.

But there is disagreement over the proposed borders, with minority groups saying they will not be granted sufficient rights.

Hindu groups have also been demonstrating, demanding that Nepal be declared a Hindu state - it became a secular republic after the monarchy was scrapped

Peace remains a distant dream in Afghanistan

In Kabul, a man of 75 stands looking at the heap of rubble where his house stood until it was destroyed by a Taliban bomb last month. Now he has nowhere to live, and exists on the charity of friends.

Mohammed Nasim's two nephews were killed and 17 other family members were injured when a tonne of explosives, presumably intended for the army intelligence barracks opposite, went off in the middle of the night. Half a dozen houses were wiped out, and more than 200 people killed or injured.

"There's no future for me or my family in this country," Mohammed Nasim says. "I don't feel safe here any more. They have to give us asylum somewhere else. This will happen somewhere else tomorrow, and we can't get away from it."

Realistically, he's too old to leave. But thousands upon thousands of younger people feel there's no future for them here in Afghanistan. They try to get visas for Iran, and then make their way from there into Turkey, and on to Greece, Bulgaria or Romania.

It's arduous and the dangers can be great, but they believe it's better than hanging on in a country that is ceaselessly at war.

No winners

The only effective way to stop them would be to make Afghanistan peaceful and prosperous again - something that the Russians, the Americans, the British and a dozen other countries have not succeeded in doing since the 1970s.

So how close is Afghanistan to peace? The sad answer is that it doesn't seem any closer than it has for years past.

The Taliban certainly aren't winning this war. The trouble is, neither is the government.

Kabul today is a city in a state of heightened nerves. Crazy rumours do the rounds continually. One particularly strong one is that the bomb that destroyed Mohammed Nasim's house was dropped deliberately by a Pakistani or even an American plane.

The level of threat is high. Ministers, officials and the relatively few Western soldiers who are still based here travel round Kabul by helicopter to avoid the possible dangers of the streets. They clatter backwards and forwards overhead, hundreds of feet above the gridlock and heat of the Kabul streets.

The past few weeks have seen a big increase in Taliban attacks. Yet the Taliban seem no closer to achieving their aims here.

They had assumed that over the past year, when the American, British and other forces withdrew and a new and untried President, Ashraf Ghani, had come to power, would be their big chance: the government would never be weaker, and they themselves would never be stronger.

But it hasn't turned out that way. The Taliban have captured six district centres, it's true - but they've lost five to the government forces.

According to European diplomats, the police intelligence force, the NDS, has managed to stop at least a fifth of all Taliban attacks. This has been one of the big success stories of the past year.

Now a bitter split has opened up within the Taliban leadership. The top leaders managed to hide the news for two years that their leader, Mullah Omar, had died of TB in 2013. As soon as it leaked out, last July, there was uproar within the Taliban.

One faction now wants Mullah Omar's son and brother to take control of the movement, while another wants Omar's deputy, Mullah Akhtar Mansour, to succeed. In the meantime there's a steady flow of defections to so-called Islamic State, which is still only a bit-part player in Afghanistan.

Manam Niazai, a leading Taliban figure who supports Mullah Omar's family, told me he thought the defections would be temporary.

"Most of the people who have switched to Islamic State in the provinces of Nangahar, Helmand and Farah have done so because of Mullah Mansour, the man who has declared himself to be the new Taliban leader," he said. "If there's a new leadership there'll be no place for Islamic State. These are all our friends, and they'll come back to us again."

He insisted that there were no real links between the Afghan version of Islamic State, and the movement in Iraq, Syria and elsewhere.

You might think that a major split in the ranks of the Taliban would help the government. In fact it makes things even harder. The government of President Ghani badly needs to open substantive peace talks with the Taliban - it's the only way forward. But for now there's no-one to talk to.

People like Mohammed Nasim, the victim of the Taliban bomb, feel this proves that Afghanistan will never be at peace. And until that perception changes, the flood of Afghans to Europe will continue.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-34150967

Millions of Indian Workers Strike

Millions of Indian workers launched a 24-hour strike on Wednesday against what they said were Prime Minister Narendra Modi's “anti-labor policies,” prompting billions of dollars in economic losses.

Ten major unions called the nationwide strike over the government's pro-business initiatives after recent talks with Finance Minister Arun Jaitley broke down.

The unions — which represent a wide range of industries, from banking to coal mining — are demanding the government dump plans to sell off stakes in state-run companies to boost the public purse and to shutter unproductive factories.

“We are against these anti-labor policies. The government is going to change the laws to benefit the corporates,” said Gurudas Dasgupta, secretary of the Indian Trade Union Congress, which has 3.6 million members.

“The changes they want to bring are against the working classes. I am very confident of a hugely successful strike,” he told Agence France-Presse on Tuesday.

Later on Wednesday, Dasgupta told The Times of India that the response to the strike was “magnificent” and estimated that more than 150 million workers participated, though the figure could not be independently confirmed.