Global banking system SWIFT-ly cuts off Iranian banks

Kurdistan Photo

In an attempt to step up pressure on Iran to curb its nuclear program, the world’s biggest electronic payment system, the Belgium-based SWIFT, cut off some two dozen blacklisted Iranian banks on March 17 in response to EU regulations. The move, likened to being expelled from the financial equivalent of the United Nations, will financially isolate Iran by shutting down its main channel of business with the rest of the world, impacting both on the government and Iranian businesses.

SWIFT Chief Executive Lazaro Campos made a statement on Thursday saying “disconnecting banks is an extraordinary and unprecedented step for SWIFT. It is a direct result of international and multilateral action to intensify financial sanctions against Iran". U.S. Senator Robert Menendez, who was among those pushing for the expulsion of Iranian banks from SWIFT to be included in pending U.S. sanctions legislation, said “the joint action of the U.S. and EU sends a strong message to Iran that we are serious about imposing punishing sanctions”. Similarly, the U.S. undersecretary of Treasury for terrorism and financial intelligence, David Cohen, said in a statement that SWIFT’s decision “reflects the growing international consensus that substantially increased pressure is needed to convince the Iranian regime to address the international community’s concerns about its illicit nuclear activities.”

SWIFT’s decision will put a dampener on Iran’s oil trade as it will hamper its ability to make or receive payments for crude oil which accounts for about half of the Iranian government’s revenues. Whilst China and India have said they will continue buying Iran’s oil, the Iranian government will need to “find workarounds for large, strategically important and government-facilitated oil payments”, such as gold. Just last week, in fact, the governor of Iran’s central bank said the country would accept payment in gold “without any reservation”.

It is Iranian businesses, however, that will bear the brunt of the measures. "It will make life even more difficult for us than before, because this is like our lifeline to the outside being cut," said Naser Shaker, who owns an oil and gas trading company in Dubai. The move will strangle Iranian businesses’ transactions and as a result cause the collapse of many banking relations.  Morteza Masoumzadeh, a member of the executive committee of the Iranian Business Council in Dubai, lamented that "this is devastating news for our businesses, but what can I do? Do we have any options?" Trevor Houser, an energy analyst and partner at Rhodium Group noted that SWIFT’s action will affect what Iran buys more than what it sells, as such “small Iranian businesses that rely on interbank electronic transfers to pay for everything from food to electronics imports are going to have a hard time buying from abroad”.

Last week’s move comes after a barrage of new measures adopted by the U.S. and EU since November as part of a concerted effort to stymie Iran’s nuclear ambitions by isolating its economy. The measures gained momentum after the United Nations International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors released a report on 8 November in which they cast doubt on the supposedly civilian purposes of Iran’s nuclear program.

Forced adoption in Australia

Greens senator Rachel Siewert

A Senate committee in Australia urged the Federal government on February 29 to “issue a formal statement of apology” for the widespread practice of forcing women to give up their babies for adoption between the 1950s and 1970s. Following an 18-month inquiry, the Community Affairs References Committee collected over 400 submissions to investigate the former forced adoption policies in the post-war period. The report noted that around 150,000 unmarried women were coerced into signing their children off for adoption by churches, doctors and adoption agencies among others.

Throughout the post-war period forced adoption was widespread across Australia, as mothers who were often in their teens or unmarried were coerced into giving up their babies or “faced circumstances in which they were left with no other choice”. This was partly due to the social stigma attached to unmarried motherhood up until the 1970s, resulting in single mothers often spending the majority of their pregnancy away from home. Many were sent away from their homes to “preclude prejudice or judgement from the local community” and were either housed with relatives or group accommodation settings. Religious organisations that ran the group accommodation settings were also involved in setting up the adoption, which was often a “routine and informal” process. The evidence collected also revealed that nurses and social workers almost always recommended adoption to single mothers.

At birth, the babies were usually removed immediately and kept on a separate floor until they were taken home by adoptive parents. This was in line with the “clean break” theory which was popular in the 1950s and 1960s; it held that “the best outcome for both the mother and child is achieved when the child is adopted at birth and no further contact occurs between them”. The clean break was vaunted as a means of avoiding the social stigma associated with the unmarried mother and “fatherless” child, as everyone could just forget about the “unfortunate” incident and move on. The committee heard harrowing stories from women who had been coerced into giving up their child by being drugged or even shackled to their beds. Others claimed their signatures had been forged or they simply had not been informed by social workers of government help that may have been available to them to raise their child, thus leading them to believe adoption was the only feasible route.

Greens senator and chairwoman of the committee Rachel Siewert broke down as she tabled the report in the Senate, saying it had been a "heartbreaking inquiry" and that it was "undoubted that past policies and practices have caused great harm and hurt to mothers, fathers, adoptees, and their family members". "It is time for governments and institutions involved to accept that such actions were wrong, not merely by today's standards but by the values and laws of the time", she continued. Labor senator Claire Moore added, "the history [...] will now be known and acknowledged [...] to the people caught up in the horror of this history, we can now call it a horror and not pretend it didn't happen". The release of the report, it seems, is merely the first step in redressing the harm caused.

Occupy London: a fading fad?

Outside St Paul's Cathedral

When the Occupy London movement pitched its tents in the churchyard of St Paul’s Cathedral in London last October it sent shockwaves through the suit-clad City workers to the whole country. Building on the momentum from other protest camps worldwide, such as Occupy Wall Street, the protesters outside St Paul’s denounced the capitalist system and the ensuing inequality. Commentators were keen to interpret the resurgence of protest movements as a portent of an imminent sea change in western society, perhaps fuelled by nostalgia for the social ferment of the 1960s. These predictions proved to be unfounded, or in any case premature. The excitement aroused by the camp soon died down as legal proceedings with the City of London Corporation got under way to ultimately result in the eviction of the protesters on 28 February. The Occupy movement in Zuccotti Park in New York had already been evicted back in December and Occupy Bath cleared the tents in Queen Square the same month. As Laurie Penny from the New Statesman wrote, “the political establishment is making its message clear, in the manner of a hostess trying gently to expel the last unwelcome guests at the end of a party: stretching, ostentatiously tidying up and talking loudly about how cold it is outside”. The question now is, what have these movements achieved? And will they be remembered?

To look for a concrete achievement one must first start from the objectives, and these were rather like a crème brulée: seemingly sturdy on the outside only to reveal themselves soft after you dig a little. Occupy London sought to fight corporate greed and “make [their] voices heard against the crisis which the banks have created”. Some very lofty aims indeed. But fighting corporate greed is not as clear cut as it seems, whilst making one’s voice heard need not take 5 months. Joan Smith, a human rights campaigner, believes that “once you’ve met your aims, it’s crucial to take your cause forward and I’m not sure continuing to stay outside St Paul’s Cathedral takes these protesters’ political objectives any further”.

Perhaps, then, we are wrong to look for concrete aims in the Occupy London protesters and even the movement worldwide. Michael Chessum, one of the leaders of the student protests, believes that developing concrete demands now would be premature. One must not interpret “fighting corporate greed” as an insular objective, for it is connected to a deeper societal malaise with the capitalist paradigm that has dominated western society for three decades. It would also be wrong to focus excessively on the “we are the 99%” mantra, for whilst the protesters do call for an end to the expanding schism between the super rich and the rest of society, they feel that the system has failed them as a whole, of which social inequality is simply one aspect. The Occupy London movement has thus been a “standing reminder that the force of capitalism may not be what its champions say it is”, raising awareness of the failings of capitalism simply through their presence and stimulating more public debate on the issue.

Awareness and debate may die down, however. Occupy London’s eviction did not elicit the same interest as its inception. Taken alone, the movement has neatly blended into the plethora of groups that make up our civil society, and its “anti-capitalist discourse has not disappeared so much as soaked in, like a stain into a carpet”. Yet context is key; the resurgence in social tumult over the past year signals that people are prepared to stand together and denounce what they perceive as an unfair system. This perception is strong enough to instigate protest camps and is unlikely to fade away simply because the tents have come down. Occupy London has not been an agent of change, but it has highlighted the extent of popular resentment with capitalism, whether founded or not, and is a prelude of more to come. We may not be in an interregnum between the crisis and a new system, but the discontent is there and clearly discernible. Meanwhile, life in St Paul’s churchyard will return to business as usual, replete with tourists and City acolytes.

Launch of the Darfur Regional Authority: a step forward?

Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir

Last week Sudan’s President Omar al-Bashir inaugurated the Darfur Regional Authority (DRA), a body intended to kick-start post-war reconstruction  and facilitate the peace process in the war-torn region of Darfur in western Sudan. The launch of the new body marks an important milestone in the implementation of the Doha Document for Peace in Darfur (DDPD), the peace agreement signed in Qatar last year between the Sudanese government and one of Darfur’s rebel groups, the Liberation and Justice Movement (LJM).  The deal has been rejected by other rebel groups, including the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), which holds parallel talks with the Khartoum government.

President Al-Bashir announced the creation of the DRA on Wednesday in the region’s capital Al Fasher as well as a general amnesty for the prisoners of the LJM. He also urged the rebel movement to ensure that the security arrangements of the deal, which would envisage the integration of LJM fighters into the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), are correctly implemented. This would avoid a repeat of the failed 2006 Abuja agreement in which Minni Minnawi, the one rebel signatory, went back into rebellion after having rejected the security arrangements. Mr Bashir stressed the importance of repairing the social fabric of local communities after the nine-year war and bringing criminals to justice all the while inviting the non-signatory rebel groups to join the peace accord.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon welcomed the inauguration of the DRA, recommending that the parties “take all necessary measures to equip the authority to fulfil its responsibility to promote reconciliation, early recovery and development so that peace dividends are realized by and equitably shared among the population of Darfur”. Ban Ki-moon further urged the rebel groups who have not signed the peace accord and the government to enter into negotiations for a final agreement immediately so as to pave the way for a comprehensive peace process.

Similarly the President of Chad, President Idriss Deby, who is believed to have supported the JEM during the war because he belonged to the same ethnic group as its former leader Khalil Ibrahim, pledged to put his country’s resources at the disposal of Sudan to aid the peace process and stressed the importance of dialogue as the only conduit for the resolution of problems.

Behind the bullish talk however lies a formidable task in ensuring that the Qatar peace process is actually implemented successfully. The appointment of an LJM member, Tijani Sese, as head of the DRA marks an important step in fulfilling a power-sharing arrangement, along with the inclusion of LJM ministers in the federal government. However it is as yet unclear how the DRA’s executive body will work with other authorities such as the state governors, who will probably be loath to accept a reduction in their powers. Whilst the launch of the DRA is no doubt a significant development in the long peace process in Darfur, the exclusion of other rebel groups and other unresolved issues presage a long road ahead.

Egypt's revolution: one year later

Father and boy celebrating the one year anniversary

“Mubarak was the head of a pyramid and what we find is that while he has been toppled, the rest of the pyramid is still there.” These words, spoken by a protester on Tahrir Square who gathered with thousands of fellow Egyptians to commemorate the first anniversary of the revolution that toppled Hosni Mubarak’s regime, encapsulate the ambivalent feelings surrounding the revolution. On the one hand are those who see the 25^th of January as a celebratory day, which saw Egypt break free from the shackles of decades of authoritarian rule under Mubarak. In the words of Wael Ghonim, the young Google executive who became the face of the revolution after creating a Facebook page for the protesters, “a psychological barrier of fear has been broken”. On the other side we have the invigorators who cast doubt on the achievements so far. Shaimaa Zain descended onto Tahrir Square a year ago to demand change and claims the reason she has returned is that “things haven’t improved. In fact they got worse”. She echoes the fears of many other compatriots in in saying there is a conspiracy between the military and the extremists.

The parliamentary elections saw the overriding victory of the Muslim Brotherhood, long smothered under Mubarak’s rule, and the more extreme Salafists who together control a majority of seats in parliament. Some worry that the Islamists will not challenge the power of the military, which still sits comfortably at the top of the pecking order and has been keeping the democratisation process going at a leisurely pace. The fear is that the Islamists will not mobilise their popular support to displace the military’s coddled position of strength because the current democratic process has paved their way to power; similarly the military will ensure the process ratchets ahead in such a way as to favour the Islamists. However some have dismissed such fears as unfounded. Egypt’s political class is divided in a triangular contest for power between the military, the Islamists and the revolutionaries.  Roger Hardy explains that the military and the Islamists are actually wary of one another, despite having been forced into “tactical accommodation” by events in the past.

Roger Hardy further claims that the army has unwittingly found itself in the limelight of the revolution, and is eager to return to the sidelines. Provided, of course, that its core interests are not threatened, such as its budget and perks and privileges. However this is probably an excessively sanguine view of the situation. Whilst a seamless transition like that in Tunisia was perhaps a bit elusive for a country like Egypt, the military certainly seems to have embraced its newfound position of power with gusto. The statement on its Facebook page for the eve of the one year anniversary emphasised its prominent role in the revolution: “the military protected the revolution, stood with its objectives, embraced its demands and promises to fulfil it”. The revolutionaries and liberals thus find themselves in an awkward position where they need the military to guide the delicate political process whilst simultaneously calling for its exclusion from the political scene.

 Having achieved their unifying goal, namely the end of Mubarak’s regime, the revolutionaries have failed to coalesce into a credible political force that can counteract the strength of the military and the Islamists through the normal political channels.  They have largely failed to translate their effervescent moral force into an efficient election-winning machine. For now the world waits with bated breath to see whether political Islam will indeed prove to be the democratic model for the Arab world. Revolutions, by their very nature, are rarely predictable. Egypt has been no exception.