Is our fear of dirty bombs leading us to disaster in Mali?

Alexander Pannett 11.50am

The crisis in Mali has reached new heights with the announcement that the UK will be sending 350 troops to the region.

The task of the soldiers is to train the Malian army and their deployment is seen as signaling a more long-term commitment to the region by the UK.

The use of soldiers is an escalation of the UK’s support for France, which had previously been solely logistical with the provision of two RAF transport planes. It inevitably raises fears of mission creep at a time of severe cutbacks to the UK defence budget.

However, there is a contradiction between the direct intervention in Mali and the less overt anti-terrorist approach taken in Yemen and Somalia. Why the sudden urgency and build up of Western troops?

The main issue which has not been widely reported in the Western press is the uranium mining area of north Niger, which borders Mali.

According to a 2008 report by a French parliamentary committee, about 18 per cent of the raw material used to power France’s 58 nuclear reactors came from Niger in 2008.

If the uranium mines fell under the control of Islamic fundamentalists then nuclear dirty bombs could become a real terrorist threat to Europe. This is especially worrying considering the relative ease of smuggling illicit goods into Europe from the North African coast.

The mines are also located in an area controlled by the Tauregs, a nomadic tribe that spreads across south-west Sahara and whose alliance with Islamic extremists has formed the backbone of the Malian rebels.  The Tauregs have been fighting for autonomy against a Malian army that has been accused of extrajudicial killings and other human rights abuses against Taureg civilians by Amnesty International.

The Algerian hostage crisis underlined the threat of Islamic extremism in the Saharan region.  It is important to the security and peaceful development of the world that any extremism is countered and exposed for the narrow and cruel bigotry that it is.

However, too often the West has papered over complex local economic and cultural issues with its simple response to extremist views.

The Tauregs appear to be fighting against an unjust Malian government that arose to power after an army coup in 2012. The Tauregs crave self-determination much as Americans, Irish, Polish and other Western peoples have in the past. To ignore their plight is immoral and short-sighted. It could lead to a calamitous strategic blunder as the Malian campaign descends into bitter guerrilla warfare against impoverished but tenacious people fighting for their freedom.

It would be folly to let the ideological fight against religious extremism force the West against uprisings that cloak their vocabulary with Sharia law but are nationalistic in their ambitions not religious. The analogy of Vietnam is disturbing.

After Afghanistan and Iraq, the West should be careful that it is not entering a hornet’s nest of complex secular and tribal divisions.  Whilst concern over the security of uranium mines in the region is rational, Britain and France should not predicate such concern with the vicarious brutalization of persecuted peoples to further the distasteful ends of corrupt and illegitimate regimes.

In a campaign that lacks specific goals, ensuring autonomy for the Tauregs would do more to bring peace and stability to the region than the re-conquest of isolated desert towns. A political and cultural solution is preferable to a military reaction.

Follow Alex on Twitter @alpannett

A little solution to the EU’s big Nobel Peace Prize balls-up

Richard Ellis 10.29am

I can’t stand the French. Their accent irritates me. As does their arrogance, their dishonesty, their laziness and their ingratitude.

The idea that their cooking is better than ours is nonsensical (how would you rather start your day - a full English breakfast or a croissant?).

And the suggestion that they have a nobler sense of chivalry is a joke (no Englishman worthy of the name has even seen those pictures of the Duchess of Cambridge; the French published them).

I don’t care much for the Germans either, though deep down I imagine that our Teutonic cousins would be almost as civilised as us if they didn’t share a land border with France.

Nevertheless, even I can acknowledge that the people of France and Germany have demonstrated a remarkable greatness of spirit in the years since 1945. Three bloody wars in seventy years left deep scars and painful resentments.

During the mid-1960s, my father spent a few months living in Paris. One evening he had plans to meet some friends in a bar and invited a (French) colleague. He explained that there would be some French people there but also some Dutch and probably a German. Once apprised of the guest list the colleague lost interest: “I would rather stick my hand in a bucket of s**t than shake hands with a German.” And that was some while after the end of the Second World War.

The statesmen and peoples of France and Germany have put these antipathies behind them and forged a deep alliance. That is both a remarkable transformation and a tremendous achievement - and it played a major (though not an exclusive) role in securing peace for Europe. If anyone has earned a Nobel Peace Prize it is the French and the Germans.

The European Union certainly has not. The EU was not even around when the Franco-German rapprochement took place. Nor, with its north and south at diplomatic loggerheads, is the EU a matchless example of how to run a peaceful body politic.

It is too late for the prize to be re-awarded but perhaps a compromise could be reached. Brussels could offer to hold the prize on behalf of the French and the Germans. In fact, now I think of it, that would be even better than giving it to the French and Germans outright. After all, a joint award would bring questions of who should have actual possession of the medal and when.

The French would be bound to hold onto the medal for longer than their turn, which would irk the Germans, who would certainly retaliate - and that could leave us all right back at square one.

Richard Ellis is a solicitor and former parliamentary researcher

Arab politicians continue to use distant British history as an excuse for their own mistakes

Aaron Ellis 2.31pm

For many in the Arab world, the Sykes-Picot Agreement is what the Yalta conference was for many conservatives in the United States during the Cold War. It is a betrayal of people seeking freedom; a damning indictment of Great Power politics; and the source of all problems in the Middle East.

As with Yalta, all kinds of things are attributed to Sykes-Picot years after the event. For instance, the veteran Lebanese politician Walid Jumblatt has said the Syria crisis is “unravelling” a deal that created the countries of the region. This lazy understanding was reinforced by the Guardian’s Martin Chulov writing that the Agreement was adopted by Britain and France in 1919, not 1916…

The Sykes-Picot Agreement divided up the Middle East between the two Great Powers and the Arabs; it did not create the nation states we know today.

France got modern Lebanon and southern Turkey, as well as a sphere of influence over an Arab kingdom in Syria. Britain acquired most of Mesopotamia and exercised influence over a Y-shaped Arab kingdom that stretched from the Egyptian border to northern Iraq and down into the Arabian Peninsula. Though the post-war carve-up vaguely resembled the deal, it actually began to unravel almost as soon as it had been negotiated by Sir Mark Sykes and Francois Georges-Picot.

British officials in Cairo hated the Agreement and worked to undermine it: they wanted Syria to be part of a Greater Egyptian viceroyalty that would rival the Indian Raj.

“I am afraid that swine Monsieur P[icot] has let M. S. badly down,” wrote the Tory politician and diplomat Aubrey Herbert, an intelligence officer in Cairo. “This is what comes of disregarding the ABC of Diplomacy and letting Amateurs have a shy at delicate and important negotiations.”

In 1917, the deal unravelled further when the Bolsheviks leaked its details to embarrass the Allies, prompting a fierce reaction to what was viewed as outdated imperialist thinking, especially in the United States. The Russian Revolution had also removed Britain’s geopolitical reasoning for giving the French such a huge chunk of the Middle East: creating a buffer zone between them and the Russian Empire, which had been promised land in Turkey. Sykes wrote that the sooner the Agreement was scrapped the better, as the world had “marched so far” since it had been negotiated a year before and it could “now only be considered as a reactionary measure”.

His about-turn coincided with one higher up in government when David Lloyd George became Prime Minister in December 1917. Lloyd George wanted to increase Britain’s sphere of influence beyond that which Sykes had negotiated just a few years before. In his book A Line in the Sand, James Baar reports a conversation between Lloyd George and French premiere Georges Clemenceau in which the latter conceded to British demands. “Tell me what you want,” Clemenceau is supposed to have asked him.

“I want Mosul.”

“You shall have it. Anything else?”

“Yes, I want Jerusalem too.”

“You shall have it,” said Clemenceau. These concessions were recognised in the many peace conferences after the First World War, thus by 1922 the Sykes-Picot Agreement had completely unravelled.

The Middle Eastern order that people like Mr Jumblatt fear is disintegrating was created long after this much-maligned deal was a dead letter, and centuries-old problems in the region cannot be blamed on what was even then considered to be old-fashioned thinking about Great Power politics.

Britain can be rightly blamed for many things, but too often Arab politicians use our decades-old faults as an excuse for their own mistakes.

Follow Aaron on Twitter @AaronHEllis

The Ned Kelly Tax should stay in France

Alexander Pannett 1.07pm

It appears we may need to get the red carpet out for our new business guests from France earlier than we thought we would.

Francois Hollande has this week implemented the Financial Transactions Tax, commonly known as the Robin Hood tax. This is a 0.2 per cent levy on share trading in France. The Gallic plan is for the tax to become implemented Europe-wide, which would disconcertingly hit the City of London, Europe’s largest financial centre, more heavily than anywhere else.

Craig Barrett wrote the following about the perils of the tax in August last year.

“A Tobin Tax seems to me to be much the same. It’s not even particularly pretty. It is referred to as a “Robin Hood tax” in the mistaken belief that it takes from the rich and gives to the poor, missing the point that Hood was simply returning the proceeds of over-taxation to the tax-payers rather than acting as some species of socialist redistributor.

The compelling results of a study made by the Adam Smith Institute demonstrate that a tax on all trades from one currency into another simply wouldn’t work. For Britain, it could be disastrous. Some 20 per cent of the UK’s GDP is generated in the City of London, whose generated wealth is already subject to taxation. Foreign exchange trading in the UK accounts for 36.7 per cent of the world total. If we were to adopt a Tobin Tax, that proportion would surely fall - the revenue gained from further punishing the financial sector would come nowhere near to replacing the revenue lost as a result of the inevitable flight of financial institutions to other jurisdictions.And that’s because for a Tobin Tax to work, it has to be universal.”

I also had this to say about the tax back in November last year:

“A Tobin tax would not have prevented such extreme short selling as the temporary bans did and would have hampered market reactions to flawed economic models. It would not have prevented the credit crunch nor would it have alleviated the consequences of the financial crisis.

Worse, the tax would have a disastrous effect on London’s position as the world’s pre-eminent financial center. The City competes in a global market and the tax would result in the cost of trading being higher than competitor financial centers in Asia, North America and the Middle East. Investors and financial institutions would move their business away to cheaper jurisdictions, which is why the tax has not received any support outside Europe for it to be implemented by other major financial centres.”

I would also point out that the UK ‘s decades old stamp duty reserve tax of 0.5 per cent. on share transfers has not prevented the worst excesses of the City. It did not prevent the recent LIBOR scandal or the Credit Crunch. Therefore the argument that a further tax of 0.2 per cent. on financial transactions would be a panacea to the current financial malaise rings hollow.

The tax probably should not even be known as the Robin Hood tax. After all, Robin Hood’s main objection was that the hard working parts of the population were disproportionately paying for the luxurious pursuits of the more leisurely inclined. Throw in some green tights and some dodgy American accents and you are pretty much there.

Quite the opposite to the French tax, which should be more accurately called the Ned Kelly tax, as it steals from hard working types and the perpetrator wears a giant steel helmet, blinding him to the real world and allowing him to ignore all criticism…….. 

For more on this subject, see Craig Barrett’s article from August: ‘The Robin Hood Tax is a soundbite tax worth ignoring’.

Follow Alexander on Twitter @alpannett

Procrastination, prevarication & paralysis: an idiot’s guide to the Eurozone crisis

Henry Hopwood-Phillips 9.46am

I always thought that the EU had secured the winning hand.

In success, it could boast that its social democratic model, inching towards fiscal and ultimately political union, had created a permanent and enlightened route to general prosperity. In failure, the globalised proportions of its wreckage would ensure that only its supranational intervention could offer succour.

Yet the EU’s problem is that its chief creditor, Germany, has been thinking like a nation, rather than a supranational overseer. It is not that Germany is not willing to play paymaster to a transparently political project. Rather, Germany resents the fact that beneath the surface, economically the EU project resembles a cheese grater.

ClubMed, eager to ignore the holes, yearns for closer political unity because of the accompanying German credit card.

The Germans, not wanting to subsidise the European periphery forever, has suggested mandatory terms and conditions and requested appropriate collateral in return for pooling proportions of debt, privatisation, teutonic budgetary discipline, and flexible employment laws. ClubMed baulks at the small print.

The tension between German realism and Mediterranean myopia is painfully apparent. Angela Merkel has said that under no circumstances would she consider Eurobonds. Italy’s ex-prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, retorts that if Germany continues to prevent the ECB from printing money she should quit the euro. Italy’s current leader, Mario Monti, tells the German chancellor that “six decades of integration are at stake”.

In the past, at least, political obfuscation of economic realities was intelligible while the the direction of the EU’s hopes was centripetal. However, with the EU’s economically strongest member now in direct confrontation with the rest, the outcome of the crisis is far from predictable.

The impending Spanish bank bailout ought to be as conventional as a banking crisis can be, following a relatively simple process. Nonetheless, foreign investors are shunning the prospect - not just because they believe the books are cooked but because how they might be cooked is no longer discernible. An efficient and free market should not be run on fiddled facts but it routinely is. Cynicism does not ruin markets on its own. Rather confusion over the target and form of that cynicism, as with the current EU chaos, appears to. It certainly paralyses credit flows, meaning that Spain is now required to spend $600,000 to insure merely $10 million of debt.

The president of the ECB, Mario Draghi, has identified the systemic weaknesses and trends and said it cannot continue, recently describing the Eurozone as “unsustainable”.

Exasperation is noticeable even in the EU’s own reports. Its top brass has informed the new French president, Francois Hollande, that the economic assumptions behind his budget plans are “optimistic”, measures to hit budget targets “not sufficiently specified”, and France’s record on meeting past targets has been “mixed”.

In this febrile climate, the technical solutions suggested in answer to the European crisis - from a ‘Grexit’ to Eurozone deposit schemes - seem to me to be superfluous. At this pretty pass the repair of the EU body seems more dependent on the cogency and cohesiveness of its soul than any mere physical tinkering.

Does a vigneron in Rousillon shed a tear for the Greeks?

Nik Darlington 9.42am

Suppose that North-Eastern England, the region tending to be most heavily dependent on internal transfer payments, went bust, à la Grèce. Would the rest of England feel happy, or even obliged, to bail the region out? Of course it would.

Even if Scotland went belly up, despite all the rumblings of independence, the rest of the UK would come to its aid - as it did, for instance, to bail out Scotland’s biggest financial institutions (and the North-East’s, come to think of it).

But does a vigneron in Rousillon shed much of a tear for the Greeks? Or more to the point, a bank manager in Berlin? Or a station master in Stockholm?

The emotional flaw at the centre of the European Union is that however many years of postwar ‘good Europeanism’ there have been, Europe’s citizens (has that term ever felt less secure?) still feel the tug of the historic, the local and the familiar, more than the modern, the continental and the abstract.

A Greek default and eurozone exit makes dreadful economic sense, unless, perhaps, you’re Greek. Yet Europe’s emotions are directing the popular response, and, in the case of those northern Europeans with apparently unimpeachable morals, even the economic response too.

Follow Nik on Twitter @NikDarlington

European Parliament must find a bigger voice amidst the chaos

Nik Darlington 11.08am

The European Parliament is vast, its shiny superstructure reflecting the functional surroundings of Brussels back on itself. Yet when the citizens of Europe glance proverbially in its direction, it is not a reflection of themselves that they see - a reflection of their current plight - but a remote and faceless edifice.

However once inside, the Parliament shows itself for what it is. Or at least it offers a glimpse of what it could be.

Much happens here, but few follow it, fewer truly understand it, and even fewer, maybe, genuinely care about it. Whatever one’s views about the European Union, this is something to be regretted.

What we think of as the “European Union” is in fact a smorgasbord of not always complementary (nor complimentary) institutions.

Briefly, the Council consists of ministers passing laws, coordinating policies, and generally representing individual governments depending on the subject matter (e.g. agriculture or transport). Note that this is not the European Council we read of David Cameron attending with other heads of government. That irregular grouping sets the EU’s political direction and has no power to make laws.

The European Commission comprises nominees from individual member states who are assigned a portfolio (Lord Mandelson was a trade commissioner, for instance), and represent the interests of the EU as a whole.

Then there is the European Parliament, a body of more than 700 directly elected representatives from throughout the EU. Members (MEPs) serve Europe’s citizens in a similar way to how our MPs operate in Westminster - in essence holding the executive to account, scrutinising legislation, acting on behalf of constituents, and voting on new laws. MEPs typically stand for office as candidates of traditional political parties - e.g. the Conservatives, Labour, or France’s UMP - which subsequently coalesce with other European parties under like-minded umbrella labels.

As Europe lurches from one crisis to another, I believe it is the European Parliament that has to take the lead.

At a seminar for senior editors yesterday in Brussels, an Italian socialist MEP, Roberto Gualtieri, said: “Non è una problema economica, non è una problema tecnocratica, ma è una problema democratica”. Europe is on the brink because it is suffering a crisis of democracy, above all else. While Rome, Athens, or elsewhere burns, unaccountable placemen fiddle at the fringes. Or so the narrative goes.

The response of Europe’s leaders has been politically anaemic and economically heavy-handed. Throughout the continent in recent years, failed governments have been thrown out by voters. Largely in favour of rightist or centre-right alternatives, although the Left’s renewal is gaining traction. And while politicians have scarcely been so reviled, the political process has scarcely so mattered.

At the same time, euroscepticism has probably never been as strong. And not only in Britain. Why? Because at a time of public frustration, citizens are demanding a greater voice - maybe not their voice, necessarily, but a voice that represents their hopes and fears. The European Union, however, is seen to be inimical to that visceral democratic desire.

It needn’t be. A more self-confident and, crucially, better understood European Parliament can be that voice. Its members do, after all, have a democratic mandate. Of course, European elections in Britain typically attract few voters, but apathy is as much the fault of the electors as the elected.

The European Parliament also has, in the experienced German politician Martin Schulz, a president (akin to the Speaker of the House of Commons but with more political power) with strong opinions about the current crisis, and opinions that diverge from the inflexibly austere forces that have led the EU’s response to date. Brussels sources point out that President Schulz’s strong opinions are not weakly held, not shall they be meekly guarded.

In Britain, the public seems to prize that certain sort of parliamentarian who stands tall, is independent and speaks out “for the people”. Europe’s problems are indeed largely economic, but the solutions must be political. And those solutions must be seen to be legitimate in the eyes of Europeans.

There is only one European institution that can achieve this, and therein lies the European Parliament’s unenviable, but also unmissable, opportunity. And, some might add, its duty.

Follow Nik on Twitter @NikDarlington

English wine is leading the way in more ways than one

Nik Darlington 11.53am

The Greek philosopher Diogenes once said, “what I like to drink most is wine that belongs to others”.

That was, in a sense, what we inhabitants of the British Isles were forced to do for hundreds of years.

Whatever might be said about the Romans and their vines along Hadrian’s Wall, for most of history if you wanted to drink wine on these shores then you had to import it and you had to pay a pretty price for it.

Things have changed. The English (and Welsh) domestic wine industry is in very good and ever-improving health, thanks to increasing interest, investment and climate change (yes, it has its silver lining). There are more than four hundred vineyards turning out red, white and sparkling wines, which though admittedly of varying quality, have in recent years hit dizzy heights.

And yesterday the Times (£) reported on what is expected to be a ‘vintage year’ for English wine, with the Diamond Jubilee and the London Olympics earmarked as opportunities to showcase the nation’s best. Indeed, the Olympics cycling road race is due to pass close to England’s largest single vineyard, Denbies, in the Surrey Hills.

But there was another wine-related story in yesterday’s Times (£) that is worth dwelling on.

The EU has plans to abolish vine plantation regulations, which stipulate where and how much wine can be cultivated throughout Europe, so as to limit production, control quality, and maintain prices. However, a number of leading wine-producers, including France, are opposed to any relaxation of the regulations.

Supporters of the reform say it will make Europe’s wine industry more competitive and better able to meet the challenge from New World producers. They accuse France, Spain and Italy and other wine nations of trying to preserve their dominance by preventing the spread of vineyards to other regions and countries.

In 2007, the EU voted to scrap vine plantation rights, which allowed new vineyards and the extension of existing ones. Although the French Government initially backed the reforms, it has since backtracked, in the face of rural fury. President Sarkozy has vowed to fight the move.

Dominique Janin, deputy general secretary of the Assembly of European Wine Growing Regions, told The Times that liberalisation would leave vineyards at the mercy of “hedge funds and multinationals”.

“They are going to plant hundreds or thousands of hectares of vines and we will move towards industrial production,” said Mr Janin. “The consequences will be quite serious. Europe will become like Australia. When you have a plant that lasts 70 years you need rules and harmonious management.”

First of all, it is a bit of a harsh judgement on the New World producers such as Australia. That country’s recent problems, for instance, have more to do with natural disaster (drought) than industrial production. And while the New World produces some frightful cheap plonk, many of its vineyards are have been matching the old masters of Europe for some years now.

But the main point is that the likes of the French are both right and wrong. They are wrong because one of the reasons why the New World is fast catching up with the old is because its vineyards are freer to experiment with grape varieties and production methods, and to expand into new and exciting terroirs.

They are, however, right in that irrespective of how much the New World ‘catches up’ (relatively or absolutely), the unique selling point of the Old World is its history, traditions and styles. They must be protected.

The proper solution would be for the EU to forge ahead with abolishing continental regulations, so allowing certain producers to follow their own path, but to allow individual member states to maintain domestic controls. This type of flexible thinking should not run contrary to any EU anti-competition laws, because the English wine industry is already outside the existing controls.

English winemakers are proving adept at applying the best of the old - such as the classic methods of Champagne to produce top drawer sparkling wine - and at the same time pushing the boundaries, even beginning production of ‘English Malbec’ from imported Argentine grapes (which the EU is absurdly prohibiting).

Much as it is doing so in the glass, English wine could be ahead of the pack in other ways too. Europe, take note.

Follow Nik on Twitter @NikDarlington