Latest news with #InstituteforEconomicsandPeace
The Independent
26-03-2025
- Business
- The Independent
I'm a former royal marine-turned-Labour MP – Rachel Reeves is missing the point on defence
When I was under daily attack from rockets and mortars as a royal marine in Afghanistan, we knew the importance of the humanitarians working alongside us. Doctors, engineers and general staff, all were vital parts of our mission to deliver peace and stability in extraordinarily difficult circumstances. When much of the infrastructure was destroyed in the town of Garmsir, forcing residents to flee to Taliban -controlled areas, it was UK and international aid that helped rebuild health clinics, roads and houses – working in conjunction with the British and American troops providing security. People duly returned to Garmsir, and it turned our allies in the Afghan Government into a more credible force. When I worked in the tribal districts of Pakistan, UK aid helped to bring good governance to areas that were infamous for instability and exporting terrorism. It was also UK aid that provided the Pakistani government with expert advice on setting up courts, health centres, schooling, and better agriculture. Improving people's lives and providing justice gave young men alternatives to joining armed groups – making us all safer. I later worked with Syrian civil society and refugee groups in the region as an aid worker. As that civil war comes to an end, it will be the groups that UK aid supported which might offer the best hope of achieving a tolerant and stable country. What these experiences taught me is that the military must work hand-in-hand with aid organisations and civil society. It is the most effective way to successfully stabilise fragile states, confront the roots of extremism, and – crucially – prevent conflicts from spreading or from breaking out in the first place. When we reduce our development spending, we reduce our capacity to deal with conflict at the root, and our defence spending needs to go up to compensate for it. Prevention is better than cure. As research by the Institute for Economics and Peace has found, each £1 we spend on conflict prevention can save £16 that otherwise needs to be spent to mitigate the destruction caused by conflict. The chancellor has announced the government will accelerate its plan to reduce aid spending to just 0.3 per cent of national income to fund the boost to the defence budget, which means finding nearly £5bn of savings by next year – but this means the risks to the UK and the defence costs of responding to them will increase. And it is not only in war zones that the consequences of cutting the development budget will be felt. More conflict means they will also be felt in the UK if food and energy prices spike, if irregular migration rises, and if threats from extremist groups grow. Our military and security services will face those challenges at the very time when their attention must be focused on the desperate situation in Ukraine. To be clear, I strongly support increasing the defence budget to 2.5 per cent of GDP, with the ambition to go further in the next Parliament. I still remember the massive underfunding we faced in Afghanistan almost 20 years ago. Many of us had to buy our own body armour. We were driving unarmoured Land Rovers in a country littered with IEDs and Soviet landmines. Defence underfunding is not new. With Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine now in its third year, it has never been more important to rebuild the capability to show strength and support for our allies in Europe. This is the right course of action. The most effective way to ensure peace in Europe is through strength. However, state-on-state conflict is not the only threat to the UK and its interests. There are more active conflicts across the globe than at any time since the end of the Second World War in places like Gaza, Sudan, Yemen, Myanmar and the Sahel. As we increase our defence capabilities, we must ensure that UK Aid is helping to prevent and mitigate conflicts like these. In Afghanistan, our armed forces worked side by side with aid workers, just as British-backed aid workers are now in Ukraine alongside brave Ukrainian soldiers. There are so many stories of the courage of aid workers across the world's conflict zones, where fighting is causing destruction, starvation and healthcare emergencies. As a former royal marine, I understand the need to raise defence spending. But I urge the government to maintain as much of the vital development budget as we can. Our investments in conflict zones and our work preventing conflicts make us all safer. Alex Ballinger MP served in the Royal Marines from 2005 to 2013. He is now the Labour MP for Halesowen and Chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) for the Armed Forces.
Morocco World
22-03-2025
- Politics
- Morocco World
Morocco Leads Fight Against Terrorism in Latest Global Index
Rabat – Morocco has emerged as one of the world's safest nations, according to the 2025 Global Terrorism Index report from the Institute for Economics and Peace. The report notably lists Morocco among the four countries in the Middle East and North Africa region that registered scores of zero in terrorist incidents, including Kuwait, Qatar, and Sudan. These countries 'had been free of terrorist activity for at least the past five years,' the report noted. Despite regional threats Morocco built on years of strategic security developments and now outranks several European countries in safety metrics. The country strengthened its anti-terrorism approach by toughening penalties for terrorist activities and revising laws to crack down on individuals seeking terrorist training. It enhanced the monitoring of suspicious financial transfers and built stronger partnerships with international organizations like Interpol and the European Union. In 2023, Morocco launched an anti-extremism program with the EU to combat violent extremism and terrorism through prevention and education. The terrorism landscape continues to evolve in dangerous ways. The Sahel region accounted for over 30% of terrorism-related deaths in 2024, with attacks multiplying in Niger following the withdrawal of French and American forces, according to the report. It further noted that 90% of terrorism victims are in armed conflict zones, demonstrating the direct link between instability and extremism. According to the report, Al-Qaeda-affiliated groups like Nosrat al-Islam pose increasing threats across the Sahel desert, endangering stability throughout North Africa, including Morocco. Stretching from Mauritania to Sudan, the Sahel has become a global terrorism hotspot. In 2020, the region recorded over 13,800 victims, with Burkina Faso experiencing a staggering 575% increase in attacks. The report also described how recent geopolitical shifts in Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso — particularly their growing alignment with Russia and China — created security gaps that terrorist groups quickly took advantage of. Meanwhile, and with the growing terrorist threats in the Sahel region, Morocco responded by enhancing border controls and deploying advanced technologies to prevent terrorist infiltration. The country has recently foiled a terrorist plot that was planned by a terrorist cell 'Khalifa Lions in Maghrib Al-Aksa,' which had direct links with an ISIS leader operating in the African Sahel Region. Read also: Morocco's BCIJ Latest Counter-Terrorism Operation, Details, Regional Context Today's terrorist groups embrace digital strategies beyond physical violence. The report notes that 60% of terrorist attacks go unclaimed by organized groups, pointing to the rise of lone-wolf terrorism fueled by technology and digital platforms spreading extremist ideologies. Secure messaging apps like Telegram enable radical propaganda to spread widely. However, Morocco has created a digital platform 'Yakada,' through which citizens can report terrorist or extremist content they come across on social media. Through these comprehensive security measures and international cooperation, Morocco continues to defend itself against evolving terrorism threats while establishing itself as a regional security leader. Morocco's efforts in counterterrorism have been gaining acclaim recently with several international reports commending the country's strategy in defying terrorist threats.
New York Times
22-03-2025
- Politics
- New York Times
Pakistan Is Trying to Integrate the ‘Most Dangerous Place' on Earth. It's Failing.
The rugged borderlands of northwestern Pakistan have long had a reputation for lawlessness and militancy, labeled by President Barack Obama as 'the most dangerous place in the world.' The Pakistani government, facing global scrutiny over the presence of groups linked to Al Qaeda and the Taliban, moved in 2018 to overhaul the semiautonomous region's outdated governance. It merged what had been known as the Federally Administered Tribal Areas into the country's mainstream political and legal framework, vowing economic progress and a reduction in violence. Today, the effort is seen by many in the region as a failure. A renewed wave of terrorism, especially after the Taliban's return to power in Afghanistan in 2021, has undone much of the progress toward stability. Attacks have risen sharply in Pakistan, with more than 1,000 deaths across the country last year, up from 250 in 2019, according to the Institute for Economics and Peace, an international think tank. The group ranks Pakistan as one of the countries most affected by terrorism, second only to Burkina Faso in Africa. The region's troubles can be traced back to harsh colonial-era laws that were in force for more than a century and were meant to control the population, not serve it. The tribal areas' ambiguous legal status and proximity to Afghanistan also made them a geopolitical pawn. The merger of the underdeveloped region into a neighboring province has not resolved deep-rooted issues, experts say. The deteriorating law and order there is yet another major challenge for a nation of 250 million people that is grappling with economic instability and political turmoil. Tribal elders and Islamist parties are now going so far as to advocate for the merger to be reversed. That is also a primary goal of one of the biggest sources of insecurity in the region: the Pakistani Taliban, who have waged a relentless assault on security forces in a campaign aimed at overthrowing the government and establishing an Islamic caliphate. Pakistan's leaders 'promised development, peace, jobs and a fair justice system — everything we have been denied for decades,' said Noor Islam Safi, an activist from Mohmand, one of seven districts of the British-era tribal areas. 'The promises were empty,' he said during a protest in Mohmand that he led in mid-January. 'All we've been given is neglect, rising violence and a growing sense of hopelessness.' The former tribal region, which covers about 10,000 square miles — less than 5 percent of Pakistan's landmass — and is home to more than five million people, has long been a stark emblem of terrorism, repression and neglect. In 1901, the British imposed the harsh frontier laws to suppress resistance and buffer against Russian expansion. Pakistan inherited these regulations at its birth in 1947. The region's people were denied basic rights and excluded from national governance; they were not given the right to vote in Pakistani elections until 1997. Residents lived under the constant threat of arbitrary arrest and the absence of fair trials. Collective punishment was common. Entire communities suffered for the actions of one individual, facing imprisonment, fines, property destruction and exile. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 turned the region into a staging ground for Islamic fighters backed by the United States, Arab nations and Pakistan who were battling Moscow's forces. 'This border region has long served as a geopolitical chessboard, where the ambitions of colonial and post-colonial powers have sought to influence Afghanistan and reshape global geopolitics at the expense of local communities,' said Sartaj Khan, a researcher in Karachi, Pakistan, with extensive expertise in the country's northwest. After the Soviet withdrawal in 1989, the region descended into lawlessness, becoming a hub for fugitives, criminal networks, smugglers of arms and drugs, and kidnappers demanding ransom. The region became a militant stronghold after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and the Pentagon, as U.S. military operations in Afghanistan pushed Taliban and Qaeda militants into the tribal areas. Groups like Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, also known as the T.T.P. or Pakistani Taliban, moved to establish control. Such groups offered rudimentary governance while intimidating and killing tribal elders who resisted their rule. Over time, the T.T.P. expanded its terrorist network beyond the borderlands, carrying out attacks across Pakistan, including in major cities like Karachi, and even internationally, notably in New York, with the attempted Times Square bombing in 2010. After a vast operation in the tribal areas, the military declared victory over the T.T.P. in 2018. That year, Pakistan's Parliament abolished the colonial-era laws and merged the region with the adjacent province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. But gaps in the integration process, analysts and political leaders say, left the region vulnerable when the Taliban returned to power. The Taliban's resurgence gave the T.T.P. sanctuaries across the border in Afghanistan and access to advanced, American-made weapons that had been seized after the collapse of the U.S.-backed Afghan government. This allowed the Pakistani Taliban to escalate attacks in the former tribal areas. Since mid-2021, a majority of the surging terrorist attacks in Pakistan have occurred in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, with a significant concentration in the seven former tribal districts, most notably North Waziristan and South Waziristan. The T.T.P. killed 16 Pakistani soldiers in South Waziristan in December, and Pakistan responded with an airstrike inside Afghanistan, heightening tensions with Taliban rulers in Kabul. In Kurram district, 50 miles southeast of Kabul, sectarian violence exacerbated by land disputes led to more than 230 deaths last year. Road closures by warring tribes have kept residents trapped in a cycle of violence. Farther north along the Afghan border, in Bajaur district, 34 attacks were recorded in 2024, primarily carried out by the Islamic State Khorasan, or ISIS-K, the local branch of the Islamic State, which poses global security risks. In other districts, the T.T.P. and local allied groups exert control, extorting money from traders. The new legal frameworks in the former tribal areas remain largely unenforced because of inadequate administrative capacity and insufficient numbers of formal police officers. While the region was promised $563 million in annual development funding, Pakistan's economic struggles have caused shortfalls. Many essential services are still underdeveloped or dysfunctional. 'An abrupt merger, rather than a gradual and thorough process, failed to replace a governance system that had operated for over a century,' said Naveed Ahmad Shinwari, a development expert with extensive experience in the region. While police personnel have been recruited and stations established, the traditional semiformal police, composed of illiterate individuals representing their tribes, have struggled to transition into a formal structure, making them vulnerable to militant attacks. Courts exist in some places, but officials in many areas say that security concerns have prevented them from building a judicial infrastructure, forcing residents to travel long distances for justice. As part of the Trump administration's gutting of global aid, major initiatives in former tribal areas, including land settlement regulation and infrastructure improvements, have been disrupted. The region's merger initially garnered widespread support among residents eager for equal citizenship, but significant resistance has emerged to the changes that followed. Replacing outdated tribal policing and jirgas, or councils of tribal elders, has prompted deep concerns about the impact on a centuries-old way of life. 'Our jirgas used to resolve cases in months, sometimes days, but Pakistan's overburdened judiciary takes years,' said Shiraz Ahmed, a resident of a remote village who traveled 60 miles for a land dispute hearing. While some groups in the former tribal areas are calling for the merger to be reversed, analysts said that doing so could essentially hand the region over to militant groups.
See - Sada Elbalad
14-03-2025
- Politics
- See - Sada Elbalad
Egypt Drops 16 Spots in Global Terrorism Index
Taarek Refaat Egypt dropped 16 places on the Global Terrorism Index (GTI), from the 13th spot in 2014 to the 29th in 2024. The Global Terrorism Index (GTI), an index issued by the Institute for Economics and Peace, measuring the impact of terrorism, was released on Friday. It ranks 163 countries based on four sub-indicators: the number of terrorist incidents, the number of deaths caused by terrorist groups, the number of injuries caused by terrorist groups, and the number of hostages taken by terrorist groups, in a given year. The lower a country's ranking on the index, the lower its terrorism rates. The Sahel region of Africa remains the epicenter of global terrorism, accounting for more than half of all terrorism-related deaths last year. Notably, five of the ten most affected countries in 2024 were from this region.
Shafaq News
11-03-2025
- Business
- Shafaq News
Iraq's global standing: education gap, security risks, and economic challenges
Shafaq News/ Iraq continues to face significant challenges in education, security, and economic well-being, as reflected in recent global reports. Education: Gender Disparity in Higher Education Iraq remains among the countries where men significantly outnumber women in obtaining higher education, according to data published by the Arab Barometer network. The data shows that 28% of Iraqi men have attained post-secondary education, compared to only 20% of women. In contrast, Kuwait recorded the highest female higher education attainment rate among Arab countries, with 79% of women holding post-secondary degrees compared to 71% of men. At the other end of the spectrum, Mauritania had the largest gender disparity, with only 15% of women receiving higher education, compared to 29% of men—the lowest ratio in the survey and below the global average. Security: Iraq Ranks 13th in Terrorism Impact Iraq ranked 13th globally in the 2024 Global Terrorism Index, issued by the Institute for Economics and Peace. The index reported an increase in the number of countries experiencing terrorist attacks, rising from 58 to 66. While the Middle East saw a 7% decline in terrorist incidents in 2024, with 618 recorded attacks, ongoing violence between Israel and Palestinian factions has contributed to regional instability. Syria ranked 3rd globally in terrorism impact, followed by Somalia (7th), while Iraq came 13th, Yemen 22nd, and Palestine 25th. Among the least affected Arab nations, Kuwait, Mauritania, Morocco, Qatar, and Sudan recorded zero terrorism incidents, according to the report. Economy: Iraq's Standing in Wealth and Public Spending A recent UN Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA) report ranked Iraq 12th among 20 Arab nations and 118th globally (out of 173 countries) in terms of material well-being, based on actual per capita spending. The report indicates that the average annual expenditure per Iraqi citizen was USD 6,461. Regarding individual income levels, Iraq ranked 9th in the Arab world and 106th globally, with an annual per capita income of USD 12,421. In terms of government spending per capita, Iraq also ranked 9th regionally and 102nd worldwide. The report noted that telecommunication services are the most expensive sector for Iraqis, while education remains the least costly compared to other expenses.
