‘Zone of Peace’ Campaign Launched In 3 Countries to Build ‘People(s)-Centered Movement’ in the Americas

Editor’s Note: This article originally appeared in Peoples Dispatch.

On Sunday, January 8, president of the Sanaa-based government in Yemen, Mahdi al-Mashat, congratulated the thousands of protesters who participated in the “siege is war” rallies held across the country a day earlier to denounce the Saudi-led war and blockade.

Al-Mashat said that by participating in the rallies, the Yemeni people had once again shown their united opposition to the external aggression directed at their country and the suffering that the war has unleashed on millions of people.

Al-Masirah reported that thousands of Yemenis took to the streets in capital Sanaa and several other cities on Saturday, January 7, denouncing the Saudi Arabia-led and U.S.-assisted aggression and blockade of Yemen.

The protesters carried banners and posters denouncing the U.S.-Saudi collaboration in the war against Yemen and demanded an immediate end to the siege of the country. Protesters asserted that the blockade was another form of warfare against the people of Yemen.

Protesters also raised the issue of the uncertainty created following the collapse of a rare UN-led ceasefire in October. Speaking at the protests, Sa’ada Governor Mohammad Jaber Awad said that the “status of no war and no peace” should end as soon as possible as it allows the continued looting of the country’s natural resources, Press TV reported.

Ever since the Houthis took control of Sanaa, a Saudi Arabia-led international military coalition has been waging a war in Yemen, calling the Houthis an Iranian proxy. The coalition has also imposed a comprehensive land, sea, and air blockade of Yemen, preventing the movement of both people and goods. The war and the siege have killed thousands of people and caused massive suffering for millions.

According to UN estimates, over 377,000 people have been killed in the war so far and millions have been displaced from their homes. Over seven years of war have also severely devastated the health and other civilian infrastructure of Yemen, already the poorest country in the Arab world. According to one estimate, despite the ceasefire, over 3,000 Yemenis were killed or injured last year alone.

The United States has been supplying weapons worth billions of dollars to Saudi Arabia and its allies and has provided technical and other forms of assistance to the coalition forces in the war. After facing global criticism for its role in creating the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, newly elected President Joe Biden decided to end the U.S. role in the war in Yemen in February 2021.

However, despite publicly announcing the end of its role in the war, the United States has continued supplying weapons to Saudi Arabia and its allies. There are also reports of its forces being involved in implementing the siege on Yemen.

Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by Multipolarista.

Facing a deep economic crisis and bankruptcy, Sri Lanka was rocked by large protests this July, which led to the resignation of the government.

Numerous Western political leaders and media outlets blamed this uprising on a supposed Chinese “debt trap,” echoing a deceptive narrative that has been thoroughly debunked by mainstream academics.

In reality, the vast majority of the South Asian nation’s foreign debt is owed to the West.

Sri Lanka has a history of struggling with Western debt burdens, having gone through 16 “economic stabilization programs” with the Washington-dominated International Monetary Fund (IMF).

These structural adjustment programs clearly have not worked, given Sri Lanka’s economy has been managed by the IMF for many of the decades since it achieved independence from British colonialism in 1948.

As of 2021, a staggering 81 percent of Sri Lanka’s foreign debt was owned by U.S. and European financial institutions, as well as Western allies Japan and India.

This pales in comparison to the mere 10 percent owed to Beijing.

According to official statistics from Sri Lanka’s Department of External Resources, as of the end of April 2021, the plurality of its foreign debt is owned by Western vulture funds and banks, which have nearly half, at 47 percent.

The top holders of the Sri Lankan government’s debt, in the form of international sovereign bonds (ISBs), are the following firms:

• BlackRock (U.S.)
• Ashmore Group (Britain)
• Allianz (Germany)
• UBS (Switzerland)
• HSBC (Britain)
• JPMorgan Chase (U.S.)
• Prudential (U.S.)

The Asian Development Bank and World Bank, which are thoroughly dominated by the United States, own 13 percent and 9 percent of Sri Lanka’s foreign debt, respectively.

Washington’s hegemony over the World Bank is well known, and the U.S. government is the only World Bank Group shareholder with veto power.

Less known is that the Asian Development Bank (ADB) is, too, largely a vehicle of U.S. soft power. Neoconservative DC-based think tank the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), which is funded by Western governments, affectionately described the ADB as a “strategic asset for the United States,” and a crucial challenger to the much newer, Chinese-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank.

“The United States, through its membership in the ADB and with its Indo-Pacific Strategy, seeks to compete with China as a security and economic partner of choice in the region,” boasted CSIS.

Another country that has significant influence over the ADB is Japan, which similarly owns 10 percent of Sri Lanka’s foreign debt.

An additional 2 percent of Sri Lanka’s foreign debt was owed to India as of April 2021, although that number has steadily increased since. In early 2022, India was in fact the top lender to Sri Lanka, with New Delhi disbursing 550 percent more credit than Beijing between January and April.

Both Japan and India are key Western allies, and members of Washington’s anti-China military alliance in the region, the Quad.

Together, these Western firms and their allies Japan and India own 81 percent of Sri Lanka’s foreign debt – more than three-quarters of its international obligations.

By contrast, China owns just one-tenth of Sri Lanka’s foreign debt.

The overwhelming Western role in indebting Sri Lanka is made evident by a graph published by the country’s Department of External Resources, showing the foreign commitments by currency:

As of the end of 2019, less than 5 percent of Sri Lanka’s foreign debt was denominated in China’s currency the yuan (CNY). On the other hand, nearly two-thirds, 64.6 percent, was owed in U.S. dollars, along with an additional 14.4 percent in IMF special drawing rights (SDR) and more than 10 percent in the Japanese yen (JPY).

Western media reporting on the economic crisis in Sri Lanka, however, ignores these facts, giving the strong, and deeply misleading, impression that the chaos is in large part because of Beijing.

Sri Lankan Economic Crisis Driven by Neoliberal Policies, Inflation, Corruption, Covid-19 Pandemic

This July, Sri Lanka’s government was forced to resign, after hundreds of thousands of protesters stormed public buildings, setting some on fire, while also occupying the homes of the country’s leaders.

The protests were driven by skyrocketing rates of inflation, as well as rampant corruption and widespread shortages of fuel, food, and medicine – a product of the country’s inability to pay for imports.

In May, Sri Lanka defaulted on its debt. In June, it tried to negotiate another structural adjustment program with the U.S.-dominated International Monetary Fund (IMF). This would have been Sri Lanka’s 17th IMF bailout, but the talks ended without a deal.

By July, Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe publicly admitted that his government was “bankrupt.”

Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who spent a significant part of his life working in the United States, entered office in 2019 and immediately imposed a series of neoliberal economic policies, which included cutting taxes on corporations.

These neoliberal policies decreased government revenue. And the precarious economic situation was only exacerbated by the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Facing an out-of-control 39.1 percent inflation rate in May, the Sri Lankan government did a 180 and suddenly raised taxes again, further contributing to popular discontent, which broke out in a social explosion in July.

Media Falsely Blames China for Sri Lankan Debt Default

While 81 percent of Sri Lanka’s foreign debt is owned by Western financial institutions, Japan, and India, major corporate media outlets sought to blame China for the country’s bankruptcy and subsequent protests.

The Wall Street Journal pointed the finger at Beijing in a deeply misleading article titled “China’s Lending Comes Under Fire as Sri Lankan Debt Crisis Deepens.” The newspaper noted that the crisis “opens a window for India to push back against Chinese influence in the Indian Ocean region.”

U.S. media giant the Associated Press also tried to scapegoat China, and its deceptive news wire was republished by outlets across the world, from ABC News to Saudi Arabia’s Al Arabiya.

Many corporate media outlets in India, including the New Indian Express, Business Standard, India Today, The Print, as well as Japan’s media conglomerate Nikkei published similarly fallacious reports.

U.S. government propaganda outlet Voice of America, which is closely linked to the CIA, employed the same spurious tactics in an article in April titled “China’s Global Image Under Strain as Sri Lanka Faces Debt Trap.”

VOA accused Beijing of “pursuing a kind of ‘debt-trap diplomacy’ meant to bring economically weak countries to their knees, dependent on China for support.”

China's Global Image Under Strain as Sri Lanka Faces Debt Traphttps://t.co/gqWbe5PGdz

— Voice of America (@VOANews) April 26, 2022

On social media, the Western propaganda narrative surrounding the July protests in Sri Lanka was even more detached from reality.

A veteran of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), and National Security Agency (NSA), Derek J. Grossman, portrayed the unrest as an anti-China uprising.

“China’s window of opportunity to one day control Sri Lanka probably just closed,” he tweeted on July 9, as the government announced it was resigning.

After working for U.S. spy agencies, Grossman is today an analyst at the Pentagon’s main think tank, the RAND Corporation, where he has pushed a hawkish line against Beijing.

China’s window of opportunity to one day control Sri Lanka probably just closed. pic.twitter.com/WOLIb3SUTf

— Derek J. Grossman (@DerekJGrossman) July 9, 2022

BBC Reluctantly Admits the ‘Chinese Debt Trap’ Narrative in Sri Lanka Is False

China has funded several large infrastructure projects in Sri Lanka, building an international airport, hospitals, a convention center, a sports stadium, and most controversially a port in the southern coastal town of Hambantota.

The UK government’s BBC sent a reporter to Sri Lanka to investigate these accusations of supposed “Chinese debt traps.” But after speaking to locals, he reluctantly came to the conclusion that the narrative is false.

“The truth is that many independent experts say that we should be wary of the Chinese debt trap narrative, and we’ve found quite a lot of evidence here in Sri Lanka which contradicts it,” BBC host Ben Chu acknowledged.

He explained, “The Hambantota port, well, that was instigated by the Sri Lankans, not by the Chinese. And it can’t currently be used by Chinese military naval vessels, and actually there’s some pretty formidable barriers to that happening.”

“A lot of the projects we’ve been seeing, well, they feel more like white elephants than they do Chinese global strategic assets,” Chu added.

In our latest film from Sri Lanka, which faces financial collapse as the global Big Squeeze bites, Ben Chu examines the effect that Chinese loans and investment are having on the country:#Newsnight https://t.co/GBFZ1ItP0G

— BBC Newsnight (@BBCNewsnight) June 22, 2022

The British state media outlet interviewed the director of Port City Colombo’s economic commission, Saliya Wickramasuriya, who emphasized, “The Chinese government is not involved in setting the rules and regulations, so from that standpoint the government of Sri Lanka is in control, and it’s up to the government of Sri Lanka’s wish to flavor the city, the development of the city, in the way it wants to.”

“It is accurate to say that infrastructure development has boomed under Chinese investment, Chinese debt sometimes, but those are things that we’ve actually needed for a long, long time,” Wickramasuriya added.

Chu clarified that, “Importantly, it’s not debt but equity the Chinese own here.”

“So is the debt trap not all it seems?” he asked.

Mainstream U.S. Academics Debunk the ‘Chinese Debt Trap’ Myth

Mainstream Western academics have similarly investigated the claims of “Chinese debt traps,” and come to the conclusion that they do not exist.

Even a professor at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies, which is notorious for its revolving door with the U.S. government and close links to spy agencies, acknowledged that “the Chinese ‘debt trap’ is a myth.”

Writing in 2021 in the de facto mouthpiece of the DC political establishment, The Atlantic magazine, scholar Deborah Brautigam stated clearly that the debt-trap narrative is “a lie, and a powerful one.”

“Our research shows that Chinese banks are willing to restructure the terms of existing loans and have never actually seized an asset from any country, much less the port of Hambantota,” Brautigam said in the article, which was co-authored by Meg Rithmire, a professor at the stridently anti-socialist Harvard Business School.

The Chinese "debt-trap" narrative is a false one which wrongfully portrays both Beijing and the developing countries it deals with, Deborah Brautigam and Meg Rithmire write: https://t.co/FagExsdeNT

— The Atlantic (@TheAtlantic) February 7, 2021

Brautigam published her findings in a 2020 article for Johns Hopkins’ China Africa Research Initiative, titled “Debt Relief with Chinese Characteristics,” along with fellow researchers Kevin Acker and Yufan Huang.

They investigated Chinese loans in Sri Lanka, Iraq, Zimbabwe, Ethiopia, Angola, and the Republic of Congo, and “found no ‘asset seizures’ and, despite contract clauses requiring arbitration, no evidence of the use of courts to enforce payments, or application of penalty interest rates.”

They discovered that Beijing cancelled more than $3.4 billion and restructured or refinanced roughly $15 billion of debt in Africa between 2000 and 2019. At least 26 individual loans to African nations were renegotiated.

Western critics have attacked Beijing, claiming there is a lack of transparency surrounding its loans. Brautigam explained that “Chinese lenders prefer to address restructuring quietly, on a bilateral basis, tailoring programs to each situation.”

The researchers noted that China puts an “emphasis on ‘development sustainability’ (looking at the future contribution of the project) rather than ‘debt sustainability’ (looking at the current state of the economy) as the basis of project lending decisions.”

“Moreover, despite critics’ worries that China could seize its borrower’s assets, we do not see China attempting to take advantage of countries in debt distress,” they added.

“There were no ‘asset seizures’ in the 16 restructuring cases that we found,” the scholars continued. “We have not yet seen cases in Africa where Chinese banks or companies have sued sovereign governments or exercised the option for international arbitration standard in Chinese loan contracts.”

Benjamin Norton is founder and editor of Multipolarista.

Only a handful of European countries have refused to impose sanctions on the Russian Federation after the United States called for them once Moscow’s “special military operation” in Ukraine began on February 24. Serbia is one such outlier. As a result, the West is pressuring the Balkan nation to change its foreign-policy vector and pick a side in the Russo-Ukrainian conflict.

Ever since the war in Ukraine broke out, Serbia has been trying to preserve its neutral position. Belgrade condemned the Russian invasion, but did not join in on anti-Russia sanctions. That led Moscow to keep Serbia off its list of “unfriendly countries.” That means the Balkan nation—unlike European Union members—can continue purchasing Russian natural gas and oil in U.S. dollars, rather than opening ruble accounts at Gazprombank, a privately owned Russian bank. The problem, however, is the EU could indirectly punish Serbia for not imposing sanctions.

According to reports, transport of crude oil from Croatia for Serbian oil corporation Naftna Industrija Srbije (NIS) will cease May 15 due to the EU’s sanctions against Russian companies. Russia’s Gazprom Neft owns 56.15 percent of shares, while the Serbian state owns 29.87 percent. The fourth package of EU sanctions prohibits European companies from cooperating with a number of Russian companies, including Gazprom Neft and its subsidiaries, in which Russia has more than 50 percent ownership.

Getting Around Sanctions

What are Serbia’s options? According to Jelica Putnikovic, editor in chief of the Energija Balkana web portal, the alternative to oil supplies from Croatia is transporting crude oil by rail from the Adriatic ports of Durres in Albania and Bar in Montenegro, or by barge from the Greek port of Thessaloniki and the Black Sea port of Romania’s Constanța.

“It is, however, a longer and more expensive transport. The good thing is that Romania and Bulgaria still have not announced that they plan to impose similar sanctions on NIS, which opens the possibility for various oil deliveries to Serbia,” Putnikovic stressed in an interview with a Serbian publication. Her analyses show Serbia produces about 23 percent of its oil needs, while 45 percent of imports come from Iraq, 10 percent from Kazakhstan, 1 percent from Norway and about 16 percent from Russia. Russian gas is relatively cheap for Serbia. It costs $270 per 1,000 cubic meters, while gas prices broke all records at the end of February in Europe and reached $3,900 per cubic meters.

“For us, oil and gas supplies are the most important issues,” Vladimir Djukanovic, a Serbian lawmaker and the top official of the ruling Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) said in an interview with Toward Freedom. The SNS won the majority of parliamentary seats in elections held Sunday, and the party’s leader, Aleksandar Vucic has been re-elected for a second presidential term.

Djukanovic claims Serbia—despite strong pressure from the EU—does not intend to join anti-Russia sanctions.

“If the EU decides to impose energy sanctions on Russia, then we can think about joining sanctions,” Djukanovic added.

Despite sanctions, the EU continues to import Russian oil and gas, although it has radically cut economic ties with Moscow. Presently, the only European air corridor left open to Russia is via Serbia, which is now acting as a gateway. However, Air Serbia—the country’s national airline—has been facing anonymous bomb threats on an almost daily basis. “The author has expressed their dissatisfaction with Serbia’s diplomatic relations with Russia,” reported one news agency on an alleged threat.

“Serbia is politically very important to the West. The EU is not pressuring other European countries—namely Moldova, Georgia and Turkey—to impose sanctions on Russia, because those nations already pursue unfriendly and hostile policies toward Russia,” Djukanovic said. “We have good relations with Moscow, and they aim to portray us as an enemy of Russia.” He added Belgrade must preserve the military neutrality it declared in 2007 in response to the 1999 NATO bombing of Yugoslavia.

In spite of that, the Serbian Army cooperates with the United States’ Ohio National Guard. Moreover, according to Gabriel Escobar, the U.S. State Department’s deputy assistant secretary overseeing U.S. policy toward the countries of the so-called “Western Balkans,” Serbian Armed Forces have conducted far more military exercises with NATO members than with Russia.

Serbia’s Uncomfortable Position

But can Serbia really preserve its military neutrality? According to Serbian journalist and analyst Zeljko Pantelic, if Belgrade continues to insist on its “non-aligned” status, it risks cooling down relations with the EU.

“Brussels expects Serbia to harmonize its foreign policy with that of the EU,” Pantelic explained. “If Belgrade, however, attempts to destabilize the region at the expense of Russia, and agrees to be used as the Kremlin’s ‘useful idiot’, the consequences for Serbia will be serious.”

Serbian Parliament Speaker Ivica Dacic, on the other hand, insists imposing sanctions on Russia would be tantamount to “political suicide.”

“If we are ready to give up Kosovo, then we can impose sanctions on Russia,” Dacic said in an interview. “But if we are not ready, then we cannot.”

Indeed, Serbia relies on Russia’s veto power in the United Nations Security Council, as the only way to prevent the self-proclaimed Republic of Kosovo—which is the subject of a long-running political and territorial dispute between the Serbian government and ethnic Albanian Kosovo leaders based in the city of Pristina—from becoming a UN member state. Pantelic, however, believes Belgrade’s justification for not imposing sanctions on Russia because of Kosovo is ridiculous. “Only people acting in bad faith, or those who are total illiterates in geopolitics, can believe in it.”

For Serbia, energy cooperation with Russia plays a very important role—possibly even more important than the Kosovo issue—given the country, according to Vucic’s recent statement, depends 100 percent on Russian gas. Still, in Pantelic’s opinion, Serbia will have to carry out “de-russification” of the Kremlin-owned companies operating in the Balkan nation.

“Otherwise, Belgrade will de facto impose sanctions on itself, because Russian-owned companies in Serbia will not be allowed to do business with the EU,” Pantelic concluded.

One thing is for sure: If Belgrade joins anti-Russia sanctions, or decides to nationalize NIS, relatively cheap Russian gas will become a thing of the past.

Nikola Mikovic is a Serbia-based contributor to CGTN, Global Comment, Byline Times, Informed Comment, and World Geostrategic Insights, among other publications. He is a geopolitical analyst for KJ Reports and Enquire.