Book Review: ‘From Here to Equality’ Counts How Much In Reparations Are Owed to Black People

This article was produced by Peoples Dispatch/Globetrotter News Service.

As Afghanistan’s economy continues to spiral, as many as 34 million Afghans are living below the poverty line, says a new UN report. The “Afghanistan Socio-Economic Outlook 2023” report released by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) on April 18 highlights the impact of cuts in international aid to Afghanistan since the Taliban took power.

The report notes that the number of people below the poverty line in Afghanistan has increased from 19 million in 2020 to 34 million today. It also adds, “Even if the UN aid appeal for international assistance to reach $4.6 billion in 2023 succeeds, it may fall short of what is needed to improve conditions for millions of Afghans.”

The UNDP report comes after the UN said that it was “reviewing its presence” in Afghanistan following the Taliban’s ban on Afghan women from working for the international organization earlier this month. The UN statement suggested that it may be planning to suspend its operations in the country.

The report also notes that Afghanistan is currently facing a severe fiscal crisis after the ending of foreign assistance “that previously accounted for almost 70 percent of the government budget.” A severe banking crisis also continues. In 2022, Afghanistan’s GDP contracted by 3.6 percent. The report adds that the average real per capita income has also declined by 28 percent from the 2020 level.

On May 1, the UN began holding crucial talks regarding Afghanistan in Doha. The participants include the five permanent UN Security Council members, countries in the region such as Pakistan, India, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan, and key players such as Saudi Arabia and Turkey. Notably, the de facto Taliban government of Afghanistan was not invited to participate. “Any meeting about Afghanistan without the participation of the Afghan government is ineffective and counterproductive,” said Abdul Qahar Balkhi, Taliban foreign ministry spokesman.

Editor’s Note: This article originally appeared in Electronic Intifada.

A court in Washington, D.C., has entirely dismissed a lawsuit against the American Studies Association over its support of an academic boycott of Israel.

The lawsuit, which was filed in 2016 by Israel advocates, has now failed three separate times in court – a significant defeat for the Israel lobby’s attempt to punish scholars who back Palestinian rights.

“The court found that the claims primarily arose from advocacy on an issue of public interest and were not likely to succeed,” stated the Center for Constitutional Rights.

In a 2013 referendum, members of the American Studies Association overwhelmingly endorsed an academic boycott of Israel.

The vote followed an endorsement of the boycott by the association’s governing body.

Declaring the boycott an ethical stance, the ASA said that it “represents a principle of solidarity with scholars and students deprived of their academic freedom and an aspiration to enlarge that freedom for all, including Palestinians.”

Israel advocates within the association, however, jumped into action to persecute colleagues who dared to criticize Israel.

Using a tactic known as lawfare, in which Israel lobby groups use legal means to harass and silence supporters of Palestinian rights, the plaintiffs claimed that the boycott resolution was brought by “insurgents” within the association who attempted to “subvert and change the ASA’s purpose” into a political advocacy organization.

The plaintiffs alleged that a “cabal” of leaders from the US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (USACBI) surreptitiously took over the ASA and used their positions on its executive committee and national council to foist the boycott resolution on the association’s unsuspecting membership, misspending ASA money in the process.

A federal court threw out a key claim in the lawsuit in 2017, ruling that the ASA’s endorsement of the boycott was not contrary to the association’s charter.

After the lawsuit was initially dismissed in 2019, the plaintiffs filed an appeal, and opened a second case in the Washington, DC Superior Court.

Later that year, the Superior Court granted the defendants’ motions to dismiss in part, but denied their anti-SLAPP motion.

SLAPP suits are intended to suppress free speech and force people or organizations into spending money defending themselves in court.

But defendants appealed the denial of that anti-SLAPP motion.

The DC Court of Appeals ordered the court to reanalyze the case, resulting in the most recent ruling, notes the Center for Constitutional Rights.

The force behind the lawsuit was the Louis D. Brandeis Center, an Israel advocacy organization that has for years worked to smear Palestine solidarity activism as anti-Semitism, and attempts to suppress it with frivolous lawsuits and bogus civil rights complaints.

The organization’s former president, attorney Kenneth Marcus, represented the plaintiffs until February 2018 – when he was appointed as the Trump administration’s top civil rights enforcer at the US Department of Education.

After resigning from his position in 2020, Marcus returned to lead the Louis D. Brandeis Center.

“The purpose of lawsuits like these are really to harass and intimidate activists who support rights anywhere, but freedom and justice in Palestine in particular,” Astha Sharma Pokharel, staff lawyer with the Center for Constitutional Rights, told The Electronic Intifada.

Along with the anti-SLAPP laws that are designed to deter these kinds of attacks, the court’s dismissal “sends a message to Palestinian rights advocates that they are supported and that the law is on their side,” Sharma Pokharel added.

‘A Losing Strategy’

The Center for Constitutional Rights represented Steven Salaita, one of the defendants targeted by this lawsuit.

In 2014, Salaita was fired by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign for social media comments criticizing Israel’s assault on Gaza that year.

He sued the university for breach of contract, alleging administrators acted under pressure from pro-Israel donors, later settling the case.

Salaita then found himself targeted by the lawsuit against the American Studies Association.

He told The Electronic Intifada this week that he was relieved that the DC court dismissed the lawsuit against the American Studies Association.

“It was something hanging over my head and I dislike being obliged to deal with people who deny my humanity,” Salaita said.

“I don’t know what message [Israel lawfare groups] will hear – probably nothing – but it should send them the message that it’s a losing strategy,” he said.

“More importantly, it should send them the message that even if their nonsense were to be effective according to judicial bodies in the United States, it still won’t stop anybody from agitating against the Israeli state.”

Boycotts, he added, are “designed to bypass and subvert state institutions.”

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.