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Egy katonai delegáció érkezik az Amerikai Egyesült Államokból az USA Szárazföldi Haderejének főparancsnokával, Frederick Ben Hodges altábornagy vezetésével – írja Novorosszia hírügynöksége. Erről Viktoria Kusnir, a Védelmi Minisztérium szóvivője nyilatkozott.

Oroszország nem vesz részt az ukrán hiteltartozás átütemezésében –írja a TASS-ra hivatkozva a Lenta. Szergej Sztorcsak orosz pénzügyminiszter-helyettes kijelentette: „Nem, mi nem veszünk részt a tartozással kapcsolatos műveletben”.

Relief efforts continue in Nepal. Photo Credit: Rajan Shrestha via Wikimedia Commons

The Crusades: A Complete History
By Jonathan Phillips
History Today

The crusades may not be recent history, but the number of times they’ve been appropriated by politicians in the past few years you’d think they might be. Phillips provides a fairly comprehensive history of these wars and the logic behind them.

Nepal’s Aid System is Broken. So These Lifesavers Hacked It.
By Abe Streep
Wired

As governments and international NGOs struggled to provide aid in the aftermath of the devastating earthquake in Nepal, a number of ad hoc, unregistered and unlicensed efforts have sprung up to fill the void these larger organizations have left. Wired looks at one of them, which was borne out of an bed-and-breakfast called the Yellow House.

How PTSD Became a Problem Far Beyond the Battlefield
By Sebastian Junger
Vanity Fair

Junger, who has experience with PTSD on a personal level as well, explores the history of the disorder, its effects and why it’s so prevalent in Western societies. Ultimately, he notes, it boils down to making society feel more inclusive for soldiers who have left the perils of war to return home.

The Killing of Osama bin Laden
By Seymour M. Hersh
The London Review of Books

Love it or leave it, Hersh’s “alternative narrative” of the killing of Osama bin Laden at his compound in Abbottabad has sparked conversations the world over. Hersh’s account posits that bin Laden had been held by Pakistani officials for a number of years and tries to poke holes in the official narrative presented by the Obama administration. Agree with him or not, it’s worth a read to see what all the fuss is about.

Theorizing the Drone
By Grégoire Chamayou
Longreads

What does the rise of the drone mean for modern warfare? How does it, if it does at all, change the moral calculations in war? What even counts as a drone? These are just a few of the questions French philosopher Grégoire Chamayou tries to answer in these four chapters republished by Longreads from his book Theorizing the Drone.

Blogs:

Climate Change: A Generational Challenge by Elly Rostoum
Turkmenistan and Europe’s pipe dreams by Mark Varga
International Security: We’re Doing It Wrong by Oliver Barrett
Turkey Cracks Down on NGOs by Gary Sands
Countering the Sunni-Shia Divide by Ali G. Scotten

Over at FPA.org:

Great Decisions 2015 Spring Updates by Eugene Steinberg, Paul Mutter, Daniel R. Donovan, Hannah Gais, and Jordan Stutts

A Kreml nem kívánta kommentálni pénteken a Kommerszant című napilap értesülését, miszerint Moszkva a Párizs által felajánlottnál több pénzt akar a francia Mistral helikopterhordozó hajók helyett. Dmitrij Peszkov, az orosz államfő szóvivője csak annyit fűzött hozzá az újság közléséhez, hogy az orosz vezetés továbbra is "az áru vagy pénz" elvhez tartja magát.

Oroszország a NATO miatt fokozatosan erősíteni fogja katonai jelenlétét a Krímben - jelentette ki Alekszandr Grusko, az észak-atlanti szervezetnél akkreditált orosz nagykövet a Ria Novosztyi orosz hírügynökségnek. A diplomata azt mondta: "amit teszünk, az valamennyi nemzetközi kötelezettségvállalással egybevág. Semmit sem sértünk meg. Nincs olyan tiltás, hogy nem helyezhetünk el ott (a Krím félszigeten) bizonyos típusú fegyvereket".

The 15-year-old diarist was a singular talent. Let’s stop pretending every young woman tweeting her life under fire is doing the same.

Nyílt társadalmi vitát kezdeményez a prágai nemzeti múzeum arról, mi legyen a "nemzet atyjának" nevezett František Palacký (1798-1876) történész és politikus agyával.

Életfogytiglani szabadságvesztésre ítélték az Egyesült Államok kenyai és tanzániai nagykövetsége ellen 1998-ban elkövetett robbantásos merényletekben játszott szerepe miatt pénteken New Yorkban Kálid al-Favvazt, aki az amerikai hatóságok szerint Oszama bin Laden egyik helyettese volt.

Sarmis-15 elnevezéssel nagyszabású nemzetközi hadgyakorlat kezdődött pénteken az erdélyi Nagysinken (Cincu), s abban az amerikai, a brit, a kanadai, és a román hadsereg mintegy 1500 katonája vesz részt több mint kétszáz páncélos csapatszállító járművel és harci eszközzel.

An interesting infographic provides some detail about the two TSPs in Europe.

12 A-10s belonging to the first Air Force Theater Security Package and 12 F-15s of the first ANG  TSP (theater security package) are currently deployed in eastern Europe in support of Operation Atlantic Resolve.

Both TSPs will operate from bases across the Old Continent for about 6 months to augment U.S. Air Force in Europe support to Operation Atlantic Resolve, and reassure regional allies.

The following infographic provides some additional detail about the activities conducted by the TSPs so far (actually, until May 11).

 

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Fellegi Tamás, a hasonló nevű volt miniszter édesapja 85 éves volt. 1957-ben elbocsátották a Magyar Rádióból, de később ő alapíthatta meg az MRT legendás Szórakoztató és Zenei Főosztályát.

Az Iszlám Állam (IÁ) nevű dzsihadista szervezet pénteken elfoglalta a nyugat-iraki Ramádi város központját, fegyveresei kitűzték zászlójukat a tartományi kormányzat épületére - jelentették szemtanúk.

REUTERS/Philippe Wojazer

Embrassons-nous Folleville ! Mercredi, la Commission a clôt son bras de fer avec la France. Mieux, elle l’a félicité dans un grand élan d’affection publique : « je salue les autorités françaises pour leur engagement à se réformer (…) et pour les mesures prises afin d’assurer la viabilité des finances publiques et ramener le déficit sous 3 % d’ici 2017 », n’a pas hésité à déclarer le très austère vice-président de l’exécutif européen chargé de l’euro, le Letton Valdis Dombrovskis. « Notre investissement en temps, notre capacité de persuasion ont payé », s’est félicité auprès de Libération, Michel Sapin, le ministre des finances. L’annoncedu rebond inattendu de la croissance française (+0,6 % du PIB au premier trimestre), soit mieux que l’ensemble de la zone euro (+0,4%) et surtout que la locomotive allemande (+0,3 %), est venue couronner la lune de miel entre l’exécutif européen et l’Hexagone.

C’est dans le cadre du « semestre européen » que la Commission a rendu son avis sur la France : chaque pays de l’Union a droit, chaque année, à sa recommandation de politique économique (qui devra ensuite être adoptée par le conseil des ministres des Finances (Ecofin)). Cette étape était, pour le coup, très attendue, car Paris devait absolument convaincre de sa volonté de poursuivre ses réformes structurelles afin de relancer durablement son économie. Et ce, après avoir obtenu, en février, à la suite d’une bataille homérique menée par Pierre Moscovici, le commissaire chargé des affaires économiques et monétaires, un nouveau délai de deux ans (après celui de 2013) pour ramener son déficit public sous la barre des 3 % du PIB. Plutôt que d’attendre le verdict après avoir transmis sa copie à la Commission, le gouvernement a cette fois mouillé sa chemise pour rassurer les plus « durs » des commissaires : Manuel Valls même s’est rendu à Bruxelles pour appuyer les visites répétées de Michel Sapin et d’Emmanuel Macron, le ministre de l’Économie, le 18 mars, afin d’expliquer que l’effort serait poursuivi en dépit des défaites électorales et de l’amélioration de la conjoncture. « Les circonstances géo-politiques, avec la crise grecque et la perspective du référendum britannique sur l’appartenance à l’Union européenne, ont sans doute joué en notre faveur », reconnaît Michel Sapin : de fait, il n’était pas vraiment urgent d’ouvrir un troisième front avec la France. « Mais pas seulement », insiste le ministre des Finances, « sinon la crédibilité de la Commission aurait été mise en cause ».

Pour elle, le compte est vraiment bon : elle se dit convaincue que l’Hexagone ramènera son déficit à 3,4 % en 2016, comme elle s’y est engagée, et que les réformes structurelles seront poursuivies (elle cite six domaines prioritaires dont la réduction des effets de seuil en matière de représentation du personnel, la réforme des retraites complémentaires, réduction du coût du travail et du SMIC, les accords de maintien de l’emploi, l’amélioration du système fiscal, etc.). « Il est essentiel que le gouvernement français maintienne l’élan et profite de l’amélioration des conditions économiques pour poursuivre l’agenda de réformes », a souligné Dombrovskis. Autrement dit, « si on tient tous nos engagements, la Commission estime qu’il n’y aura pas de problème », commente Michel Sapin.

Côté déficit, l’exécutif européen se montre moins exigeant sur la réduction du « déficit structurel » (corrigé des variations de la conjoncture), la France prévoyant de faire moins que les - 0,8 % exigés, puisque les objectifs de déficit nominal devraient être tenus. « On a bien fait de procéder à l’opération-vérité de l’automne dernier qui a beaucoup crispé en annonçant clairement ce qu’il était possible de faire », estime le grand argentier français. « Surtout qu’au final, le déficit annoncé de 4,3 % pour 2014 n’a été que de 4 % ce qui a rassuré tout le monde ». L’effort supplémentaire de 4 milliards d’euros d’économie pour 2015 exigé par la Commission devra encore être validé le 20 juin prochain, mais pour Michel Sapin l’affaire est entendue.

Reste que, pour l’exécutif européen, l’économie française demeure fragile comme en témoigne le niveau élevé d’un chômage (3 points de plus qu’en 2007, soit 10,3 %) qui ne devrait pas décroitre d’ici à 2017, la dégradation des parts de marché à l’exportation, le niveau très élevé des dépenses publiques et de la dette publique, la faiblesse de l’investissement, etc. Ainsi, le rebond d’activité au premier trimestre est surtout porté par la consommation (favorisée par la baisse des prix de l’énergie) et n’a entrainé aucune diminution du chômage. Pis : 13.500 emplois ont été détruits au premier trimestre… Autant dire qu’elle reste sous surveillance : toute dégradation de la situation de la seconde économie de la zone euro aurait des implications pour l’ensemble de ses partenaires souligne ainsi la Commission.

Mais c’est aussi vrai des bons élèves de la zone euro qui devraient faire plus d’efforts pour soutenir l’activité chez leurs partenaires qui doivent purger leurs finances publiques et réformer leur économie. C’est en particulier le cas de l’Allemagne : la Commission estime qu’elle devrait investir dans les infrastructures, l’éducation et la recherche en profitant de ses marges de manœuvre budgétaire.

Pour Michel Sapin, c’est la preuve que la Commission commence à raisonner au niveau de la zone euro et pas « pays par pays ». « Il faut sortir de cette surveillance budgétaire trop rigide, trop tatillonne ». Mais il reconnaît que cela passe aussi par l’instauration d’un vrai gouvernement économique qui implique une réforme des traités européens, une perspective qui hérisse le gouvernement français…

N.B.: Article paru dans Libération du 14 mai

It took 17 years, but federal prosecutors have finally won a conviction for a militant linked to the devastating al Qaeda bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that left 224 dead and 4,000 injured and marked the group’s emergence as America’s top terrorist adversary.

A federal judge Friday sentenced Khaled al-Fawwaz, a top former advisor to Osama bin Laden, to life in prison. He was convicted in February on four conspiracy counts in connection to the 1998 attack, which killed 12 Americans.

The twin truck bomb attacks in Dar es Salaam and Nairobi prompted then-President Bill Clinton to launch Operation Infinite Reach, which consisted of cruise missile strikes in Somalia and Afghanistan. The missiles fired into east Africa destroyed the Al-Shifa pharmaceutical factory in Somalia, a facility that ended up having no connection to al Qaeda or bin Laden.

Strikes in Afghanistan destroyed four training camps and were an effort to kill bin Laden, who was believed to be at the Zhawar Kili al-Badr base. He left hours before the missiles struck.

After 9/11, Clinton came under fierce criticism for not having mounted a more muscular attempt to kill bin Laden.

The bombings in Kenya and Tanzania were the second attack by al Qaeda against American targets. In 1992, the group bombed a hotel in Yemen, where U.S. troops had been staying in route to Somalia. The service members were not at the hotel when a series of bombs went off, but two American tourists were killed.

Fawwaz was not convicted for planning the embassy bombing, but on four conspiracy counts. A the time of the attacks, he was in London disseminating bin Laden’s messages and sending supplies to terror cells in Africa. He was arrested in London in 1998, then extradited to the United States in 2012 after a long legal fight.

Lawyers for Fawwaz said he deserved less than life in prison because he was not as responsible for the attacks as other al Qaeda leaders. But prosecutors argued to Judge Lewis Kaplan that Fawwaz was the leader of a terrorist cell in Kenya in the 1990s who was once the ninth most powerful person in al Qaeda.

U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said he is the 10th person to be convicted or to plead guilty in connection to the bombings.

Photo Credit: Alexander Joe/Getty Images

A besztercebányai Bél Mátyás Egyetem egykori és mostani doktoranduszai azt állítják, hogy szexuálisan zaklatta őket az egyik professzor - írja a Nový Čas internetes oldalán.

After a brief but frightening setback for proponents, U.S. congressional leaders looked set on May 13 to pass legislation for an eventual up-or-down (“fast-track”) vote on what would be one of the world’s largest trade accords, the U.S-led Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). The accord, a project behind which U.S. President Barack Obama has thrown his full support, would originally join together 12 countries bordering the Pacific Ocean. Significantly, China isn’t on that list; in fact, in the months leading up to fast-track voting, U.S. officials have been selling the pact internationally and domestically as a deal to counter Chinese influence. But whether TPP becomes reality or not, China has already moved on. And the anti-China rhetoric the United States has deployed has ultimately done more harm than good.

TPP is more than just a trade agreement, at least to hear the Obama administration tell it. In recent months, U.S. officials seeking to win domestic support among skeptical democrats have promoted it as a geostrategic cudgel to fend off a rising China. In an interview with The Wall Street Journal on April 27, President Barack Obama asserted, “If we do not write the rules, China will write the rules out in that region,” meaning the Asia-Pacific. “We will be shut out.” When Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe met President Obama to discuss TPP, their explicit and implicit messages were “all about China,” according to Patrick L. Smith, a long-time correspondent in Tokyo.

By continuing and intensifying the anti-China rhetoric in TPP discourse, administration officials have only made it more likely that the trade regime, if it becomes reality, will alienate China.

None of this was inevitable. As recently as two years ago, China was nervous about being shut out of the TPP. Li Xiangyang, dean of the Global Strategy Institute at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, a top government-linked think tank, remarked in 2012 that “TPP represents the gravest challenge China faces” on its upward trajectory, given its popularity in Asia and its exclusion of China. Scholar Fan Libo also argued in an article published in December 2012 that “the benefits of joining TPP outweigh the costs for China.” In May 2013, the Chinese Ministry of Commerce announced that China would “assiduously study” the pros and cons of TPP. Then in March 2014, at the conclusion of China’s National Party’s Congress and National People’s Congress, an annual event that directs major policy moves, Minister of Commerce Gao Hucheng spoke to domestic and international reporters. “We think the TPP is an important negotiation, and also a high-quality trade regime,” Gao said. “China is always open and accommodating to regional cooperation.” He also made it clear that China was well-informed of TPP negotiations through Sino-U.S bilateral dialogue mechanisms.

When the United States spun the TPP as a high-standard trade regime, with its inclusion of rigorous labor and environmental clauses, it also resonated with those wishing to push China to reform. Long Yongtu, the former Chinese trade minister who negotiated the country’s entry into the WTO, argued in November 2014 that “TPP has to include China sooner or later.” Long and other reformists saw the TPP’s standards as potentially creating an external lever to, as Long wrote, “help China’s badly-needed reform in the state sector, labor, and environmental areas.” In November 2014, China announced a landmark climate accord with the United States. And the Xi administration has designated “deepening market reform” a top policy in the coming years – a fine fit for the TPP’s requirements.

In late 2014, moderate voices were supported by a set of serious investigations into how key terms in the TPP are likely to affect China. Researchers at Chinese universities and government think tanks concluded that China could manage the short-term costs that TPP would incur on their country, whether it joined or not. These include state-owned enterprises, supply chain manufacturing, intellectual property rights, textiles, exports, environment, and labor markets in China. The findings suggested that China could manage the costs via reforms in tax rates, expanding outbound investment, and reform in relevant legal and environmental regulations.

Of course, China was not going to wait for the United States to come around. Quietly, China began searching for new ways to bolster its influence in Asia. In late 2013 Xi publicly announced for the first time what he called the “Silk Road Economic Belt” and the “21 Century Maritime Silk Road,” comprising what was later known as China’s New Silk Road in Eurasia. Things have been moving fast since. In Kazakhstan, China has signed economic projects in the areas of trade, industry, energy, technology, and finance, totaling $23.6 billion. In Belarus, in addition to a massive Sino-Belarus Industrial Park, modeled after the Suzhou Industrial Park near Shanghai, eight Chinese provinces and seven localities in Belarus have signed development projects with each other. In Russia, China has just finalized 30 economic projects, with a total worth of around $20 billion.

China’s confidence in regional politics has also been boosted by its progress assembling the charter member ranks for its Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank, or AIIB. China proposed the AIIB in October 2013; a year later, 21 nations, all Asian, gathered in Beijing and signed the memorandum establishing the bank. Six months later, the membership has expanded to 57, including traditional U.S allies in the United Kingdom, Australia, and South Korea. Embarrassingly, U.S efforts to stop close allies like the United Kingdom from joining have failed. 

With these recent successes in their proverbial back pockets, Chinese officials and scholars no longer care as much about TPP. Li Xiangyang, a dean at CASS who was deeply concerned about TPP two years ago, now spends most of his time promoting the Silk Road. The initiative is “diverse and open,” he said; in contrast, “TPP uses high-standards to exclude nations,” and is “not real openness.” Scholars also argue that TPP imposes United States-drafted terms on others. “It has too much politics,” they noted, “while AIIB was driven by market principles.” Of course, the future is critically uncertain. China has been generally silent as the TPP debate goes on in America.

There’s a lesson here for U.S. policymakers: there are profound merits to staking trade standards on solid policy grounds, as opposed to the very different terrain of realpolitik. When the U.S speaks for labor, environment, and small inventors, it attracts reform-minded Chinese who can do much of the internal sales job themselves. When it lards initiatives like TPP with geopolitical significance, it only pushes China to focus on the same.

After all the exhaustive back-and-forth on fast-track authority, the years of negotiation, and the recent, coordinated drum-beating about containing a rising China, the TPP may ultimately come to pass. But it’s too late to win hearts and minds in China. The world’s largest country has already moved on.

AFP/Getty Images

Driving through Sittwe, the dusty provincial capital of Rahkine state in northwest Burma, you notice a small poster affixed to nearly every shop and home. In English these signs read “white card,” and they alert anyone passing by that the building’s occupant sides with recent government efforts to prevent Burma’s most threatened ethnic and religious minority group, the Rohingya, from participating in the upcoming national elections. Most of Burma’s Rohingya are, in fact, stateless, and “white card” refers to the special identity documents issued to them by the government in lieu of the papers held by Burmese citizens. A few months ago officials decided that white card holders would not be allowed to participate in the national vote scheduled for this fall — effectively excluding the overwhelming majority of Rohingya.

As you drive on, the cacophony of bustling markets and careening tuk-tuks gradually gives way to the quiet of unpaved jungle roads and, eventually, a makeshift barbed wire roadblock that now separates nearly 150,000 Rohingya from the outside world. My Buddhist driver, from the state’s majority Rahkine ethnic group, refused to take me past the fence line into one of the world’s largest collections of internment camps — an implicit acknowledgement that he didn’t feel safe proceeding into a Rohingya community. Similarly, on the other side, my Rohingya guide refused to try to leave, too fearful of the consequences of being found outside the camps. “They just want us all to go away,” was the best explanation one camp dweller could give for his three years of internment.

The Rohingya we met inside the camp referred to it as an “open prison.” They have been interned here since a spate of inter-communal violence in 2012 killed scores of Rohingya and destroyed the homes and businesses of 140,000 more. Many people described how their Rakhine neighbors perpetrated the abuses, while others recounted that police officers or other local government actors were also involved. One woman remembered a fire brigade that approached when Rohingya houses were ablaze. Instead of extinguishing the fires, the firefighters poured gasoline and helped them spread.

Small wonder that many Rohingya are fleeing the country in desperation, taking to ramshackle boats which often become death traps. Their grim story stands in stark contrast to the official narrative emerging from Burma. After decades of military dictatorship and international sanctions, Burma has been haltingly shifting to civilian government and re-engaging with the international community since 2010. This slow liberalization has started to feel like a success — and from Washington, London, and Brussels it looks like one: scores of prominent opposition political figures have been released from imprisonment and are now preparing to participate this fall’s general election. Some sanctions have been lifted and foreign investment is flowing in. The space for civil society groups is expanding.

But one local activist cautioned against the “euphoria of change,” stressing that a real and lasting transition cannot occur unless it happens for everyone in society — regardless of ethnicity or religion.

The Rohingya — a community of just over one million Muslims at the bottom of Burma’s ethnic caste system — are not feeling the euphoria. In fact, they are now increasingly at risk of being eliminated entirely from the country’s political, social and economic life. While only about 10 percent of the Rohingya population are interned in camps and suffering from insufficient food and a lack of health care, the entire population is at risk of elimination.

The first step towards the Rohingya’s destruction is the increasingly aggressive application of a 1982 citizenship law requiring them to accept the label “Bengali” — a reference to neighboring Bangladesh and an assertion that they are not really Burmese — or else have their citizenship and basic rights and freedoms revoked. Under either scenario, the intention is clear: to deny Rohingya their legal place in Burmese society. “By denying us citizenship,” one Rohingya advocate told me, “they are denying our entire existence, our struggle, and our survival.” The move has made the Rohingya the world’s largest stateless people and now serves as the justification for every indignity and transgression inflicted upon the community — from denying them freedom of movement and ability to hold jobs to the basic right get an education, receive government services, or hold property.

This targeted nature of the attacks against the Rohingya have drawn increasingly worried references to the United Nation’s 1948 Genocide Convention, which defines genocide as the “attempt to destroy in whole or in part a national, ethnic, racial or religious group,” and have prompted warnings that the Rohingya could become the latest victims of this crime of crimes.

Subject to hate speech sponsored by both state and religious figures, targeted attacks, forced internment, and arbitrary detention, the Rohingya have now become targets of national legislation reminiscent of the Nazi-era Nuremberg Laws, which stripped Jewish Germans of citizenship rights based on their presumed “ethnic” origins. In similar fashion, the latest Burmese laws aspire to limit Rohingya birth rates and their ability to marry. One Rohingya leader described this de facto apartheid system as “an attempt to depopulate the Rohingya people” through their “soft elimination.” This is quite literally what the government’s recently proposed and ominously sounding “Population Control Bill” would do.

Perhaps even more alarming is seeing how official discrimination has given way to popular hatred of the Rohingya by the country’s Burman ethnic majority and other ethnic groups. Even Burma’s Western-backed, pro-democracy advocates like Aung San Suu Kyi have remained silent on the persecution of their compatriots, as coming to their defense now would run counter to the popular will.

Added together, this potent climate of racism, xenophobia, and hate has primed Burma for further rounds of deadly violence, as was last seen in 2012. Though the official death toll remains relatively low, in the hundreds, many human rights groups believe the true number to be substantially higher. As national elections approach later this year, the warning signs for massive atrocities grow ever more conspicuous. The Rohingya’s disenfranchisement could serve as the spark that sets the country ablaze.

To its credit, the Obama administration has taken notice of these disturbing developments and has signaled to the Burmese government that it should take steps to protect and strengthen minority rights as a precondition for a deepening of the relationship. Military assistance, something Burmese officials have made a top priority, has rightfully been put on hold.

Meanwhile, the president’s new Atrocities Prevention Board has helped ensure that the threats to Rohingya remain a central component of the deepening bilateral discussion with Burmese officials. The president raised their plight in meetings with his counterpart last November and has implemented initiatives to detect early warning signs of new violence against the Rohingya — something not done for the Tutsis of Rwanda two decades before. But will it suffice?

As Burma’s opening continues, growing numbers of European and U.S. investors are rushing to get a piece of the country’s investment bonanza. But with the opening of every new Mercedes dealership or luxury high-rise, Western leverage to achieve adequate protections for the most vulnerable of Burma’s citizens erodes.

In a 2012 conference at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, then-Secretary of State Clinton warned that “the United States and our partners must act before the wood is stacked or the match is struck, because when the fire is at full blaze, our options for responding are considerably costlier and more difficult.” So much wood is already stacked in Burma. The crimes and injustices that have already been perpetrated against the Rohingya represent some of the core preconditions for genocide that analysts and advocates look for — but it is not yet too late to do something about it.

Conditioning future concessional lending, military assistance, and development packages on the creation of new legislative protections for the Rohingya is a meaningful step the international community could take to ensure the rush to declare Burma a democratic success does not exclude the Rohingya. So, too, would pressing the current and future governments to hold accountable local, national, and religious authorities who have helped to incite, direct, or condone past and any future violence against Rohingya.

When we asked what could be done to improve their situation, some Rohingya told us that the national and local authorities should allow more humanitarian assistance to reach them. Some called for greater international pressure on the government. Others called for efforts to change hateful mindsets within society against Rohingya and other Muslims. In the meantime, one woman I met in a Rohingya internment camp said simply, “We can just stay here, pray, and wait.” One thing is for certain: if violence does erupt and Burma’s leaders and people do decide to seek a “final solution” for the Rohingya, it will be impossible for anyone to revive the tired refrain of past generations of genocide apologists — “we didn’t know.”

In the photo, Rohingya refugees stand at an IDP camp on the outskirts of Sittwe, Myanmar.
Photo Credit: Paula Bronstein/Getty Images

Az 58 éves amerikai Michael McAlister pontosan a fél életét töltötte rács mögött, méghozzá ártatlanul. Azért csukták le, és ítélték el 1986-ban, mert hasonlított Norman Bruce Derr hírhedt szexbűnözőre.

A visegrádi négyeken kívül Lettország, Románia, Svédország és persze a Keleti Partnerség államainak (Örményország, Azerbajdzsán, Fehéroroszország, Grúzia, Moldova, Ukrajna) diplomáciai vezetői vettek részt a tanácskozáson. Rigára készültek.

Let’s imagine for a moment, that in some massively devastating economic disaster, the entire population of Canada, roughly 35 million people, loses its jobs. The country’s infrastructure implodes — no functioning trains or reliable electricity — and then these people also lose their homes, their schools, and their belongings. Poverty begins to take root, and lines for food stretch around blocks. There’s a shortage of resources and shelter. Ensuing conflict erupts in a war, complete with bombs exploding overhead, snipers firing rifles, and soldiers going from house to house making arrests.

Clearly, it’s not safe to stay in Canada.

So now take lots of these millions of Canadians and move them across the border into the United States. Oh, wait — that’s not going to work (the United States doesn’t want millions of immigrants seeking asylum, does it?). Instead, picture these people fleeing to relatively safer areas within the country, building makeshift shelters out of tarps and cardboard in parks or renting rundown apartments with the little money they were able to take with them. And now, you can begin to imagine what it’s like for internally displaced people stuck within their own borders.

According to a report from the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center (IDMC) in Geneva, the number of people forced to flee their homes but remain within their own borders because of war and general violence was, as of the end of 2014, a record-breaking 38 million. During the past year alone, 11 million people were displaced. That’s 30,000 people per day.

On top of that, the report found that in 2014, in about 90 percent of the 60 countries IDMC monitors, people were living in protracted displacement (and bearing children into displacement) for a period of at least 10 years. And in most cases, these internal refugees are not perfectly welcomed within the communities to which they flee. They face long-term hardships like lack of access to health care, ethnic discrimination, trauma from what they’ve seen and fled, and an inability to find jobs.

Unlike refugees, internally displaced people are dependent on their governments, which are often themselves in turmoil and are either unable or unwilling to help, and are usually responsible for the displacement in the first place. (Think Syria.)

Displaced people are the unseen byproducts of war: Living beyond the reach of aid organizations or even protection of the Geneva Conventions, unlike refugees. Finally, however, with the new numbers from IDMC, we can measure and name the problem, and distinguish these lost millions’ plight from that of those who manage to make it to surrounding countries.

But considering the main drivers of war, which then leads to dislocation — as well as poverty and overall inequality — it’s hard to imagine how to truly help the ever-increasing number of IDPs who are stuck in a kind of purgatory that lasts … no one knows how long. “The problem is really so huge that no one knows where to start,” says Alexandra Bilak, one of the authors of the report.

Unlike in the past though, intricate country breakdowns show five countries that account for 60 percent of new displacement worldwide: Iraq, South Sudan, Syria, Democratic Republic of Congo, and Nigeria, with Syria holding the largest number of IDPs in the world, at 7.6 million. We now know specifically where attention is needed. And we know the issue needs solving, the key to which, says the center, is to get people to sit up and finally see the problem — and then start coughing up funding.

“We are like the weathermen,” says Alfredo Zamudio, director of the IDMC. “We are telling people that it’s raining.”

Still, attention to the IDP crisis remains scant in international donor circles. People trapped within their own borders remain unseen by dominant donor countries, unlike the migrants who are drowning off the Italian coast or those queuing up at the Jordanian border.

Although if you were to ask “a Lebanese or a Syrian or an Ethiopian or a Sudanese they wouldn’t talk about a few thousand asylum seekers. They would talk about the millions of refugees and internally displaced people, and so should we,” says Jan Egeland, secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council, a nonprofit humanitarian organization that aids those affected by displacement and the umbrella group under which the IDMC operates. Then add on a term like “protracted displacement” and you have perhaps the most un-media-friendly story possible: people staying put. That doesn’t sell newspapers. Altogether, “IDPs have just become forgotten,” says Zamudio.

There is some good news, however, says Egeland, because mass displacement is a political problem (something Egeland calls “a cancer of international politics”), which means there are political solutions. While there are (unenforceable) guiding principles on internal displacement codified by the U.N. in 1998, it might be time for a new conversation on them.

“We need to get back to countries sitting down together and saying we have a common problem and we need to pull in the same direction,” he says. On the plus side, he points out that “there are many more nations and many more millionaires in many more countries that could invest in hope, and a fewer number of truly miserable places.”

Zamudio agrees, adding that, “there are good people in these governments trying to do the right thing.”

Egeland does, however, point his finger at countries that are not pulling their financial weight, and says they’re not just “the usual suspects.” He’s mainly critical of countries that have enough wealth to help, but choose not to: “How come three tiny Scandinavian countries can still be among the top 10 donors in the world? Where are all of the Asian tigers? Where are all of these incredibly oil-rich countries among donors?”

“All of those of us who are in the top 2 to 3 billion of the world population have more than enough to share. Much more.”

Beyond increasing funding, Egeland also says we need more “witnesses” — aid workers and journalists to take stock of the crisis working inside countries with large numbers of IDPs — inside Syria, inside Yemen, something that he recognizes as both costly and dangerous. He says much of the reason people are unable to go home during displacement is because of a “protection crisis.” That assistance may reach those in need, but does not provide protection. There needs to be “much more effective and coherent peacekeeping and diplomacy. Much more effective sanctions to award good behavior and punish bad behavior.” He specifies that he does not mean further military actions from the West. Instead, Egeland wants “more systematic possibilities for relocation of refugees in the areas of greatest tension,” he says. “It’s as easy and as difficult as that.”

For the 38 million people in this liminal state, life can be desperate, and the snail’s pace of action to help them devastating. Bilak describes an erosion of resilience when there is a long-term lack of support.

Consider just one example of someone living in dislocation. Pikas Kapi belongs to a family displaced by low-level conflict between Papua, New Guinea, and the Indonesian government that has been flaring since independence from the Dutch in 1962. He and his family have been in a care center for almost four years, “living in broken tents and with no one helping us,” he told the IDMC. “Life is very difficult, particularly for our children. Many are still traumatized by the fighting and don’t want to go back to school.” Many, Kapi says, become ill because they don’t get enough to eat and water quality is poor. “We have to hope for rain if we want to drink. … We feel abandoned.”

In some places, people are living for years away from their homes, forced to move over and over again as conflict comes nearer. A look at the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, which has 2.8 million IDPs after 20 years of war, shows one of the most complex situations of displacement in the world, says Bilak, one in which people are exhausted from having to move so many times because of violence. They are forced to keep switching work to feed themselves; women who only know how to farm have to leave their fields because they are being raped, only to have to learn how to mine, where they are abused, only to have to accept that there is no easy place or life for them.

For Bilak, the answer to ending mass internal displacement, especially the protracted kind, is to shift thinking from classifying it as a short-term humanitarian crisis to an entrenched development issue. “We need to bridge the relief to development gap,” she says. But with an ironic laugh she adds, “I don’t think anyone really knows how to do that.”

Looking closely at stories like Kapi’s should be enough to move hearts to give money to assist with resettlement, peacekeeping, job training, etc. But since that hasn’t been enough to make change thus far, Egeland has other incentives to draw donors.

“It’s not just because of our ideals we should care,” he says. “It’s because it’s in our interests too. If we take millions and millions of teenagers in and around Syria and we say, ‘No, we will not give you an education nor a job nor a future,’ would we still expect them to be moderate and well-behaving and never flirt with extremism or join terrorist groups?”

“Of course they will be angry,” Egeland says. “And of course they can be recruited in all sorts of directions. So we have to invest in hope.”

It’s as easy and as difficult as that.

MOHAMMED SAWAF/AFP/Getty Images