How big is the Islamist threat in Mozambique? And why are Rwandan troops there?

Phil Clark

Professor of International Politics, SOAS, University of London

Military intervention by Rwanda and SADC only buys time for Mozambique to address lack of development in its northern region.

Rwanda has sent troops to Mozambique to assist the government in fighting against a four-year Islamist militant insurgency. Political scientist Phil Clark provides insights into the threat and why Rwanda is supporting Mozambique.

Do the insurgents in Mozambique represent a new front of Islamic terrorism on the continent?

Since 2017, jihadist militias in the northern Mozambique province of Cabo Delgado have mounted an armed insurgency against the Mozambican government. Their stated objective is to instil Sharia law across northern Mozambique. This is said to be in response to the region’s chronic poverty, unemployment and weak public services under the Frelimo-led government in Maputo.

The Mozambican insurgents represent a new armed Islamic front, with entirely local motivations and command structures. However, their propaganda invokes common tropes of regional and global jihad.

They often claim responsibility for attacks using the name given to them by the local population, ‘Al-Shabaab’. But there is no evidence that they have any direct links to Al-Shabaab in Somalia.et newsletter

Recently, Islamic State (ISIS) claimed responsibility for jihadist attacks in Mozambique.

But, again, there appears to be little direct connection between the Mozambican jihadists and the Islamic State. ISIS has previously attempted to claim responsibility for attacks by unassociated Islamist groups elsewhere in Africa, for example the Allied Democratic Forces in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo

How big a threat do they represent?

The jihadists pose a significant threat to local civilians and foreign economic interests in Cabo Delgado. The four-year low-intensity civil war has killed more than 3,000 civilians, displaced 800,000 and caused widespread food insecurity.

Meanwhile, the energy giants ExxonMobil and Total have suspended their liquid natural gas projects in Cabo Delgado. ExxonMobil is investing US$30billion and Total US$20billion.

The insurgents have cited the perception that local people will fail to benefit from government deals with the multinational companies as one catalyst for their attacks.

The combination of widespread violence and threats to foreign businesses have led to a patchwork of international military and security interventions. This includes reports of:

• the Mozambican government’s use of Russian and South African mercenaries

• the presence of Portuguese military trainers, and

• Total’s hiring of a former French foreign legionnaire to coordinate security for its gas plant on the Afungi peninsula.

In addition, Rwanda and the Southern African Development Community (SADC) –- including South African special forces – have deployed peacekeepers to Cabo Delgado.

This raises major concerns over a seeming lack of coordination among these armed actors.

Why is the Rwandan government getting involved?

There is vociferous debate about this.

The Rwandan government frames this as a ‘responsibility to protect’ mission. This, it argues, has been inspired by the international community’s failure to protect civilians in Rwanda during the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi.

The Rwandan intervention in Mozambique came shortly after French President Emmanuel Macron’s visit to Kigali in May 2021. Some commentators have suggested that Rwanda, funded by France, has intervened to shore up France’s interests, principally the gas reserves of French-owned Total.

The Rwandan government has chafed against the claim that it is simply doing France’s neo-colonial bidding. It has stressed the humanitarian basis of its intervention.

There is scant evidence of direct French backing for Rwanda’s military campaign. Nevertheless, France held a series of high-level talks with Rwanda and South Africa about the Cabo Delgado conflict in the months preceding their interventions in Mozambique. This suggests close coordination between Paris and these actors, reflecting the enormous French interests at stake.

In May this year Macron discussed military solutions to the crisis with a number of African heads of state at a summit in Paris. They included Mozambican President Filipe Nyusi, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa and Rwandan President Paul Kagame. This was succeeded by similar talks with Kagame and Ramaphosa in Kigali and Pretoria several weeks later.

Crucial to Rwanda’s involvement in Cabo Delgdao are growing ties between Rwanda and Mozambique after the two countries signed a memorandum of understanding in 2018.

Earlier this year Nyusi made a lightning-stop visit to Kigali to ask for Rwanda’s military assistance in Cabo Delgado. Nyusi had previously stated his preference for bilateral rather than multilateral military intervention. He is perhaps concerned about ceding too much control to a SADC mission led by regional powerhouse South Africa.

He also noted Rwanda’s track record of conducting highly disciplined and effective peacekeeping missions. These have included Rwandan battalions operating in the Central African Republic outside the broader UN peacekeeping mission, similar to Rwanda’s current support for Mozambican forces outside of SADC.

Alongside its humanitarian objectives, the Rwandan government stands to benefit in security and diplomatic terms from its involvement in Cabo Delgado.

The intervention fits a pattern of Rwanda’s ‘responsibility to protect’ role in peacekeeping missions in Darfur, Mali, CAR and Haiti. These have bolstered its international image and afforded it considerable international leverage. For example, in 2010 when foreign donors considered prosecutions and suspending aid to Rwanda because of its alleged crimes in eastern Congo, Kigali threatened to withdraw its peacekeepers from Darfur.

The Cabo Delgado campaign is also consistent with Rwanda’s recent talk of tackling Islamist threats at home and in the wider region.

In regional geopolitical terms, Rwanda will have delighted in reports that its troops in northern Mozambique have proven more effective than those of SADC, with which it has often had a testy relationship.

Finally, Rwanda’s intervention bolsters its bilateral relations with Mozambique and France. A key catalyst for Rwanda’s diplomatic push with Mozambique in recent years has been the concern that Maputo had become a launching pad for exiled Rwandan dissidents. This has included members of the opposition Rwanda National Congress. Closer security ties have included Rwanda’s request that Mozambique rein in opposition members on its soil.

Kagame has for years lambasted France for failing to apologise for its complicity in the 1994 genocide. It therefore took some genocide survivors by surprise when he warmly welcomed Macron’s remarks on the issue. They had misgivings about whether Macron had fully acknowledged and apologised for France’s role in the genocide.

Kagame’s warm comments preceded the announcement of a new €500 million  French development package to Rwanda.

What are the implications of its involvement?

The Rwandan forces have so far proven effective in tackling the jihadist insurgents. This has led the Mozambican government to claim that Rwanda’s entrance has fundamentally altered the direction of the conflict and improved the security situation for civilians and foreign companies.

The concurrent operations by Rwandan and SADC forces, however, could pose problems in the coming months. Various SADC leaders – as well as Mozambique’s largest opposition party Renamo – have criticised the arrival of Rwandan troops. They argue that this should have been an exclusively SADC effort.

These issues were clearly on the mind of Rwandan Foreign Minister Vincent Biruta who travelled to Pretoria in early June to discuss Rwanda-South Africa cooperation in Mozambique. This came shortly after Rwandan military chiefs conducted their first reconnaissance trip to Cabo Delgado.

But military force can achieve only so much. This has been made clear in comparable cases of Islamist violence in the Horn of Africa, Nigeria and the Sahel.

Systemic political and socio-economic interventions are necessary to address years of Frelimo neglect in northern Mozambique. These have produced the deprivation and marginalisation that underpin the insurgency.

Mozambicans themselves are clearly the key actors in this situation. Nevertheless, Rwanda and SADC should use their diplomatic leverage to encourage Nyusi to address the structural causes – and not only the violent manifestations – of the conflict. This includes ensuring that the immense natural gas wealth that will flow once the conflict abates benefits not only Nyusi’s government and multinational corporations but, most importantly, everyday Mozambicans.

https://theconversation.com/how-big-is-the-islamist-threat-in-mozambique-and-why-are-rwandan-troops-there-168123

King Mswati may need to scrutinise Bhutan’s transitional approach to avoid complete catastrophe in Eswatini

 

King Mswati may need to scrutinise Bhutan’s transitional approach to avoid complete catastrophe in Eswatini (former Swaziland)

King Mswati III of Eswatini. 

The Himalayan nation is a model for transitioning from absolute to constitutional monarchy, but time for this option in Eswatini is running out. 

Up to 60 protesters and rioters were killed by security forces in Eswatini in June. And many government and private buildings and vehicles were destroyed, causing damage estimated at R3-billion. Things have since gone quiet, but for how long? King Mswati III has shown no signs of having learnt any lessons from those events. 

Instead, he has doubled down, appointing a hardline prime minister in Cleopas Dlamini and arresting two pro-democracy members of Parliament, Bacede Mabuza and Mthandeni Dube, under the country’s Suppression of Terrorism Act. They were allegedly stoking unrest by calling for the prime minister to be elected by parliament – not appointed by the king. 

Regional intervention seems to have gone nowhere. The violence and destruction of June jolted the Southern African Development Community (SADC) into sending ministers and officials to consult with the government and some members of civil society and the political opposition. 

SADC quietly produced a report recommending that Mswati engage in a national dialogue about the country’s future. But an official noted rather helplessly that, “There will only be a national dialogue if Mswati wants one.” And clearly, he doesn’t, aware that ‘national dialogue’ can only go one way — towards democracy. In the final communique of SADC’s August heads of state summit, there was no mention of the Eswatini matter.

Chatham House scholars, Fundile Maphanga and Christopher Vandome, have recently warned that Mswati is on course for a huge collision with his people. Especially youth, who are disenchanted with their lot as poverty grinds on and much less indulgent of the king’s claims to be the defender of Swazi traditional values. 

Young people are also incensed by the royal family’s ever more Bourbon-esque indifference to their people’s plight. Eleven customised Rolls-Royces were recently acquired — one for the king, one for the Queen Mother, and one for each of Mswati’s wives.

Maphanga and Vandome note that as “the country’s current economic and social trajectory is unsustainable, the king and his advisers may seek to consider various options for reform. Lesotho and Bhutan could offer lessons of monarchical leadership reforms that would allow Eswatini to retain distinctive cultural institutions and practices, while the monarchy relinquishes executive powers within its political system.”

This is an interesting suggestion. All three are tiny monarchies surrounded by bigger states. But although nearby Lesotho seems the more obvious example, it is remote Bhutan — an isolated Shangri-La of Buddhism in the Himalayas — that is probably a better model for Mswati. 

Lesotho is indeed a constitutional monarchy, but it isn’t really clear that it was ever an absolute monarchy. The country has had a messy political history since independence from Britain in 1966. Its kings have occasionally meddled in politics, though power has mainly oscillated between politicians and the military. 

By contrast, Bhutan transitioned quite definitively from an absolute monarchy to a constitutional one, over several years. Most remarkably, the change was initiated by the monarch himself, King Jigme Singye Wangchuck. In 1998 he devolved some executive powers to a cabinet of ministers and enabled the National Assembly to elect the cabinet. 

In 2001 he launched a constitution-writing process that reflected Bhutan’s Buddhist values and cultural norms. And then Jigme Singye abdicated in 2006 in favour of his eldest son and stood back to let the transition unfold. In 2008 Bhutan held its first democratic elections which the pro-monarchy Harmony Party won by a landslide. Parliament adopted the draft constitution in July of that year.

The country essentially has a conventional democratic constitution, enshrining the usual freedoms, with some Bhutanese idiosyncrasies. The constitution also creates an important place for the monarch as the nation’s unifying force and head of the Buddhist faith. It emphasises the ‘fundamental duties’ of citizens, not only their rights. 

What is most remarkable about the transition though is that it wasn’t the result of popular democratic ferment. It was Jigme Singye’s “top-down gift to his people.” His advisers and the public seemed largely opposed to the idea as the monarchy was so popular. So he had to persuade them of its merits. 

That reminded me of when I asked Mswati many years ago whether he didn’t think a constitutional monarchy would be the best compromise between Eswatini’s traditional values and the rising demand for democracy. He assured me that he’d consulted his people, and they didn’t think that was a good idea.

In retrospect, like Jigme Singye, he should have persuaded them to give it a try. It may now be too late for Mswati to emulate Bhutan’s former monarch. Since the June bloodbath, which many blame on the king, democratic activists have withdrawn the support they might have had for a constitutional monarchy. They now want a democratic republic.

But launching a Bhutan-like reform process may nonetheless be Mswati’s last shot at saving himself and the nation from disaster. The Bhutan constitution shows that traditional values — which Mswati purports to espouse — can be reconciled with conventional democratic freedoms. 

Good alternatives may be closing out for Mswati. And although Jigme Singye appeared to have been motivated by a genuine concern for his people’s welfare, some commentators think he was jolted by events in a neighbouring kingdom. In 2001, Nepal’s Crown Prince Dipendra shot dead King Birendra, Queen Aishwarya, seven other royal family members, and himself, in their palace in Kathmandu. This bloodbath precipitated the rapid unravelling of the monarchy and the emergence of a republic in 2008.

And one hears of rumbling among the Swazi royals, particularly by Mswati’s many siblings, who feel they’re being overlooked for patronage in favour of the king’s wives and children. They believe Mswati is jeopardising the monarchy by his autocratic and extravagant lifestyle. 

So perhaps a palace revolt is just another one of those hazards Mswati could avoid by embarking on an — admittedly unlikely — Bhutanese pathway to constitutional monarchy.

Peter Fabricius, ISS Consultant. 

https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2021-10-08-king-mswati-may-need-to-scrutinise-bhutans-transitional-approach-to-avoid-complete-catastrophe-in-eswatini/

 

‘We want to know how YOU feel’: Why a woke British judge failed to deport a serial sex offender back to South Africa

Frank Furedi

is an author and social commentator. He is an emeritus professor of sociology at the University of Kent in Canterbury.

By failing to deport a persistent flasher because he didn’t get the chance to express his feelings about his crimes, British courts are heading down a dangerous route, prioritising emotionalism over the principle of justice.

It looks like the British criminal justice system is fast coming to resemble a reality TV series. A serial convicted sex offender from South Africa has just won an appeal against his deportation after a judge ruled that the Home Office did not offer him a “fair opportunity” to disclose to the court how he felt about his crimes.

It appears that very soon it will be mandatory for a British court to provide criminals with an opportunity to reveal their feelings about their offences before they can be sentenced. At least, that is the outlook which informed the decision of the very woke judge who halted the deportation of Phile Negma.

Negma, who has been convicted of four indecent exposures and been the subject of a sex offender’s notice for 15 years, is the beneficiary of what’s best described as the ‘emotional turn’ of the system of criminal justice.

Just like reality TV, which promotes emotionalism, British courts have embraced the culture of feelings. The high point of any show like ‘The X-Factor’ occurs towards the end, when a contestant is asked ‘how do you feel?’. Telling the world of your feelings serves as a form of public catharsis. It also indicates that how you feel sometimes trumps what you did. While this performance is acceptable for ‘The X-Factor’, it is not suitable for a criminal court.

It is a sign of the times that a member of the British judiciary takes the view that justice cannot be served unless Negma is provided with an opportunity to explain how he feels about his crime. Once upon a time, the criminal justice system operated on the basis of evaluating the gravity of a criminal act and was rightly indifferent to the feelings of the offender.

But not the judge who stopped Negma’s deportation. The judge claimed that he was surprised that “there was no engagement” on the part of the Home Office with “the appellant” as to how the denial to talk about how he felt about his crime impacted “upon his ability to address sexual preoccupation and deviant fantasies linked to voyeurism.”

What a very strange comment indeed. Whether or not Negma has an opportunity to address his sexual perversion has little to do with the decision of the Home Office to deport him. How Negma feels about exposing his genitals while looking straight in the eyes of a female passer-by may be of interest to a psychiatrist, but should not be the basis for a legal judgement.

The incorporation of emotionalism into the system of justice is actively promoted by mental health activists and legal crusaders promoting therapeutic jurisprudence. In a world where how you feel frequently trumps what you did, it is not surprising that the courts often behave as if the people standing before them are not offenders or victims, but potential victims in a psychiatric ward.

For a very long time, offenders have had their sentences reduced or were entirely let off on the grounds of diminished responsibility due to a mental health problem. In recent times, an obsession with mental health and emotions has become even more internalised by the courts. Lawyers frequently seek to relieve their clients of responsibility for the offences they committed on the ground that they too are victims – in this case a victim of emotional upheaval.

Advocates of therapeutic jurisprudence insist that feelings and emotions need to be at the centre of legal proceedings. They claim that how courts operate and the decisions that they make have to be evaluated from the standpoint of their impact on people’s emotional and psychological wellbeing. In America, where the adoption of this approach is most advanced, the language used in court proceedings often resembles that which prevails in a mental health institution.

The main problem with the emotional turn of the legal system is not that it results on being too soft on criminals. I have no wish to see the imposition of a harsh system of criminal justice on society. The real problems with the influence of psychology on court proceedings is that it violates the principle of fair and equal justice. We all know that it is not fair when the rich achieve better legal outcomes than the poor. It is no less fair when those who know how to play the emotional card are held to a different standard than those who don’t.

Let’s judge people in accordance with their actions, and leave their feelings to the likes of Simon Cowell and his friends.

 

Tobacco control: ideology versus public health

The Framework Convention on Tobacco Control not only negatively impacts tobacco farmers, tobacco companies and tobacco retailers, but also harms smokers themselves, in several ways.

Superficially, the goal of the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC), which is to gradually reduce and ultimately eliminate tobacco consumption, seems noble and laudable. After all, tobacco is undeniably unhealthy.

So are many other things, though, that are not subject to rules drawn up by unaccountable public health experts at the World Health Organisation (WHO).

Ahead of the 9th Conference of the Parties (COP9), due to be held in Geneva, Switzerland, where the smell of old money permeates the streets, we really ought to understand how the FCTC works, and why it is a real problem that only those with a bona fide anti-tobacco stance are permitted to attend.

An international conclave of public health officials making rules for billions of people, without any consultation with affected parties or any accountability to national legislatures, is incompatible with the basic principles of participatory democracy.

Besides tobacco companies themselves, and millions of farmers and retailers are victims of draconian anti-tobacco legislation hatched at these gatherings, where besides the public health experts, only anti-tobacco NGOs are permitted entry.

Smokers themselves also suffer harm.

Illicit trade

One oft-discussed effect of FCTC-style suppression, especially through high excise taxes, is the growth of an illicit market in untaxed products. Greatly exacerbated by the inexplicable prohibition on tobacco during South Africa’s first lockdown, the illicit market for tobacco is now well developed.

Illicit trade now accounts for over half of South Africa’s cigarette market, compared to 37% in 2019. Even though the tobacco prohibition was lifted over a year ago, market shares have not returned to normal, and a hefty increase in sin taxes has made things worse, not better.

Black market products are far cheaper than legal, fully taxed tobacco, which makes them highly attractive to skint consumers. However, these illicit products are often of poor quality, and pose a risk of contamination.

The illicit market also siphons money away from the legitimate market, which reduces their economic viability and cuts into government revenue. Estimates of lost revenue due to unpaid excise duties have doubled to R20 billion from their pre-pandemic levels of around R10 billion.

While it may seem relatively harmless to entertain a black market in tobacco products, one should never lose sight of the fact that organised crime gangs, which have now added tobacco to their portfolio, use those profits to support truly shady business, ranging from kidnapping, extortion, protection rackets and armed robbery to hard drugs and modern slavery.

Taxing the poor

Smoking is unpopular among wealthy elites nowadays. It remains very popular among the poorer classes, however. That makes taxing tobacco an invidious tool for public policy. The demand for tobacco is relatively inelastic; due to its addictive nature, people tend to pay whatever they have to for their fix.

I myself once said I’d quit smoking when the price of a packet of Camels hit R5. When I eventually did quit, a packet cost over R50. Price sensitive, I was not, even though I’ve often struggled financially.

Excise taxes on tobacco are highly regressive. They hit the poor the hardest. What they are required to spend on tobacco tax they could have been spending on better nutrition or better healthcare for them and their families.

One could, of course, callously argue that their own poor choices cost smokers so much money, but from a public health perspective, taxing the poor for smoking is a very counter-productive intervention.

Harm reduction

One would expect the overarching objective of the public health campaign against smoking to be about, well, public health. That is, once the matter of second-hand smoke has been dealt with, the concern should be about the health of smokers.

In fact, the obsession of the ideologues that are allowed to attend FCTC COP meetings is not the health of smokers. They couldn’t care less about smokers. Their ire is directed at tobacco companies. They want to punish tobacco companies and drive them out of business, no matter what they actually do, say or sell.

So, for example, in a very lengthy report on the scientific basis of tobacco control, you’ll find lines such as these: ‘Tobacco control experts warn that increased marketing of [smokeless tobacco products like snus] may have an adverse impact on population health by appealing to young, new users or by inciting current smokers to maintain their nicotine dependence.’

What is harmful about smoking is largely the products of combustion. Burning tobacco produces the same toxic ingredients as burning any vegetation, such as your cosy wood-fired hearth. The only difference is the concentration of the smoke you inhale.

Nicotine is itself relatively benign. It is highly addictive, of course, but as a stimulant, it poses health risks comparable to those of caffeine. It is not listed by the International Agency for Cancer Research as a potential carcinogen, and studies that claim otherwise are largely weak, speculative and unquantified.

De-demonise nicotine

For every study about the potential harms of nicotine, there is a study about its potential benefits, including in preventing Alzheimer’s disease, delaying the onset of Parkinson’s disease, and reducing susceptibility to SARS-CoV-2 infection.

‘We need to de-demonise nicotine,’ a professor of tobacco addiction told Scientific American in 2015. For decades, it has been accepted wisdom that ‘people smoke for the nicotine, but die from the tar’.

‘Should we really be that bothered about addiction in and of itself, if it doesn’t come with any other substantial harms?’ another expert asked the Scientific American reporters.

The FCTC technocrats will have none of it. To them, nicotine addiction by itself is just as bad for your health as smoking tobacco, and must be treated as equivalent.

Ironically, they hold this view even while advocating for nicotine-replacement therapies (NRT). Perhaps that is because NRT is typically sold by pharmaceutical companies under medical supervision. In the battle for profit between Big Tobacco and Big Pharma, where might the interests of public health technocrats lie?

What is smoke?

What exactly constitutes smoke occupies two pages of a document to be presented at COP9. The intention is to conclude that any vapour or aerosol produced by any product, such as a heated tobacco device or even a vape, should be classified as ‘smoke’ for the purposes of tobacco control regulations.

It thereby conflates a variety of thermo-chemical processes with combustion. By the same logic, if they were regulating food safety, they might have considered cooking food equivalent to burning food. Even though burning food produces far more carcinogens and toxins, tobacco-style control would condemn merely heating food, too, and would prohibit claims that cooked food is less harmful to your health than burnt food.

This is non-sensical. Any scientific approach would attempt to quantify the risks of, say, heated tobacco products (HTPs), when compared with conventional combustible tobacco products like cigarettes. It stands to reason that by eliminating the toxic byproducts of combustion, and retaining only the by-products of heating, HTPs must be to some degree less harmful than cigarettes.

The problem is this: in its latest report on the scientific basis of tobacco product regulation, the FCTC explicitly recommends ‘[putting] the burden of proof on manufacturers to support claims about the products, and prohibit unsubstantiated claims about the relative risk or harmfulness of HTPs relative to other tobacco products’.

Until then, the FCTC technocrats recommend regulating heated tobacco products on an equal basis with combustible tobacco products (unless they are already banned and such treatment would relax restrictions on them). It also recommends prohibiting claims of reduced risk without conclusive evidence to that effect.

However, it also explicitly rejects any research or representation made by anyone who has links to, or receives money from, the tobacco industry.

So the only way to ever obtain sufficient evidence to support reduced-harm tobacco products would be if some benevolent third party, with no interest in the matter whatsoever, were to fund and conduct independent research.

The FCTC knows full well this is unlikely to happen, so its pre-judged rules and regulations, made in what they admit is an absence of evidence, are immune from challenge.

Vaping myths

That the FCTC is not at all interested in public health, but only in destroying the tobacco industry, is even clearer when it comes to vaping. It is heavily biased against electronic nicotine delivery systems (ENDS), even though it recognises their potential to reduce risk, compared to cigarette smoking.

It strongly emphasises the potentially toxic components of ENDS vapour, spending an entire chapter trying to characterise the potential risks of ENDS and electronic non-nicotine delivery systems (ENNDS, or vapes that don’t contain nicotine). Yet it can only speculate about potential health effects.

It briefly refers to ‘single cases of lipid pneumonia’, without disclosing that those cases were all related to fatty oils (vitamin E acetate) used in black-market, psychoactive cannabis oils, and not to the liquids used in commercial vapes.

Besides this inconsequential factoid, the FCTC report is unable to present any evidence whatsoever of documented real-world harm caused by vaping, almost 20 years after their first introduction in the market.

It is obsessed over the minutiae of ‘nicotine flux’, which is the rate at which the devices deliver nicotine. According to the worthies at the FCTC, users can absolutely not be trusted to adjust settings and select nicotine concentrations for themselves. This, they argue, must be regulated in fine detail.

It says that ‘ENDS use by previously nicotine-naïve individuals is inconsistent with public health goals’, but that is trivially false if that individual would otherwise have taken to smoking tobacco.

It is also rare for non-smokers to start vaping in the first place, contrary to the FCTC’s fears. The notion of a youth vaping epidemic is simply false. In South Africa, the Vaping Products Association of South Africa (VPASA) has run a national campaign against youth access to vapes, which the organisation continues to support, even in the absence of legislation, by holding its members accountable to industry-imposed standards.

Quitting smoking

The FCTC seeks to medicalise the use of vaping for smoking cessation. ‘Under certain circumstances, such as in the context of intensive behavioural counselling, ENDS that deliver nicotine effectively might help some smokers to quit combustible smoking, with positive public health effects,’ its report says. ‘Most of these individuals, however, continue to use ENDS, with uncertain individual health consequences and thus an uncertain public health impact.’

That is nonsense. Indeed, its report later admits that it doesn’t know to what extent ‘intensive behavioural counselling’ is required to use ENDS for smoking cessation. Another misdirection is that ‘uncertain health consequence’ is not equivalent to ‘likely significant health consequences’.

It is true that while we have no reason to believe vaping to be substantially harmful, we don’t know exactly how safe vaping is in the long term. Undoubtedly, inhaling vapours is likely to involve at least some health risk (as do so many small pleasures). However, that lack of evidence does not undermine what we do know, which is that vaping is far safer than smoking.

The FCTC might labour under the delusion that smokers are eager to await their instructions on how exactly to quit smoking, but few real-world smokers are going to want to quit ‘in the context of intensive behavioural counselling’.

Vaping is attractive to them because it is a pleasant alternative to smoking, unlike pharmaceutical nicotine-replacement therapies. Trying to medicalise vaping is only going to make it less attractive to smokers, and therefore less effective as a cessation tool.

The FCTC’s claim is also falsified by a great deal of anecdotal and testimonial evidence.

On an online forum, one user said: ‘I smoked between half a pack and a pack a day from about 15 to 30. Switched to the vape because the smokes were hell on my lungs. Haven’t been able to kick the vape yet but feel 10,000x better overall. Haven’t had a cigarette in 3 years and no desire to any time soon, even while out drinking. Tbh I can hardly stand to be around them.’

Replied another: ‘Same. Pack a day from 19-35. Switched to vaping 2 years ago, feel infinitely better in terms of breathing and it shows on my face too. I look pretty much the same now as I looked when I was 25.’

I quit smoking using a vape myself, and can attest to immediately feeling better. I had a chronic cough for three months before quitting, after a bout of bronchitis. A doctor who saw me cough persistently on YouTube suggested it might be early-stage chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Within days of switching to vaping, the cough had cleared up, and it hasn’t returned.

I also quit the vape within months, contrary to the FCTC’s belief that vaping is likely to become a permanent habit. Even if people quit smoking and continue to vape for the rest of their lives, however, they will be very much better off than they were as smokers.

Not enough people vape

Public Health England (PHE) completely undermines the FCTC’s views on ENDS as smoking cessation devices. Instead of being worried about people vaping, it is worried that not enough people vape.

It says: ‘As the number of vapers in England plateaus, incorrect perceptions of its relative risks compared to smoking may be discouraging smokers from using vaping to quit.’

These ‘incorrect perceptions’ are exactly the fear-mongering produced in the FCTC reports. Yet PHE discovered that ‘nicotine vaping products were the most popular aid (27.2%) used by smokers trying to quit in England in 2020’, ‘it is estimated that in 2017, more than 50,000 smokers stopped smoking with the aid of a vaping product who would otherwise have carried on smoking’, and ‘using a vaping product as part of a quit attempt in local stop smoking services had some of the highest quit success rates – between 59.7% and 74% in 2019 and 2020’.

The FCTC should be shouting this from the rooftops. It should be advising smokers worldwide to switch to vaping, and recommending national public health authorities to liberalise – and even subsidise – the vaping industry, in the interest of public health and harm reduction.

And instead of deliberately trying to make vaping unattractive, by railing against flavourings and fancy vaping devices, the FCTC should wish to make vaping even more attractive as an alternative to smoking.

Public health

If the FCTC’s concern really was public health, it would be investing time, effort and money in investigating how novel products such as HTPs, ENDS and ENNDS could contribute to their efforts to convince people not to smoke tobacco, and how they could reduce harm.

It is clear that these products have an important role to play, but the FCTC is far more concerned that they give the tobacco industry ‘loop-holes’ through which they could continue to profit.

The FCTC also has no time for people who choose to smoke despite the known health risks, because quitting poses even greater risks to their mental and physical well-being. People with mental health issues, or recovering from drug and alcohol addiction, often rely on smoking to get by. To them, the risk of far-off disease or an early death is far smaller than the very immediate risks of mental breakdown, suicide or relapse.

The campaign waged by the FCTC is an ideological battle against the tobacco industry. Until it becomes a campaign truly focused on public health, it should be resisted.

It admits to lacking evidence on any number of points, yet it prohibits that very evidence from being led at its conferences, because of ‘tobacco interests’. It won’t even listen to the smokers in whose interests it claims to act.

The entire FCTC effort is undemocratic, dictatorial, misdirected and irrational, and has no place in a free world.

https://dailyfriend.co.za/2021/10/08/tobacco-control-ideology-versus-public-health/

 

Taliban invited to Moscow for talks over future of Afghanistan in wake of American troop withdrawal, top Russian diplomat confirms

7 Oct, 2021 

FILE PHOTO. Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid (C) speaks to the media at the airport in Kabul on August 31, 2021. © AFP / Wakil KOHSAR

Russia has invited representatives of the Taliban to meet in Moscow as part of efforts to open diplomatic channels with Afghanistan’s de facto new government, President Vladimir Putin’s special envoy for the country has confirmed.

Speaking to journalists on Thursday, Zamir Kabulov, who also serves as the director of the second Asian Department at the Russian Foreign ministry, said that an invite had been extended to Taliban officials.

However, the precise details of a meeting and who might attend it have not yet been disclosed.

Despite the Taliban being designated as a terrorist organization and banned in Russia, representatives of its political branch were granted permission to attend talks in Moscow earlier this year in an effort to forge a peace deal. Since then, the Islamist militant group has taken control of almost all of Afghanistan following the withdrawal of US troops and their allies.

In July, just weeks before the Taliban took Kabul, Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova defended ongoing negotiations with its senior leaders. “The Taliban movement is prohibited in our country,” she said, adding that Moscow “reaffirms in every possible way its determination to fight against international terrorist activity.”

“There is a small and important nuance,” Zakharova went on. “The Taliban movement is part of the inter-Afghan dialogue. This is the very dialogue that the Security Council [at the UN] has called on all countries to facilitate.”

She said that by holding talks with all sides, Russia would continue to champion that process.

Any hopes for a peaceful settlement between the warring parties have since disappeared with the collapse of the US-backed government in August.

In past weeks, Taliban leaders have declared Afghanistan to be an Islamic Emirate and taken control of the state. However, no foreign nation has yet recognized the group as the country’s legitimate government.

Kabulov has previously hinted that Russia could grant recognition, while explaining that “we are in no hurry” and that such a move would be dependent on “how the new regime behaves.”

“If we compare how easy it is to negotiate as colleagues and partners, then the Taliban have seemed to me for a long time much more prepared for negotiations than the puppet government were,” he said in August.

According to the top diplomat, the former US-backed leadership was “doubtfully elected, ruled badly and ended shamefully.”

However, as well as opening diplomatic channels with the group, Moscow has also moved to shore up security in the region following the departure of American troops. Russian soldiers have staged a series of drills with forces from neighboring Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, insisting that the shared border will be protected.

https://www.rt.com/russia/536835-taliban-invited-to-moscow-for-talks/