BANGKOK: US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson landed in Bangkok on Tuesday for talks with junta chief Prayut Chan-O-Cha, the highest-level American diplomatic visit since the Thai army grabbed power in a 2014 coup.
The one-day drop-in comes as Washington reboots its relationship with Thailand under President Donald Trump, whose administration has enraged rights groups by cosying up to strongmen around the globe.
The Thai army’s 2014 toppling of the civilian government pinched ties with Washington, who distanced itself from its oldest ally in Asia and trimmed back military aid.
But relations are on a better footing under Trump, with the US president extending an invitation to junta chief Prayut Chan-O-Cha.
The thaw also comes amid Washington’s growing concerns of rival superpower China’s clout in the region.
Beijing entices its smaller neighbors by offering massive investment decoupled from human rights concerns, which appeals to leaders weary of US pressure.
Thailand is a lynchpin country in China’s massive trade and infrastructure ‘One Belt, One Road’ strategy.
A US Embassy spokesperson said Tillerson would discuss regional flashpoints such as North Korea’s nuclear missile program and territorial disputes in the South China Sea.
It was not immediately clear how firmly the former oilman would push the junta government on its crackdown on political rights.
The US wants Thailand to “emerge as a strengthened democracy that respects and guarantees human rights and fundamental freedoms,” said embassy spokesperson Steve Castonguay.
Earlier in the week Susan Thornton, acting US Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian Affairs, defended America’s reach out to the military regime, as pragmatism appears to outweigh principle in Trump’s foreign affairs agenda.
“They have a road map by which they’re going to work toward a restoration of constitutional government, democratic elections,” she said.
“It’s time to go back and encourage them.”
Tillerson’s visit comes on the heels of a regional forum in Manila, where the former ExxonMobil CEO hailed a UN measure to pass tough new sanctions on North Korea over its growing nuclear arsenal.
Trump has tried to browbeat Beijing — North Korea’s ally and biggest trade partner — into reining in the hermit state’s ballistic missile program.
The US has also turned to Southeast Asian nations to help isolate Pyongyang, though it failed to persuade the regional bloc to bar North Korea’s top envoy from last week’s forum.
Tillerson is also slated to pay respects to Thailand’s late King Bhumibol Adulyadej, who has been lying in state at the Grand Palace since his death in October 2016.
Later he will travel to the Malaysian capital.
Tillerson in Thailand, as US cosies up to oldest Asian ally
Tillerson in Thailand, as US cosies up to oldest Asian ally
South Korea’s military says North Korea fired missile into eastern sea
- The South’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said the missile was fired from an area near Pyongyang
- Seoul denounces the launch as a provocation that poses a serious threat on the Korean Peninsula
The South’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said the missile was fired from an area near the North Korean capital of Pyongyang and that the launch preparations were detected in advance by the US and South Korean militaries. It denounced the launch as a provocation that poses a serious threat to peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula.
The joint chiefs said the military was strengthening its surveillance and defense posture in preparation for possible additional launches and sharing information on the missile with the United States and Japan.
The launch came as US Secretary of State Antony Blinken was visiting Seoul for talks with South Korean allies over the North Korean nuclear threat and other issues.
Blinken’s visit comes amid political turmoil in South Korea following President Yoon Suk Yeol’s short-lived martial law decree and subsequent impeachment by parliament last month, which experts say puts the country at a disadvantage in getting a steady footing with Trump ahead of his return to the White House.
In a year-end political conference, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un vowed to implement the “toughest” anti-US policy and criticized the Biden administration’s efforts to strengthen security cooperation with Seoul and Tokyo, which he described as a “nuclear military bloc for aggression.”
North Korean state media did not specify Kim’s policy plans or mention any specific comments about Trump. During his first term, Trump met Kim three times for talks on the North’s nuclear program.
Many experts, however, say a quick resumption of Kim-Trump summitry is unlikely as Trump would first focus on conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East. North Korea’s support for Russia’s war against Ukraine also poses a challenge to efforts to revive diplomacy, experts say.
Before his presidency faltered over the ill-conceived power grab, Yoon worked closely with US President Joe Biden to expand joint military exercises, update nuclear deterrence strategies and strengthen trilateral security cooperation with Tokyo.
More than 260 Rohingya refugees arrive in Indonesia
- The mostly Muslim ethnic Rohingya are heavily persecuted in Myanmar
- Latest group of refugees arrived on a beach in the region’s town of West Peureulak
BANDA ACEH, Indonesia: More than 260 Rohingya refugees, including women and children, arrived in Indonesia’s easternmost province of Aceh after floating at sea for days, an official said Monday.
The mostly Muslim ethnic Rohingya are heavily persecuted in Myanmar and thousands risk their lives each year on long and dangerous sea journeys to reach Malaysia or Indonesia.
An East Aceh official, Iskandar – who like many Indonesians goes by one name – said this latest group of refugees arrived on a beach in the region’s town of West Peureulak on Sunday night around 10:25 p.m. local time (1525 GMT Sunday).
“There are 264 of them – 117 men and 147 women,” Iskandar said Monday, adding that in the group, around 30 were children.
He said they had initially been on two boats, one of which had sunk off the coast while the second managed to move closer to shore.
They could then walk to the shore when the tide was low, he said.
“They told me they were rejected in Malaysia,” Iskandar said, adding that the local government has not decided where to move the Rohingya refugees.
Rohingya arrivals in Indonesia tend to follow a cyclical pattern, slowing during the stormy months and picking back up when sea conditions calm down.
In November, more than 100 refugees were rescued after their boat sank off the coast of East Aceh.
In October, 152 Rohingya refugees were finally brought ashore after being anchored for days off the coast of South Aceh district while officials decided whether to let them land.
Indonesia is not a signatory to the UN refugee convention and says it cannot be compelled to take in refugees from Myanmar, calling instead on neighboring countries to share the burden and resettle the Rohingya who arrive on its shores.
Many Acehnese, who have memories of decades of bloody conflict themselves, are sympathetic to the plight of their fellow Muslims.
But others say their patience has been tested, claiming the Rohingya consume scarce resources and occasionally come into conflict with locals.
Up to 300 Afghans arrive in Philippines for US visa processing
- Action made despite domestic opposition in the Catholic-majority country over security and other concerns
- The Afghans could stay for no more than 59 days and would be ‘confined to their billet facility’ except for embassy interviews
MANILA: Up to 300 Afghans arrived in the Philippines on Monday on temporary stays while being processed for US resettlement, Philippine and US officials said.
The Philippines and the United States signed an agreement last July allowing possibly hundreds of Afghans to stay in Manila while their US Special Immigrant visas were being processed.
This was despite domestic opposition in the Catholic-majority country over security and other concerns.
“The DFA issued the appropriate Philippine entry visa to these applicants in line with current rules and regulations,” Philippine Department of Foreign Affairs spokeswoman Teresita Daza said in a statement.
“All applicants completed extensive security vetting by Philippines national security agencies.”
A US State Department official, speaking on condition of anonymity, would not be specific about the number involved other than to say “up to 300.”
Under the deal, the US government will shoulder the cost of the Afghans’ stays in Manila, including food, housing, medical care, security and transportation, the Philippine DFA statement said.
The Afghans will stay at a facility operated by the US State Department’s Coordinator for Afghan Relocation Efforts, an earlier US Embassy statement said.
Daza had previously said the Afghans could stay for no more than 59 days and would be “confined to their billet facility” except for embassy interviews.
The applicants all underwent medical screening in Afghanistan.
Tens of thousands of Afghans fled their country in the chaotic evacuation of August 2021 as US and allied forces pulled out to end Washington’s longest war, launched after the attacks on September 11, 2001.
Many of those who had worked with the ousted Western-backed government arrived in the United States seeking resettlement under a special immigrant visa program, but thousands were also left behind or in third countries, waiting for their visas to be processed.
Blinken to meet Europeans on Syria pathway
- Senior US diplomat Barbara Leaf met Sharaa last month and said that the United States was lifting a bounty that has been on its head
Seoul: US Secretary of State Antony Blinken will meet his European counterparts Thursday in Rome on Syria, as the West looks to engage the new Islamist-led leadership.
Blinken will “meet with European counterparts to advocate for a peaceful, inclusive, Syrian-led and Syrian-owned political transition,” a State Department statement said as he visited Seoul on Monday.
The State Department did not immediately specify the participants.
Blinken, on a trip that will also take him to Japan and France, will later join President Joe Biden as he pays a farewell visit to Rome that includes an audience with Pope Francis.
Islamist-led forces toppled longtime ruler Bashar Assad in a lightning offensive last month after 13 years of brutal war.
Western powers have since been cautiously hoping for greater stability in Syria, a decade after the war triggered a major refugee crisis that shook up European politics.
The French and German foreign ministers on Friday visited Syria, although the trip was overshadowed when new leader Ahmed Al-Sharaa shook the hand only of France’s Jean-Noel Barrot, a man, and not Germany’s Annalena Baerbock, a woman.
Senior US diplomat Barbara Leaf met Sharaa last month and said that the United States was lifting a bounty that has been on its head.
She also welcomed “positive messages” he has made, including on protection of minorities, and said he had promised that Syria would not pose a threat to neighboring countries, as Israel pounds Syrian military sites.
The quiet financier: Daesh’s elusive strongman
- Abdul Qadir Mumin is believed to be already Daesh’s general directorate of provinces from Somalia
- Born in Puntland in Somalia’s northeast, Sheikh Mumin lived in Sweden before settling in England, where he acquired British nationality
- In London and Leicester, he built a reputation in the early 2000s as a fiery preacher in radical mosques, but also in online videos
PARIS: His orange henna-dyed beard and striking eyewear would make him easy to pick out in a crowd, but Abdul Qadir Mumin has remained elusive.
The Somalian leader of the Daesh group has in all likelihood risen to the status of strongman of the entire organization, even if he lacks the official title, analysts say.
While observers wonder who is behind Daesh-designated caliph Abou Hafs Al-Hachimi Al-Qourachi — the would-be leader of all Muslims — or whether such a person actually exists, Abdul Qadir Mumin may already be running Daesh’s general directorate of provinces from Somalia.
“He is the most important person, the most powerful one, he is the one controlling the global Islamic State network,” said Tore Hamming, at the International Center for the Study of Radicalization (ICSR).
In this opaque structure where the leaders get killed one by one by the United States, Mumin is among the few “senior guys who managed to stay alive the entire time until now, which does give him some status within the group,” Hamming told AFP.
A few months ago it was thought that an American strike had killed him. But since there was never any proof of his demise, he is considered to be alive and active.
“Somalia is important for financial reasons,” said Hamming. “We know that they send money to Congo, to Mozambique, to South Africa, to Yemen, to Afghanistan. So they have a good business model going.”
The transactions are so shadowy that even estimating the amounts is impossible — as is determining the exact routes the money takes from place to place.
Born in the semi-autonomous region of Puntland in Somalia’s northeast, Sheikh Mumin lived in Sweden before settling in England, where he acquired British nationality.
In London and Leicester, he built a reputation in the early 2000s as a fiery preacher in radical mosques, but also in online videos.
He is said to have burned his British passport upon his arrival in Somalia, where he quickly became a propagandist for the Al-Shabab group, linked to Al-Qaeda, before announcing his defection to Daesh (or Islamic State) in 2015.
“He controls a small territory but has a big appeal. He distributes volunteers and money,” said a European intelligence official, who declined to be named, claiming that a Daesh attack in May in Mozambique “was carried out by Maghreb and African militants.”
Mumin also finances the Ugandan rebels of the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) — affiliated with Daesh in the Democratic Republic of Congo — “who now number between 1,000 and 1,500,” the official said. With Mumin’s help, “they have recently turned to the jihad” seeking “radicalism, weapons, and funding.”
Some observers have described him as the caliph of the jihadist command structure. However, such an official designation would signal an ideological reversal for the group with deep roots in the Levant, the territory of the Daesh caliphate that lasted from 2014 to 2019 and spanned Iraq and Syria.
“That would create some kind of uproar within the community of supporters and sympathizers of Daesh,” said Hans-Jakob Schindler, director of the Counter-Extremism Project (CEP) think tank.
In theory, the caliph has to be an Arab from a tribe linked to the prophet. The supreme leader of a group so concerned with its ideological foundations “cannot be just any Somali with an orange beard,” Schindler told AFP.
Especially because leaders of operationally active Daesh affiliates, such as IS-K in Afghanistan or ISWAP in western Africa, could lay claim to the position.
While the Somalian does not meet traditional leadership criteria, his geographical location brings some advantages.
“The Horn of Africa may have offered welcome insulation from instability in the Levant and greater freedom of movement,” said CTC Sentinel, a publication on terrorism threats, at the West Point military academy.
“This profile of leadership parallels that of another jihadi leader — Osama bin Laden — who saw that funding his war was most central to winning it,” it said.
Mumin’s rise to the top, despite the small number of fighters under his command, also reflects two internal dynamics within Daesh.
The first, said Hamming, is that “the caliph is no longer the most important person in the Islamic State.”
And the second is that Daesh eeeeeis indeed pursuing a gradual strategic shift toward Africa.
“Ninety percent of violent images on jihad consumed in Europe come from Africa,” said the European intelligence official.
Nonetheless, the organization’s leadership remains centralized in the Middle East, wrote CTC Sentinel.
“In this sense, much is business as usual,” it said.
