Daily Archives: April 28, 2017

Violence erupted in Macedonias parliament as tensions between ethnic Albanian minorities and nationalists boiled over, prompting sharp rebukes from Western governments.

Protesters supportive of the nationalist VMRO-DPMNE party, as well as individuals clad in identity-concealing hoods, stormed parliament on Thursday night local time, violently accosting at least lawmakers and journalists. Police say the violence left 102 inside and outside parliament injured.

Parliament had just managed to break the filibuster of the minority VMRO-DPMNE. The party lost its governing majority in Decembers elections, which were an attempt to quell concern after leaked wiretaps showing illegal surveillance and corruption on the part of the then-ruling party. The governing majority is now the Social Democrats, led by Zoran Zaev, in coalition with the parliaments ethnic Albanian parties. President Gjorge Ivanov has so far defied calls to make Zaev prime minister.

On Thursday, parliament managed to move forward in putting together a new government by voting on a new speaker, who received the support of the Social Democratic parties as well as members of the ethnic Albanian parties. The newly elected speaker is Albanian Talat Xhaferi.

The demonstrators, who had been protesting the influence of ethnic Albanian parties, broke through the police and entered parliament to assault journalists and legislators including some Albanian MPs. And so the fear now is that what had been a political crisis, with VMRO-DPMNE attempting to scare the Macedonian population with the idea of more rights for Albanians, will become a full-fledged ethnic clash.

The Macedonian and ethnic Albanian communities are still living next to each other, not together, Jan Cingel, a researcher with the Bratislava-based GLOBSEC Policy Institute, told Foreign Policy. If something happens some kind of a spark can light more tensions.

The European Union and NATO swiftly condemned the assault on lawmakers and reporters.

The acts of violence in the Parliament are wholly unacceptable and we call for calm and restraint, Federica Mogherini, the EUs head of foreign policy, and Johannes Hahn, European commissioner, said in a joint statement.

I strongly condemn yesterdays attacks on members of Parliament in Skopje. Violence has no place in any parliament, said Jens Stoltenberg, NATO secretary general.

But the EU and NATO havent specified how they could follow up on these words of warning. And, of course, not all EU member states saw the situation the same way.

Hungarys foreign minister, Peter Szijjarto, echoed the official Russian position in blaming influence from abroad. Moscow blames the EU and United States; Budapest, external intervention and, of course, Hungarian-born billionaire and perpetual bogeyman George Soros. (Russian and European interest and investment in the region increased only recently, said Cingel, who believes the protests were the manifestation of homegrown tension.)

Macedonia hasnt had a government since December, when former Prime Minister Nukola Gruevski won an election but didnt gain enough votes to win a parliamentary majority. Talks with the ethnic Albanian parties floundered over a debate on designating Albanian as an official second language in Macedonia.

Macedonia, a former Yugoslav republic, plunged into ethnically-fueled strife and violence following Yugoslavias break-up in the 1990s. In 2001, the countrys Albanian minority led an armed rebellion that ended under a NATO-brokered peace agreement. The peace deal failed to resolve tensions between the countrys ethnic groups, which have been simmering ever since.

While Macedonia made a series of democratic and market-oriented reforms in the past decade to boost their prospects of joining the EU and NATO, experts fear the country is backsliding and that the political crisis could spill into the streets.

Photo credit:ROBERT ATANASOVSKI/AFP/Getty Images

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NATO, EU Rebuke Macedonia Over Parliament Violence - Foreign Policy (blog)

Jens Stoltenberg: Thank you very much Prime Minister Gentiloni, Paolo. We have met many times before, but this is the first time we meet formally in your new capacity as Prime Minister and I really appreciate this opportunity to meet with you, to discuss a wide range of security challenges we face together in NATO. But especially to focus on the preparations for the meeting in May in Brussels, where NATO leaders, heads of state and government, are going to meet. The new US President, the new President of France, but also Montenegro, which is going to be at the next or the new member of NATO we will all be together there and showing the strength and the solidarity of the alliance through being together in Brussels at the leaders meeting.

Let me also thank Italy for being such a vital and highly valued NATO ally. You are contributing to NATO missions, operations, activities in many different ways and that is of great importance for our shared security, for our collective defence and for the strength of the alliance. You are on the top when it comes to contributing forces to our mission in Afghanistan. You are in Afghanistan with forces which are of great importance for the mission. I have met them myself in Herat and they are there helping to stabilize Afghanistan and also helping to fight international terrorism in Afghanistan and we thank you for your presence in Afghanistan. You are also present in the Balkans, helping to keep the Balkans stable and to also address the challenges posed by foreign fighters in that part of Europe and we also thank you for being the lead nation, having the leadership in our KFOR mission in Kosovo.

Let me also thank you for your contribution later this year to a Canadian-led battle group in Latvia, being part of our enhanced forward presence in the eastern part of the alliance. And Italy will next year lead our High Readiness Joint Task Force or Spearhead Force which is of great importance for the readiness of the alliance and the ability of the Alliance to reinforce if needed.

So you are participating and contributing in many different ways to the strength of the alliance. In particular I would like to thank Italy for being the driving force for developing NATOs strategy towards the south. We are now in the process of establishing a Hub for the south in our Joint Force Command in Naples. This will be an important tool in strengthening, enhancing NATOs ability to address the challenges we see emanating from the south, improve our situational awareness and improve our ability to react and to deal with the threats, including working with partners in the south.

NATO has been at the forefront of fighting terrorism for many, many years and our biggest military operation ever is in Afghanistan and we have to remember that the reason why we are in Afghanistan is to prevent Afghanistan from becoming a safe haven for international terrorists once again. NATO is also contributing to the fight against terrorism in many other ways. We have established a new division for intelligence. Sharing intelligence is key when it comes to addressing the terrorist threat. NATO is also providing support for the Counter-ISIL coalition, training Iraqi officers and providing AWACS surveillance plane support to the Coalition and you are really an important contributor to the Counter-ISIL Coalition and this is important for all of us. We are stepping up our support for Iraq and we have recently included military medicine, courses and training and also stepping up our counter-IED activities when it comes to helping Iraq stabilize their own country and fight, and fight terrorism.

NATO is also prepared to help Libya. I spoke with Prime Minister al-Sarraj last week. A NATO expert team will meet with the Libyan authorities in the coming weeks to discuss how NATO can help Libya build institutions, including a modern ministry of defence, joint chief of staff and intelligence serviceshelp to build institutions which are crucial to stabilize Libya. And Italy is once again being a highly valued ally because you are really present, you are really helping to solve the crisis, the problems in Libya through the political process, but also through your presence in Libya. And we all are grateful for what you do there.

Let me also underline that NATO and the European Union have stepped up our cooperation which is also important for Italy, being a member of both the European Union and NATO. And we have the NATO maritime security operation in the Mediterranean, Sea Guardian, and we have, currently we have four ships, three maritime patrol aircrafts and some other assets providing direct support to the EUs Operation Sophia, showing how NATO can help support the European Union addressing the challenges, the migrant and the refugee crisis we see in the central Mediterranean and we are also present in the Aegean Sea dealing with the migrant and refugee crisis.

As you mentioned we will also address burden sharing at the meeting in May with heads of state and government. Burden sharing is about defence spending and of course when tensions are going up we have to increase our investment in defence. I welcome that Italy has increased. Last year, Italy increased defence spending. And we are following up on the pledge we made together in 2014 to stop the cuts, to gradually increase defence spending and then move towards spending 2 % of GDP on defence within a decade. But burden sharing is about more than spending. Burden sharing is also about the capabilities we are developing and Italy again is contributing with many important capabilities to NATO, to the alliance and the contributions to NATO activities, missions and operations in Kosovo, in Afghanistan but also when it comes to our presence in the eastern part of the alliance.

So once again thank you so much for an excellent meeting. Thank you for everything Italy is doing for our alliance and Im looking forward to seeing you again in Brussels on the 25th of May together with all the other leaders showing the strength and the unity of the alliance. Thank you.

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by NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg at the joint press point with the President of the Council of Ministers ... - NATO HQ (press release)

Satellites and mobile phones, built on international standards, help the world get connected. But the communications technology we use on land does not work well underwater. As water covers over 70 per cent of the earth's surface, NATO has sponsored research into establishing the first ever digital underwater communications standard.

Imagine a scuba diver approaching the surface, being made aware of nearby boating activity; or a submarine communicating with a land-based command post; or an underwater robot sending a warning to an oil rig after a leak is detected the possible applications of underwater communications are limitless.

It could be used in many areas: for harbour protection, maritime surveillance, mine detection, surveying offshore wind farms and pipelines, or even underwater archaeology.

The NATO Science and Technology Organizations Centre for Maritime Research and Experimentation (CMRE, see below for more info) has developed a standard for underwater acoustic communications called JANUS, which is recognised as a NATO standard by all NATO Allies since 24 March 2017. This marks the first time that a digital underwater communication protocol has been acknowledged at international level and opens the way to develop many exciting underwater communication applications.

A network of marine robots

CMRE is working to support effective underwater communication networks to allow undersea robots to work together and report back home (see the infographic on Digital Underwater Networked Communications).

"Robots can behave intelligently and act as a team," says Joo Alves, Principal Scientist and Project Leader at CMRE. For example, one of the robots could find some interesting feature and call the rest of the team.

With effective undersea communication, this can all happen in an autonomous way, without requiring direct human intervention. If needed, the operation can be managed by land-based engineers who monitor all the communications from a command and control room ashore. The connection to land is made through gateway buoys on the surface of the water equipped with radio links to local support platforms or satellites.

This is particularly important for search-and-rescue operations, says John Potter, a scientist at the CMRE Strategic Development Office. Autonomous vehicles are relatively inexpensive and of course unmanned, so they can be sent to do dirty, dangerous jobs.

Sound is known to have an impact on marine life, said Joo Alves. Aware of this risk, the Centre works with biologists and other scientists to protect the marine environment.

Much of this development work is carried out on the Littoral Ocean Observatory Network, or LOON (see below for more info). The LOON is a test facility, installed in the harbour of La Spezia, Italy that plays a central role in NATO projects, many of which are developed in partnership with the European Commission.

CMRE uses the LOON to develop and test communication solutions that contribute to the protection and monitoring of oceans and rivers by underwater robots.

JANUS, the standard underwater language

To be able to communicate with each other, underwater assets need common standards. In the air we can simply connect our gadgets to any WiFi hotspot without having to worry about the compatibility, says Joo Alves. Until now, there wasnt anything even remotely similar for the underwater domain.

As with the industry standard for WiFi communication, an undersea communication standard has to be defined in order to guarantee the interoperability between equipment from different manufacturers.

For the past ten years, CMRE has been working on the development of the first international digital underwater communication protocol, known as JANUS, which is now an approved NATO standard.

JANUS was a Roman god of openings and gateways, says John Potter. Thats why it is called JANUS, because this language opens the portal between two domains, two different operating paradigms, through which they can talk.

It is a digital underwater signalling system that can be used to contact underwater devices using a common format; announce the presence of a device to reduce conflicts; and enable a group of underwater devices (that can be underwater robots, submarines, divers or any other equipment operating under the surface) to organise themselves into a network, adds John Potter.

Adopted globally, JANUS can make military and civilian, NATO and non-NATO devices interoperable, providing them all with a common language with which to communicate and arrange to cooperate.

JANUS has been extensively tested at sea in exercises involving a number of partners (universities, industries and research institutions) covering a range of application scenarios. Close collaboration with NATO Allies has been particularly fruitful in developing JANUS for use in cases that may improve the safety of maritime operations.

For example, the Portuguese Navy has been working with CMRE to develop new concepts to support the exchange of crucial information with submarines (typically only available at the surface via radio) such as the location of nearby ships. Digital data exchanges to support rescue operations in case of a submarine incident are currently also being developed.

Littoral Ocean Observatory Network an underwater test bed

NATO Centre for Maritime Research and Experimentation

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A new era of digital underwater communications - NATO HQ (press release)