Month: May 2018

Pakistan says it is reassessing strained ties with the United States, a move that could lead to halting supply lines into Afghanistan where American troops are fighting insurgents to stabilize the war-ravaged country with the help of NATO allies.

Foreign Minister Khurram Dastgir Khan made the remarks to VOA exclusively a day before an international task force is to place Pakistan on a terrorism-financing watch list at the urging of U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration, a move likely to fuel Pakistan’s economic troubles.

The Paris-based Financial Action Task Force, or FATF decided in February to include Pakistan in its so-called “gray list” of nations that are not doing enough to curb terrorism financing.

The U.S.-led punitive move was part of Trump’s South Asia strategy he announced in August to pressure Pakistan to cut alleged ties to the Taliban and other terrorist groups waging deadly attacks on American forces in Afghanistan.

Islamabad denies charges it supports any terrorist groups and rejects “U.S. pressure tactics” as an attempt to blame Pakistan for international failures to end the Afghan conflict.

Bilateral relations have deteriorated to a point where no high-level interaction is happening these days between the two long time allies,  Khan told VOA in a wide-ranging interview.

“We have reached an impasse in which we have this very strictly formal diplomatic communication is happening, so the U.S. ambassador in Islamabad comes and speaks to us in the Foreign Office and our ambassador in Washington goes and speaks to the State Department. But that’s not really communication, the two countries are not speaking to each other,” Khan said

Communication issues

He blamed the Trump administration’s “adamant” refusal to communicate for “the low ebb” in mutual ties.

“At the moment Pakistan is not being heard. Pakistan is just being vilified and castigated in Washington without being heard at all. It is this situation.”

The only communication that currently exists apart from the formal diplomatic interaction, Khan said, is that U.S. CENTCOM commander General John Votel has been speaking to Pakistan’s army chief, General Qamar Javed Bajwa.

“Formally Pakistan is still a major non-NATO ally and for the United States to actively target Pakistan in FATF, trampling over all regulations and precedents is by necessity forcing us to rethink,” lamented the Minister.

Pakistan is required under an agreement with FATF reached in February to work on an action plan to get itself removed from the gray list, otherwise the county faces the danger of being moved to the so-called “black list” of nations.

Pakistan’s crisis-marred relationship suffered a serious blow on May 11 when Washington barred Pakistani diplomats in the United States from traveling beyond 40-kilometer radius from their posts without permission.

Islamabad responded by imposing a similar “permission regime” on American diplomats in the country. It also went a step further and withdrew a set of unilateral concessions Pakistani had granted Washington as a partner in “the war on terrorism” to ensure security cover for U.S. diplomats and officials in the country.

Diplomatic disagreement

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo last week told U.S. lawmakers American diplomats were being badly treated in Pakistan, charges Islamabad denied.

Pakistan has been receiving billions of dollars in financial assistance since joining the U.S.-led war on terrorism 17 years ago.

Khan, who also heads the defense ministry, acknowledged that American civilian and military financial assistance programs have over the years helped Islamabad meet its crucial budgetary shortfalls. But the expected financial support from Washington this year, he said, has dropped to ‘zero’ for the first time in a decade.

Minister Khan noted, however, that despite all the tensions and bitterness in mutual ties, Pakistan has kept its ground and air lines of communications open for U.S. and allied nations to ferry supplies to their troops in landlocked Afghanistan.

“Yes, we have to consider all options that are in front of us because it would appear to us that the U.S. is following what can be termed a non-violent compellence of Pakistan,” the minister said when asked whether his country is close to shutting down the supply lines.

International forces heavily rely on Pakistani routes to haul supplies. Islamabad closed them once before, after a 2011 U.S. airstrike “mistakenly” killed two dozen Pakistani soldiers.

The action had forced the United States and NATO for months to use a mix of ground and sea routes called the Northern Distribution Network (NDN) running through other countries, including Russia.

But in the wake of Washington’s current tensions with Moscow analysts are skeptical whether NDN, though a much more costly and time consuming option, can still be availed under the circumstances.

Foreign Minister Khan underscored the need for the two countries to communicate and speak to each other despite maintaining divergent views on the war in Afghanistan, the longest in U.S. history.

“The fact that that longest (U.S.) war shows no sign of turning positive for the U.S. is all the the more reason that whatever differences or grievances we might have Pakistan and the U.S. should be communicating at different levels… because ultimately this is a relationship, at least in our view, bigger than Afghanistan and has been bigger than Afghanistan.”

Terror fight

Khan said at a time when U.S. and Western partners have “abandoned Pakistan to terrorism” and continue to ignore his country’s “unprecedented” sacrifices in fighting terrorist groups, Islamabad’s traditional ally China has stood by it and brought billions of dollars in historic direct Chinese investment.

“Russians are essentially (also) walking into a vacuum created by the absence of our American friends,” the minister said pointing to Pakistan’s rapidly improving relations with old rival Russia.

At a public talk in Washington last week, John Sopko, the U.S. Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), stopped short of dismissing Washington’s narrative of singling out Pakistan for the Afghan military stalemate.

“We keep referring to Pakistan as being the key problem. But the problem also was that the Afghan government at times was viewed very negatively by their local people and what you really need is to insert a government that the people support, a government that is not predatory, a government that is not a bunch of lawless warlords,” observed Sopko.

He went on to say that the U.S. policy of pouring in billions of dollars in these unstable environments contributed to the problem of creating more warlords and powerful people who took the law into their own hands.

“In essence, the government we introduced, particularly some of the Afghan local police forces, which were nothing other than warlord militias with some uniforms on, were just as bad as the terrorists before them,” said Sopko who is overseeing U.S. spending to identify fraud and to prevent it.
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North Korea human rights advocates are considering more practical ways to reform the repressive practices of the Kim Jong Un government, as denuclearization talks continue to end the country’s economic and diplomatic isolation.

Rights activists hold out hope that U.S. President Donald Trump will confront Kim at their expected Singapore meeting in June about ongoing atrocities in North Korea, including a network of political prison camps and widespread government sanctioned abuses in the country.

Benedict Rogers, with Christian Solidarity Worldwide, a religious freedom oriented organization, urges President Trump to emulate former President Ronald Reagan who once publicly called on the leader of the Soviet Union to tear down the Berlin Wall that separated democratic West Germany and the Communist East.

“Mr. Trump’s message should be, Mr. Kim if you seek peace, come to the gates of the prison camps, open the prison camps, tear down the walls of the prison camps,” said Rogers at a North Korea human rights conference in Seoul on Thursday.

​Human rights agenda

It is unclear if human rights will be part of the agenda at the U.S.-North Korea nuclear summit, if it happens. U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and high-ranking North Korean official Kim Yong Chol have been meeting this week in New York to overcome the main obstacle to the summit; the gap between the U.S. demand for rapid and complete denuclearization and North Korea’s more phased in approach that would provide early sanctions relief.

Brad Adams, the Asia director at the advocacy group Human Rights Watch said in a statement on Thursday, “Whatever the outcome of nuclear talks, human rights-related sanctions should remain in effect until North Korea changes the way it treats its people.”

The United Nations has passed 13 resolutions addressing human rights abuses in North Korea, most recently in March of this year at the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva.

In 2014 the United Nations General Assembly voted to refer the leadership in Pyongyang to the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity, after a Commission of Inquiry report documented systematic and ongoing atrocities in North Korea, including restricting all forms of dissent, prohibiting religion, and engaging in the arbitrary arrest of more than 100,000 political opponents or critics, torture and executions of its citizens. The measure stalled in the U.N. Security Council where the North’s allies, China and Russia, are believed to be preventing it from coming to a vote.

​Engagement opportunity

Human rights abuses in North Korea were not discussed at the recent inter-Korean summit that focused on improving relations through increased dialogue and cooperation and exchanges.

Activists are preparing for the likelihood that the U.S.-North Korea summit will not substantially address the North’s human rights situation either, and that a nuclear deal would lead to an end to the current U.N. sanctions that ban 90 percent of North Korean trade, and would offer a significant increase in foreign trade and investment.

An opening of the North’s economic system could lead to legal reforms and the easing of travel and communications restrictions, if the Kim government follows the Chinese or Vietnamese models for economic development and foreign investment.

“If North Korea embarks on reform and opens up the economy more aggressively, and if there is an increase in external trade and foreign investment on North Korea, then the voices from the outside world on the North Korean human rights situation will have a bigger impact on the people of North Korea,” said Kim Young Hwan, a longtime North Korea human rights advocate, who is now with an organization called Group For The Future.

To be most effective during the initial stages of economic engagement with North Korea, Kim Young Hwan advises activists to focus on improving civil rights related to the workplace, rather than pressing for democratic reforms the Kim government would view as a direct challenge to its rule.

David Hawk with the U.S. based Committee For Human Rights in North Korea is skeptical North Korea is prepared to end the intrusive surveillance of visiting foreigners, and permit its own people more freedom and contact with the outside world to facilitate increased economic activity.

“I have the suspicion that what North Korea is interested in is a policy of reform without opening,” said Hawk at the Seoul human rights conference.

Kim this year has prioritized economic development, after saying his country reached its national security goal to develop nuclear-armed intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) capability. Outside experts dispute North Korea’s ICBM claim, saying further testing is needed to demonstrate operational capability.

The North Korean leader has already instituted numerous reforms that weaken the central government’s control over the economy, including allowing farmers to keep a portion of the crops they produce, tolerating the growth of private markets, and permitting state owned companies to make profits, set wages and fire non-productive employees.

Lee Yoon-jee in Seoul contributed to this report.
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North Korea human rights advocates are considering more practical ways to reform the repressive practices of the Kim Jong Un government, as denuclearization talks continue to end the country’s economic and diplomatic isolation.

Rights activists hold out hope that U.S. President Donald Trump will confront Kim at their expected Singapore meeting in June about ongoing atrocities in North Korea, including a network of political prison camps and widespread government sanctioned abuses in the country.

Benedict Rogers, with Christian Solidarity Worldwide, a religious freedom oriented organization, urges President Trump to emulate former President Ronald Reagan who once publicly called on the leader of the Soviet Union to tear down the Berlin Wall that separated democratic West Germany and the Communist East.

“Mr. Trump’s message should be, Mr. Kim if you seek peace, come to the gates of the prison camps, open the prison camps, tear down the walls of the prison camps,” said Rogers at a North Korea human rights conference in Seoul on Thursday.

​Human rights agenda

It is unclear if human rights will be part of the agenda at the U.S.-North Korea nuclear summit, if it happens. U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and high-ranking North Korean official Kim Yong Chol have been meeting this week in New York to overcome the main obstacle to the summit; the gap between the U.S. demand for rapid and complete denuclearization and North Korea’s more phased in approach that would provide early sanctions relief.

Brad Adams, the Asia director at the advocacy group Human Rights Watch said in a statement on Thursday, “Whatever the outcome of nuclear talks, human rights-related sanctions should remain in effect until North Korea changes the way it treats its people.”

The United Nations has passed 13 resolutions addressing human rights abuses in North Korea, most recently in March of this year at the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva.

In 2014 the United Nations General Assembly voted to refer the leadership in Pyongyang to the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity, after a Commission of Inquiry report documented systematic and ongoing atrocities in North Korea, including restricting all forms of dissent, prohibiting religion, and engaging in the arbitrary arrest of more than 100,000 political opponents or critics, torture and executions of its citizens. The measure stalled in the U.N. Security Council where the North’s allies, China and Russia, are believed to be preventing it from coming to a vote.

​Engagement opportunity

Human rights abuses in North Korea were not discussed at the recent inter-Korean summit that focused on improving relations through increased dialogue and cooperation and exchanges.

Activists are preparing for the likelihood that the U.S.-North Korea summit will not substantially address the North’s human rights situation either, and that a nuclear deal would lead to an end to the current U.N. sanctions that ban 90 percent of North Korean trade, and would offer a significant increase in foreign trade and investment.

An opening of the North’s economic system could lead to legal reforms and the easing of travel and communications restrictions, if the Kim government follows the Chinese or Vietnamese models for economic development and foreign investment.

“If North Korea embarks on reform and opens up the economy more aggressively, and if there is an increase in external trade and foreign investment on North Korea, then the voices from the outside world on the North Korean human rights situation will have a bigger impact on the people of North Korea,” said Kim Young Hwan, a longtime North Korea human rights advocate, who is now with an organization called Group For The Future.

To be most effective during the initial stages of economic engagement with North Korea, Kim Young Hwan advises activists to focus on improving civil rights related to the workplace, rather than pressing for democratic reforms the Kim government would view as a direct challenge to its rule.

David Hawk with the U.S. based Committee For Human Rights in North Korea is skeptical North Korea is prepared to end the intrusive surveillance of visiting foreigners, and permit its own people more freedom and contact with the outside world to facilitate increased economic activity.

“I have the suspicion that what North Korea is interested in is a policy of reform without opening,” said Hawk at the Seoul human rights conference.

Kim this year has prioritized economic development, after saying his country reached its national security goal to develop nuclear-armed intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) capability. Outside experts dispute North Korea’s ICBM claim, saying further testing is needed to demonstrate operational capability.

The North Korean leader has already instituted numerous reforms that weaken the central government’s control over the economy, including allowing farmers to keep a portion of the crops they produce, tolerating the growth of private markets, and permitting state owned companies to make profits, set wages and fire non-productive employees.

Lee Yoon-jee in Seoul contributed to this report.
…

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When Oregon lawmakers created the state’s legal marijuana program, they had one goal in mind above all else: to persuade illicit pot growers to leave the black market.

That meant low barriers to entry that also targeted long-standing medical marijuana growers, whose product is not taxed. As a result, weed production boomed — with a bitter consequence.

Now, marijuana prices here are in free fall, and the craft cannabis farmers who put Oregon on the map decades before broad legalization say they are in peril of losing their now-legal businesses as the market adjusts.

Oregon regulators on Wednesday announced they will stop processing new applications for marijuana licenses in two weeks to address a severe backlog and ask state lawmakers to take up the issue next year.

​California takes heed

Experts say the dizzying evolution of Oregon’s marijuana industry may well be a cautionary tale for California, where a similar regulatory structure could mean an oversupply on a much larger scale.

“For the way the program is set up, the state just wants to get as many people in as possible, and they make no bones about it,” Hilary Bricken, a Los Angeles-based attorney specializing in marijuana business law, said of California. “Most of these companies will fail as a result of oversaturation.”

A staggering inventory

Oregon has nearly 1 million pounds (453,600 kilograms) of marijuana flower, commonly called bud, in its inventory, a staggering amount for a state with about 4 million people. Producers told The Associated Press wholesale prices fell more than 50 percent in the past year; a study by the state’s Office of Economic Analysis found the retail cost of a gram of marijuana fell from $14 in 2015 to $7 in 2017.

The oversupply can be traced largely to state lawmakers’ and regulators’ earliest decisions to shape the industry.

They were acutely aware of Oregon’s entrenched history of providing top-drawer pot to the black market nationwide, as well as a concentration of small farmers who had years of cultivation experience in the legal, but largely unregulated, medical pot program.

Getting those growers into the system was critical if a legitimate industry was to flourish, said Sen. Ginny Burdick, a Portland Democrat who co-chaired a committee created to implement the voter-approved legalization measure.

Lawmakers decided not to cap licenses; to allow businesses to apply for multiple licenses; and to implement relatively inexpensive licensing fees.

The Oregon Liquor Control Commission, which issues licenses, announced Wednesday it will put aside applications for new licenses received after June 15 until a backlog of pending applications is cleared out. The decision comes after U.S. Attorney Billy Williams challenged state officials to address Oregon’s oversupply problem.

“In my view, and frankly in the view of those in the industry that I’ve heard from, it’s a failing of the state for not stepping back and taking a look at where this industry is at following legalization,” Williams told the AP in a phone interview.

But those in the industry supported the initial decisions that led to the oversupply, Burdick said.

“We really tried to focus on policies that would rein in the medical industry and snuff out the black market as much as possible,” Burdick said.

​Consolidation

Lawmakers also quickly backtracked on a rule requiring marijuana businesses have a majority ownership by someone with Oregon residency after entrepreneurs complained it was hard to secure startup money. That change opened the door to out-of-state companies with deep pockets that could begin consolidating the industry.

The state has granted 1,001 producer licenses and has another 950 in process as of last week. State officials worry if they cut off licensing entirely or turn away those already in the application process, they’ll get sued or encourage illegal trade.

Some of the same parameters are taking shape in California, equally known for black-market pot from its Emerald Triangle region.

The rules now in effect there place caps only on certain, medium-sized growing licenses. In some cases, companies have acquired dozens of growing licenses, which can be operated on the same or adjoining parcels. The growers association is suing to block those rules, fearing they will open the way for vast farms that will drive out smaller cultivators.

Beau Whitney, senior economist at national cannabis analytics firm New Frontier Data, said he’s seeing California prices fall.

In contrast, Washington knew oversupply could draw federal attention and was more conservative about licensing. As the market matured, its regulators eased growing limits, but the state never experienced an oversupply crisis.

Colorado has no caps on licenses, but strict rules designed to limit oversupply allow the state to curtail a growers’ farm size based on past crop yields, existing inventory, sales deals and other factors.

Chain stores

In Oregon, cannabis retail chains are emerging to take advantage of the shake-up.

A company called Nectar has 13 stores around the state, with three more on tap, and says on its website it is buying up for-sale dispensaries too. Canada-based Golden Leaf Holdings bought the successful Oregon startup Chalice and has six stores around Portland, with another slated to open.

William Simpson, Chalice’s founder and Golden Leaf Holdings CEO, is expanding into Northern California, Nevada and Canada. Simpson welcomes criticism that he’s dumbing down cannabis the same way Starbucks brought coffee to a mass market.

“If you take Chalice like Starbucks, it’s a known quantity, it’s a brand that people know and trust,” he said.

Amy Margolis, executive director of the Oregon Cannabis Association, says that capping licenses would only spur even more consolidation in the long-term. The state is currently working on a study that should provide data and more insight into what lies ahead.

“I don’t think that everything in this state is motivated by struggle and failure,” she said. “I’m very interested to see … how this market settles itself and (in) being able to do that from a little less of a reactionary place.”

​Craft growers

For now, Oregon’s smaller marijuana businesses are trying to stay afloat.

A newly formed group will launch an ad campaign this fall to tell Oregonians why they should pay more for mom-and-pop cannabis. Adam Smith, who founded the Oregon Craft Cannabis Alliance, believes 70 percent of Oregon’s small growers and retailers will go out of business if consumers don’t respond.

“We could turn around in three to four years and realize that 10 to 12 major companies own a majority of the Oregon industry and that none of it is really based here anymore,” he said. “The Oregon brand is really all about authenticity. It’s about people with their hands in the dirt, making something they love as well as they can. How do we save that?”
…

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When Oregon lawmakers created the state’s legal marijuana program, they had one goal in mind above all else: to persuade illicit pot growers to leave the black market.

That meant low barriers to entry that also targeted long-standing medical marijuana growers, whose product is not taxed. As a result, weed production boomed — with a bitter consequence.

Now, marijuana prices here are in free fall, and the craft cannabis farmers who put Oregon on the map decades before broad legalization say they are in peril of losing their now-legal businesses as the market adjusts.

Oregon regulators on Wednesday announced they will stop processing new applications for marijuana licenses in two weeks to address a severe backlog and ask state lawmakers to take up the issue next year.

​California takes heed

Experts say the dizzying evolution of Oregon’s marijuana industry may well be a cautionary tale for California, where a similar regulatory structure could mean an oversupply on a much larger scale.

“For the way the program is set up, the state just wants to get as many people in as possible, and they make no bones about it,” Hilary Bricken, a Los Angeles-based attorney specializing in marijuana business law, said of California. “Most of these companies will fail as a result of oversaturation.”

A staggering inventory

Oregon has nearly 1 million pounds (453,600 kilograms) of marijuana flower, commonly called bud, in its inventory, a staggering amount for a state with about 4 million people. Producers told The Associated Press wholesale prices fell more than 50 percent in the past year; a study by the state’s Office of Economic Analysis found the retail cost of a gram of marijuana fell from $14 in 2015 to $7 in 2017.

The oversupply can be traced largely to state lawmakers’ and regulators’ earliest decisions to shape the industry.

They were acutely aware of Oregon’s entrenched history of providing top-drawer pot to the black market nationwide, as well as a concentration of small farmers who had years of cultivation experience in the legal, but largely unregulated, medical pot program.

Getting those growers into the system was critical if a legitimate industry was to flourish, said Sen. Ginny Burdick, a Portland Democrat who co-chaired a committee created to implement the voter-approved legalization measure.

Lawmakers decided not to cap licenses; to allow businesses to apply for multiple licenses; and to implement relatively inexpensive licensing fees.

The Oregon Liquor Control Commission, which issues licenses, announced Wednesday it will put aside applications for new licenses received after June 15 until a backlog of pending applications is cleared out. The decision comes after U.S. Attorney Billy Williams challenged state officials to address Oregon’s oversupply problem.

“In my view, and frankly in the view of those in the industry that I’ve heard from, it’s a failing of the state for not stepping back and taking a look at where this industry is at following legalization,” Williams told the AP in a phone interview.

But those in the industry supported the initial decisions that led to the oversupply, Burdick said.

“We really tried to focus on policies that would rein in the medical industry and snuff out the black market as much as possible,” Burdick said.

​Consolidation

Lawmakers also quickly backtracked on a rule requiring marijuana businesses have a majority ownership by someone with Oregon residency after entrepreneurs complained it was hard to secure startup money. That change opened the door to out-of-state companies with deep pockets that could begin consolidating the industry.

The state has granted 1,001 producer licenses and has another 950 in process as of last week. State officials worry if they cut off licensing entirely or turn away those already in the application process, they’ll get sued or encourage illegal trade.

Some of the same parameters are taking shape in California, equally known for black-market pot from its Emerald Triangle region.

The rules now in effect there place caps only on certain, medium-sized growing licenses. In some cases, companies have acquired dozens of growing licenses, which can be operated on the same or adjoining parcels. The growers association is suing to block those rules, fearing they will open the way for vast farms that will drive out smaller cultivators.

Beau Whitney, senior economist at national cannabis analytics firm New Frontier Data, said he’s seeing California prices fall.

In contrast, Washington knew oversupply could draw federal attention and was more conservative about licensing. As the market matured, its regulators eased growing limits, but the state never experienced an oversupply crisis.

Colorado has no caps on licenses, but strict rules designed to limit oversupply allow the state to curtail a growers’ farm size based on past crop yields, existing inventory, sales deals and other factors.

Chain stores

In Oregon, cannabis retail chains are emerging to take advantage of the shake-up.

A company called Nectar has 13 stores around the state, with three more on tap, and says on its website it is buying up for-sale dispensaries too. Canada-based Golden Leaf Holdings bought the successful Oregon startup Chalice and has six stores around Portland, with another slated to open.

William Simpson, Chalice’s founder and Golden Leaf Holdings CEO, is expanding into Northern California, Nevada and Canada. Simpson welcomes criticism that he’s dumbing down cannabis the same way Starbucks brought coffee to a mass market.

“If you take Chalice like Starbucks, it’s a known quantity, it’s a brand that people know and trust,” he said.

Amy Margolis, executive director of the Oregon Cannabis Association, says that capping licenses would only spur even more consolidation in the long-term. The state is currently working on a study that should provide data and more insight into what lies ahead.

“I don’t think that everything in this state is motivated by struggle and failure,” she said. “I’m very interested to see … how this market settles itself and (in) being able to do that from a little less of a reactionary place.”

​Craft growers

For now, Oregon’s smaller marijuana businesses are trying to stay afloat.

A newly formed group will launch an ad campaign this fall to tell Oregonians why they should pay more for mom-and-pop cannabis. Adam Smith, who founded the Oregon Craft Cannabis Alliance, believes 70 percent of Oregon’s small growers and retailers will go out of business if consumers don’t respond.

“We could turn around in three to four years and realize that 10 to 12 major companies own a majority of the Oregon industry and that none of it is really based here anymore,” he said. “The Oregon brand is really all about authenticity. It’s about people with their hands in the dirt, making something they love as well as they can. How do we save that?”
…

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