Meanwhile, the BRICS’ have $100 Billion, Operational

Back to Irregular Warfare, as previously posted on this site:

$100bn BRICS monetary fund now operational

The $100 billion BRICS Contingent Reserve Arrangement (CRA) has become fully operational following the inaugural meetings of the BRICS CRA Board of Governors and the Standing Committee in the Turkish capital of Ankara.

“The first meetings of the governing bodies mark the start of a full-scale operation of the BRICS Contingent Reserve Arrangement as an international institution with activities set to enhance and strengthen cooperation,” said a Russian Central Bank statement on Friday.

BRICS leaders Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin, Jacob Zuma, Narendra Modi and Dilma Rousseff witnessed the signing of the agreement on the CRA in the Brazilian city of Fortaleza in July 2014.

The agreement entered into force on July 30, 2015.

China will provide the bulk of the funding with $41 billion, Brazil, Russia and India with $18 billion each, and South Africa with $5 billion.

The CRA is meant to provide an alternative to International Monetary Fund’s emergency lending. In the CRA, emergency loans of up to 30 per cent of a member nation’s contribution will be decided by a simple majority. Bigger loans will require the consent of all CRA members.

Meanwhile, Finance Ministers from the five BRICS countries have met in Ankara on the sidelines of the G20 meeting of global finance ministers and central bankers, amid growing worries about the state of the global economy.

With a looming US federal Reserve rate hike and Chinese market turbulence sending shock waves through emerging markets, the IMF has lowered its global growth forecast.

A G20 communique after their two-day meeting in the Turkish capital Ankara noted that global growth was falling short of expectations.

“Global growth falls short of our expectations. We have pledged to take decisive action to keep the economic recovery on track and we are confident the global economic recovery will gain speed,” the statement said.

The G20 vowed to “carefully calibrate and clearly communicate our actions … to minimise negative spillovers, mitigate uncertainty and promote transparency”.

As the BRICS countries launched new financial institutions like the $100 billion BRICS Bank, the China-led Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank, and a $100 billion BRICS currency reserve fund, the IMF has once again delayed voting reforms to give emerging countries greater say.

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Meanwhile, Putin is rejoicing in the European refugee crisis, this too is part of Irregular Warfare.

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Refugee Crisis: EU bearing burden of US foreign policy, says Putin

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday said Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is willing to hold snap parliamentary elections and share power with a “healthy opposition”.

Russia and Iran, have backed Assad since Syria’s civil war broke out in 2011.

Russia, along with other members of the BRICS bloc, have insisted on  international efforts being geared to bring about a ‘political solution’ to the crisis rather than a military one.

Syria’s conflict began with anti-government demonstrations in March 2011, which soon spiraled into a multi-front civil war that has left more than 230,000 people dead, according to UN estimates.

“Overall there is an understanding that the unification of forces in the fight against terrorism should proceed in parallel with some sort of political process within Syria. The Syrian president agrees with that, all the way down to holding early parliamentary elections, establishing contacts with the so-called healthy opposition, and bringing them into the governing,” Putin said on the sidelines of the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok on Friday.

“But this is, first of all, an issue of internal Syrian development; we are not imposing anything, but are ready to facilitate this internal Syrian dialogue,” he added.

A 2013 accord, brokered by Russia, took Assad’s declared chemicals out of Syria in an 11th-hour move to avert US bombing.

The Syrian government is fighting a number of rebel groups as well as radical militant organizations, including militants from ISIL and the Nusra Front.

“By the way, the people aren’t fleeing from the regime of Bashar Assad. They are fleeing from ISIL, which has seized their territories, including considerable parts of Syria, Iraq,” Putin said referring to the refugee crisis in Europe.

Russia has stressed in the past that Washington’s refusal to coordinate its airstrikes against purported ISIL positions in Syria with Damascus is a “mistake.” Western and Arab leaders have shied away from cooperating with Assad in the fight against the Islamic State to avoid being seen as legitimising his rule.

More than 300,000 people have crossed to Europe by sea so far this year and more than 2,600 have died during these desperate journeys.

“I think the crisis was absolutely expected. We in Russia, and me personally several times said it straight that pervasive problems would emerge, if our so-called Western partners continued to maintain their flawed, as I always stressed it, foreign policy, which they pursue to date, especially in regions of the Muslim world [such as] Middle East, North Africa,” Putin said on Friday.

“And it is, first of all, the policy of our American partners. Europe is blindly following this policy within the framework of the so-called allied liabilities, and in the end shoulders the entire burden. I am now quite surprised that some of the American mass media are criticizing Europe for what they consider to be excessive cruelty towards migrants,” the Russian President added.

As refugees land on European shores, “the ‘United States of Europe’ appeared singularly dis-united”, writes journalist and Faculty of Media at London College of Communication, Russell Merryman.

“While the EU itself resorted to lofty rhetoric about working together to deal with the crisis and developing equitable ways of distributing refugees among the member states, some of Merkel’s European partners began to retreat into petty nationalism,” writes Merryman.

“The worst display was from Hungary which built a 180km fence, while their pugnacious prime minister, Viktor Orban, said it was Germany’s problem and that the refugees threatened to undermine Europe’s Christian roots,” he adds.