The Military Transport Network of Azerbaijan

If you are a jihadist or a rebel needing some military hardware, then you have two problems. Countries that would be very happy to buy the equipment for you, such as the US, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, do not want to be identified. It can also be trouble to get the supplies through, unless the mechanism can be hidden. Is there a solution? Step forward Silk Way Airlines, a state-run cargo airline based in Baku, Azerbaijan!

A fascinating report from a Bulgarian journalist, Dilyana Gaytandzhieva, documents how Silk Way did more than 350 flights delivering hundreds of tons of weapons. The weapons were mainly from East European states, including Bulgaria and Slovakia, and also from Israel. The destinations were mainly into Iraq and Syria. Flights were given diplomatic status, so that the 'luggage' would not be checked or stopped, and the financiers of these operations were principally the US and Saudi Arabia, but also included the UAE (and, I would guess, other Gulf states too). A key country in which the weapons were unloaded for later shipment on to Syrian and Iraqi rebels was Turkey.

US military-related companies were often involved in the transport deals, but they were facilitating the delivery of non-US origin weapons - an advantage to cover up the US role. Bulgarian weapons were found by the journalist to have turned up in an Al Nusra Front (the Al Qaeda affiliate) arms cache in Aleppo, Syria, and the Iraqi army also uncovered an ISIS warehouse of these weapons in Mosul, Iraq.

Tracking such a supply network is difficult, but the observations are supported by documents and also by other corresponding sources. This was just one network, based mainly from Bulgaria and Azerbaijan; others will also be used by the various powers involved in this deadly game, including those from Libya.

Gaytandzhieva's report was filed on a Bulgarian newspaper site in early July. This led to protests from Azerbaijan and to her questioning by Bulgaria's security services. She was dismissed from her job a few days ago, according to her interview on Al Jazeera news network today, a report from which is here.*

Tony Norfield, 27 August 2017

Note: * Al Jazeera was happy to make a lot of this report since its focus directly implicated Saudi Arabia and the UAE in financing terror networks but had no mention of Qatar's role in such things.

Partition of India

The partition of India took place seventy years ago today. British media coverage of the event focuses on the bloodshed that followed and, not surprisingly, ignores the role of the British in fomenting divisions between Muslims and Hindus. Narendra Singh Sarila's book, In the Shadow of the Great Game: the Untold Story of India’s Partition (Harper Collin, 2005 and 2009), fills this gap.

This is the only book I have found that explains what was in it for the British when India was partitioned in 1947. It shows how the British backed Muhammad Ali Jinnah in his opposition to the Indian National Congress, and how they encouraged the formation of Pakistan as a dependent state that they could better rely upon to be anti-Russian than an independent India. Historians usually avoid this and instead explain partition by claiming that there were deep-rooted ethnic/religious differences that demanded a Muslim Pakistan separate from a Hindu India.

A highly recommended book that highlights another crime of British imperialism, and one that has had repercussions long after the formal end of colonial power.

Tony Norfield, 14 August 2017

Lenin in London #2

I first wrote about Lenin’s stay in London in May. By chance, I have just come across a book published in 2000 that gives some interesting details of Lenin’s visits to London from 1902.[1] My previous article provided the solution to that author’s question about what happened to the bust of Lenin that was originally unveiled in 1942. Here I note some of the points she makes about Lenin’s visits. I am not usually one to dwell on such details, but it is a nice irony of history that the UK, a centre of anti-communism in the 20th century, and still today, was also a minor aid to the success of the Russian Revolution in 1917.

Lenin’s visits to London were more by necessity than choice, with political restrictions on operating in Russia under the Tsar or in some other, closer European countries, such as Germany and Belgium. London housed a number of radical Russian émigrés, but also a small group of UK radicals with a printing press. So Lenin wrote to Harry Quelch of the Social Democratic Federation, asking if he could print Iskra (The Spark, the revolutionary journal) from their offices in Clerkenwell.

In April 1902, Lenin moved to 30 Holford Square in Islington, renting two rooms with his wife Nadezhda Krupskaya. Pamela Shields notes that they breakfasted on bacon and eggs, washed down with beer because the poor water quality was a health risk. Lenin worked on Iskra in the Twentieth Century Press offices at 37a Clerkenwell Green, the building which is now the Marx Memorial Library, and which was not far to walk from Holford Square. He sat at a desk in a tiny office close to Harry Quelch, while Krupskaya was busy at Holford Square, deciphering cryptograms and sending coded messages to agents in Russia.

From April 1902 to May 1903, the Clerkenwell printers were responsible for Iskra numbers 22 to 38. During this period, a certain Lev Bronstein, later known as Leon Trotsky, arrived at Lenin’s home and told him that Iskra, for various reasons, was not getting through to Russia. The decision was taken to smuggle in the four-page Iskra into Russia on thin paper wrapped inside the knee-high boots of supporters!

In 1902-03, with his comrades, Lenin organised meetings of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP), usually in pub rooms and with them pretending to be trade unionists. One room was also booked in the name of the ‘Foreign Barbers of London Association’, which was just as well since they were speaking Russian. On several occasions, the London Metropolitan Police attempted to eavesdrop or find out what was going on, but they had little luck, not least because their fluency in Russian left much to be desired. Lenin made further visits to London, including in 1907, and the last one, I believe, was in 1911.

The Old Red Lion pub in St John Street, London EC1, today: 

It is not known what Lenin liked to drink in the various London pubs he frequented, including the Crown and Woolpack, which closed some years ago, and the Old Red Lion, both in St John Street EC1. This was before his work on imperialism, so it is possible that he sampled India Pale Ale. However, one suspects that he would have rejected light and bitter as a typical Menshevik compromise.

Tony Norfield, 9 August 2017

---

[1] Pamela Shields, Essential Islington, Sutton Publishing. It is not clear that there were as many as six separate visits to London as she claims. Her book is available on Amazon.

Brexit & the City of London

Brexit is a big economic and political mess for British imperialism. It also undermines some of the previous plans to boost the City of London’s operations, especially in deals with China. The City will not collapse. But it will lose business as other European Union countries are already aiming to divide up the soon to-be-deceased member’s estate while the body is still stumbling around.

A large proportion of City financial dealing is with the rest of Europe, although London has been pre-eminent because of its worldwide links – including with offshore financial centres, many of which sing God Save the Queen as their national anthem. These European ties formerly helped underpin the City’s growth, but have since been a factor in decline, even before the Brexit vote in June 2016. So problems for British-based finance due to Brexit now add to those resulting from a drop in European economic strength.

Shift in economic power from Europe to Asia

IMF data show that the European Union’s share of world GDP fell from 25 per cent to 22 per cent from 2011 to 2016, a sharp fall in just five years. This was offset by a higher share for the US, and especially so for China, based on their faster growth. Weak economies, massive debts and bad loans also undermined Europe’s banks and led to a cut in their dealing operations – most of which are in London.

A good example of the impact is seen from the global foreign exchange market, which reflects the cross-border deals in the currencies used for investment in bonds, equities and real estate, and the buying and selling of goods and services. From 2013 to 2016, the size of the foreign exchange market had declined for the first time in more than a decade, based on low world growth and problems in banks. The UK’s share of the foreign exchange market fell from 41 per cent in 2013 to 37 per cent in 2016. Although the City still remained by far the world’s biggest FX dealing centre, and the US in second place had a much lower 19 per cent, the US share rose a bit, helped by the better position of its banks.

By contrast, Asian financial trading centres were the clear winners. Singapore’s share of trading rose from 5.7 per cent to 7.9 per cent from 2013 to 2016. Taken together, China’s and Hong Kong’s rose from 4.8 per cent to 7.8 per cent. Though still a small share, this is an astonishing result for China, one backed by the near-doubling in the use of the renminbi in global FX dealing to 4 per cent. This made the renminbi the eighth largest trading currency in 2016, just behind the far more established Canadian dollar and the Swiss franc. Meanwhile, the euro, now the currency of nineteen countries, saw its share slip to the lowest since its inception.

UK politicians: dumber than you might think

The City had a falling share of a falling market even before Brexit,[1] but now faces the prospect of Brexit. A key problem it faces is how far will UK-based financial companies be able to conduct business with the European Union once the UK leaves. Implausible as it may seem, despite UK governments having promoted the financial sector for more than three decades, there is no sign that the current UK government has given this much attention.

Under the Labour governments from 1997-2010, there was also a clear pro-finance policy. This was seen as one of the few competitive UK ‘industries’, one that also provided lots of tax revenues to fund public spending, from income taxes on the high paying jobs and the various duties imposed. Finance supported millions of jobs related to trading in foreign exchange and all kinds of financial securities and insurance services. It also provided international revenues that covered nearly half of the UK’s record-breaking trade deficit in goods that in 2016 amounted to 7% of GDP. Even non-financial UK business services, from accountancy to information technology, are very closely tied into the financial sector, and offset another chunk of the trade deficit. Basically, without the City’s financial business, UK living standards would be lower.

In more recent years, the UK political class has had trouble maintaining support from a disgruntled electorate. Voters worried about pressure on living standards focused on immigration from the EU, so this has led the two main parties, Conservative and Labour, to accept the referendum vote and reject EU membership. They obviously want free access for all UK business to the EU market, but this is not possible under EU treaties for a non-member, unless, at a minimum, that country also accepts the free movement of labour, ie no restrictions on migration from the EU. UK politicians can grandstand as much as they like, declaring what they want from a deal, but the end result will come from a negotiation

With the UK a member of the EU, City-based financial firms can freely do business across the rest of the EU single market, due to so-called ‘passporting’. This means that banks or other financial institutions in the UK can sell their services in all other EU countries, as these are considered part of the same market. Without the ‘passport’, or something very similar when the UK leaves the EU, that ability will either cease or become much more restricted.

More than 5,000 UK-based firms rely on these passport agreements, and some 8,000 European companies also need them to offer services in the UK. So there may be some compromise. But it is in the interests of the remaining EU-27 countries not to make this a favourable one for the UK, or else the longstanding European Union project would risk being unravelled as others considered the exit too.

How to get a piece of the financial action?

Whatever the wider economic and political issues for the UK and the rest of Europe, the UK’s financial business is an area coveted by some of the major EU players. Already, many UK and international banks and other financial institutions have said that they plan to relocate some business into the EU-27. So far it is only on a small scale, and as a precaution so as not to be left high and dry if there are barriers to their UK-based operations doing business in the EU. If it becomes clear that full access to EU financial markets will be difficult, more will follow.

The likely outcome is a piecemeal lopping off of some parts of City business into several other EU locations rather than into one new rival centre. Frankfurt, home of the European Central Bank, is one of the favoured alternatives, but there is also Dublin, Paris, Amsterdam, Luxembourg and others, depending upon where a financial company might already have some existing business.

Ironically, Frankfurt, the main financial centre for Europe’s largest economy, Germany, is a rather provincial town, not particularly attractive to financiers, and is based in country whose politicians have shown little orientation to finance. They have instead been able to benefit from the prowess of German engineering business and have had other ways of promoting German capitalists on their minds.

I do not think that the Brexit effect by itself is likely to add up to a dramatic reduction in the City’s operations. London has built up a series of reinforcing advantages that are difficult to replicate elsewhere, as shown by the several directions in which alternatives are sought. For now, at least, London has very many more international connections than rival financial centres, plus a broad range of financial services and personnel skills that other centres lack. English is the main business language and English commercial law is the foundation for many financial contracts, for example interest rate swaps, the largest traded financial derivatives contract.

The commercial law issue is more important than one might think. Lawyers based in other countries, or sent from the UK, might be trained in the relevant aspects of English commercial law, but legal judgements are based on court decisions. Being part of the relevant legal network is important. It would also take a long time before contracts are changed into another legal system, and that system may not have the specific aspects necessary that have been developed over decades within the UK legal set up.

Furthermore, most other possible centres have also had governments that have been advocates of a financial transactions tax. This will not help them make a convincing case for expanding their role as a financial business centre. Nevertheless, the incompetence of the present British government could make them question favouring London.

What next for the City?

Despite the impact of Brexit and the recent decline in the growth of financial dealing, it will not be easy to dislodge the City of London from its pre-eminent position. London will almost certainly lose business to other financial centres, but it is costly for banks to move even some operations from London to the rest of Europe, estimated at anything from $30-$50bn.[2]

As these decisions play themselves out, British financial elites are planning to secure for the London Stock Exchange the flotation of Saudi Aramco’s shares. This state-owned Saudi Arabian oil company is the world’s largest and the deal would produce big revenues for the exchange and banks handling it. Around five percent of the company might be on sale, but even this is expected to raise some $100bn.

Only a major stock exchange could handle such a large deal. But although New York is the biggest, and Trump’s pro-Saudi politics are supportive, US financial regulations could be a barrier since the Saudis do not like giving much information. London is more lax on that score and has also changed its rules to help its bid for the deal. Furthermore, there could be US legal claims against the Saudis regarding the 9/11 attacks that would impact Saudi Aramco, and this kind of trouble looks more likely to occur in a US court than any such thing in British courts.

One deal, no matter how big, would not point to sunlit uplands ahead for British finance. But the outcome for Saudi Aramco’s deal will be an interesting signal of how far a Brexit-hobbled City can have a future outside the European club. It would also indicate how far Britain’s status as a key player in world politics has been damaged, since the Saudi decision will certainly have that in mind.

Tony Norfield, 1 August 2017

Notes:

A fuller discussion of City finances in relation to British imperialism, plus Brexit and Trump is available in the paperback edition of my book, The City, available from these sources.

For a brief article on this blog covering the background to the City’s business relating to British imperialism, see here.

---

[1] The Bank for International Settlements surveys from which this information is taken are conducted in April of the relevant years, so in 2016 it was before the June Brexit vote. Similarly, the UK’s share of the trade in financial derivatives fell back between 2013 and 2016, based largely upon a drop in the volume of dealing in euros.

[2] See this Bloomberg story: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-07-31/banks-may-be-hit-with-50-billion-capital-needs-after-brexit