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BBC News
3 days ago
- Politics
- BBC News
The Inquiry Are we closer to a European army?
Available for over a year During a speech to the Spanish parliament earlier this year, the country's Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez claimed there's one thing that would guarantee lasting peace in Europe. His idea is the creation of a new army drawn from the 27 countries whose governments already work together as members of the European Union. The concept isn't a new one - and NATO already exists, the military alliance which includes EU member states and other European countries. But talk of a new military force is reappearing as the continent becomes more vulnerable to threats. Its ally the US is increasingly unreliable and unpredictable too. Other European leaders are also backing the idea This week we're asking - 'Are we closer to a European army?' Contributors: Dick Zandee, Senior Research Fellow and Head of the Security and Defence Programme at the Clingendael Institute Dr Ulrike Franke, Senior Policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations Oana Lungescu, Distinguished fellow with the Royal United Services Institute and former NATO spokesperson Prof. Dr. Sven Biscop, Director of the Europe in the World Programme at Egmont. Presenter: Charmaine Cozier Producer: Daniel Rosney Researcher: Maeve Schaffer Editor: Tara McDermott Technical Producer: Toby James Production Coordinator - Tammy Snow (Image Credit: FREDERICK FLORIN/AFP via Getty Images)
Yahoo
29-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Dutch NATO math portends uphill battle for Europe on defense spending
PARIS — The Netherlands worked out the costs of meeting NATO's new capability targets, providing a taste of the billion-euro budget challenge European members of the alliance face to boost their military posture in the face of a more aggressive Russia. The Dutch calculate that meeting their share of the targets will cost at least €16 billion to €19 billion ($18 billion-$21 billion) a year on top of the existing defense budget, Defence Minister Ruben Brekelmans told parliament in a letter last week. That would amount to about 3.5% of GDP, from 2% now – conveniently also the core defense spending target that NATO leadership is calling for. NATO's Capability Targets 2025, to be formally set at a summit in The Hague in June, will significantly increase the requirements compared to previous targets, according to the Dutch. The CT25 focus will be on ground-based air and missile defense, ground-based fire support, land maneuver units and joint enablers, Brekelmans said. For the larger economies of Germany, France and the U.K., meeting the new targets means 'we're no longer talking about a few billion extra per year, but tens of billions,' said Dick Zandee, senior research fellow at Dutch think tank Clingendael Institute and former head of planning at the European Defence Agency. The three countries have the biggest defense budgets of European NATO members, spending a little over 2% of GDP on their military. The Netherlands is Europe's sixth-biggest spender, lifting its 2025 defense budget to €22 billion euros from €21.4 billion last year. U.S. President Donald Trump has repeatedly demanded NATO countries increase military spending to 5% of GDP, threatening to pull out of the alliance if members don't pay up. NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte said this week he expects alliance members to agree to a 5% spending target in The Hague, with a proposal for 3.5% of GDP for direct military spending and another 1.5% for related spending such as infrastructure and cybersecurity. The Netherlands also estimates meeting the new NATO capability targets will require 17,000 to 18,000 more personnel. While the 32-nation alliance typically keeps the capability targets secret, NATO Supreme Allied Commander Transformation Adm. Pierre Vandier said in March the alliance will ask members to raise military capability targets by 30% – even with allies already 30% behind on delivering on existing goals. The Dutch say the NATO 'standard path' to fully meet the capability targets has been 19 years, but current threats make a faster build-up necessary, and NATO expects 'a significant part will already be built up in the coming years.' Brekelmans says around €9 billion to €10 billion of the calculated costs and 8,500 to 9,000 of the personnel count are attributable to the Netherlands not yet having fully met NATO's 2021 capability targets. While NATO defense planning is based on the principle that all the capabilities are realized, 'in practice of course, that is never achieved,' Zandee said. Neighboring Germany and Belgium have similar issues as the Netherlands of having to play catch up with the 2021 targets, with personnel shortages partially explaining the shortcomings, he said. 'All countries are coming out of roughly two decades of severe budget cuts, all countries to a varying degree donated to Ukraine, reducing stocks and supplies,' Zandee said. 'The Netherlands is not really in a unique position in this regard.' The calculations by Brekelmans exclude the costs of host nation support, with Dutch responsibility within the alliance for large-scale transfer of military equipment, as well as homeland defense and military activities outside the NATO treaty area, such as the Caribbean Netherlands. That means total defense costs would exceed 3.5% of GDP, according to Brekelmans. The Netherlands has typically been transparent about the costs of NATO targets, according to Zandee. Publishing the figures serves a political purpose in trying to muster broad parliamentary and coalition-government support for a bigger defense budget, a politically sensitive issue in the country, and gain popular support for more spending, he said. Spending 3.5% of GDP on core defense is achievable for a country like the Netherlands with healthy public finances, and also quite doable for Scandinavian countries, Zandee said. For countries in southern Europe with high debt levels 'it does become a big problem,' for example in France, where more defense spending will mean more borrowing. Italy, Spain and Belgium, among the NATO members that spend the least on defense relative to their economy, all have government debt to GDP ratios above 100%. Greece and France, the other European Union countries in NATO whose debt exceeds GDP, have historically been bigger military spenders. By contrast, the Netherlands had a debt to GDP ratio of 43.3% at the end of 2024, while for Germany the ratio was 62.5%. Zandee expects Germany under new Chancellor Friedrich Merz will agree to the 3.5% target, the British as loyal allies will commit despite 'major financial problems,' while the Netherlands will ultimately also go along. 'The problem mainly starts in Belgium and then further south,' Zandee said. 'The French will simply take the budgetary risk, because they are not going to back down. But the Italians and the Spanish in particular will have to perform some fancy maneuvering.' Some countries are already well on their way to meeting the NATO target. Estonia announced in April that it would increase defense spending to 5.4% of GDP already in 2026 and through to 2029, for an additional €2.8 billion of additional budget over four years, with the government saying spending would take into account the NATO capability targets. Meanwhile, Denmark said in February it will spend an additional 50 billion Danish kroner (US$7.6 billion) in 2025 and 2026 to strengthen its armed forces in the short term, also with a view to NATO demands and capability targets, lifting defense spending to above 3% of GDP. Poland is the only NATO country that has already met the new target, spending 4.1% of GDP on defense in 2024, for total spending of around $35 billion. Some countries may agree to 3.5% of core defense spending in The Hague with no intention of ever reaching the target, to keep NATO alive, even if they won't say so publicly, Zandee said. He said the same happened with the 2% spending target agreed in Wales in 2014. 'When it comes to the survival of the alliance and keeping the Americans in, I think even those countries will simply agree to it,' Zandee said. 'That 3.5% is almost a done deal. If Trump can wave that one piece of paper and say, 'I've achieved all this,' then the NATO summit will have been a success, it's as simple as that.'
Daily Mail
20-05-2025
- Health
- Daily Mail
The super psychoactive cannabis taking over the world: Warning over kush containing cannabis, fentanyl, and 'ground up human BONES' - as British 'drugs mule' is detained with £1.5million haul
Experts have issued an urgent warning about a terrifying new psychoactive drug dubbed 'kush', after a former cabin crew member was accused of smuggling £1.5 million worth of the deadly drug into Sri Lanka. Charlotte May Lee, 21, from Coulsdon, south London, was detained at Colombo airport on Monday, after arriving on a flight from Bangkok. According to sources, authorities seized 46kg of kush as Miss Lee arrived from Thailand on a SriLankan Airlines flight. Kush is a highly potent strain of cannabis. It's made by spraying leaves with a mixture containing synthetic cannabinoids, formaldehyde, fentanyl. According to some reports, the drug even contains ground-down human bones. Since 2022, an even more dangerous form of kush has emerged, containing synthetic opioids called nitazenes, which can be 25 times more powerful than fentanyl. Smoking the toxic drug produces euphoria, confusion, and sleepiness - often causing users to fall over and hit their heads on hard surfaces or wander into traffic. What is kush? Dr Kars de Bruijne, senior research fellow at the Clingendael Institute and author of a report on kush, told MailOnline that there are two forms of kush on the market. Both start with a base of plant matter, such as marshmallow leaf, which is then sprayed with one of two psychoactive chemical mixtures. Some forms of Kush are sprayed with synthetic cannabinoids, chemicals designed to mimic the natural psychoactive compounds found in the cannabis plant. The synthetic chemicals are many times more powerful than even the strongest cannabis strains and can often have severe harmful side effects. The second, more recent form of kush is sprayed with a mixture of synthetic opioids called nitazenes. Dr de Bruijne says: 'It's an opioid so it's similar to heroin, but it's very strong and it's deadly because even a little more than a milligram too much is able to kill someone. 'What we've seen in Sierra Leone is that it is overdoses which kill.' Smoking kush causes euphoria, confusion, and sleepiness. This often leads users to become injured after collapsing in the street, hitting their heads on the ground, or walking into traffic What is kush? Kush is a powerful drug produced by spraying chemicals onto leaves. One form contains synthetic cannabinoids, chemicals designed to mimic the natural psychoactive compounds found in cannabis. The other form of kush contains synthetic opioids called nitazenes. These nitazenes can be 25 times more potent than fentanyl, and even small errors can lead to fatal overdoses. Smoking kush causes euphoria, confusion, and sleepiness. This often leads users to become injured after collapsing in the street, hitting their heads on the ground, or walking into traffic The drug is most common in West Africa, particularly Sierra Leone. In a report for the Global Initiative against Transnational Organized Crime, Dr de Bruijne found that 50 per cent of kush samples tested in the lab contained nitazenes. However, as kush moves through the market, it is cut and adulterated with numerous other chemicals, including formaldehyde, the painkiller tramadol, and even rat poison. Most infamously, there are numerous unsubstantiated reports that kush contains human bones. Although Dr de Bruijne's testing wasn't designed to detect human bone, he says: 'Everyone we spoke to that is a bit more serious in that market says they don't make it using human bones.' Dr de Bruijne suggests that the rumour originated from the fact that early forms of kush used the synthetic cannabinoid ADB, a greyish-white powder with the street name 'bone'. Combined with the fact that kush is sprayed with formaldehyde, which is used by mortuaries to preserve bodies, it is easy to see how the rumour began. However, some are concerned that these rumours may have some basis in reality in a few fringe cases. 'I've also been speaking to people in the judicial system, and they have said that there is an increase in cemeteries where graves have been opened,' Dr de Bruijne explained. 'I think in Sierra Leone it happens more often that rumour turns into a reality. However, the spike in grave robbing might be better explained by addicts searching for valuables to sell and, as yet, there have been no confirmed cases of body parts in kush. What does kush do to your body? Since kush can contain so many different chemicals, the effects on your body can vary widely. In terms of its psychoactive effects, synthetic cannabinoids produce a response similar to that of cannabis, including relaxation and altered states of consciousness. Nitazenes, meanwhile, trigger an intense state of euphoria and relaxation as well as nausea, vomiting, and fever symptoms. Users also describe the high as being accompanied by a pounding pressure in the head and joints. Over long periods of use, the drug causes swelling of the legs and feet, leading to sores and wounds which can become infected. However, it is not currently clear why the drug has this effect. Why is kush so dangerous? Kush is a particularly dangerous drug because, once produced and sold, it is almost impossible to know what it contains. At any point in the supply chain, distributors might have added unknown amounts of chemicals that could cause adverse reactions. But the biggest risk is posed by the addition of nitazenes, which are both extremely strong and highly addictive. Dr de Bruijne says that dealers call kush 'fast cash' because of how rapidly users become addicted and ramp up their consumption. In Sierra Leone, an individual joint may cost as little as five leones (20 UK pence), but users can smoke up to 30 per day. That is an enormous expense in a country where the average income is just £500 per year, often driving users into a life of crime to fund their habit. Nitazenes also create a serious risk of overdose due to their potency, with experts warning that the drug has killed thousands of people in West Africa already. Last year, a group of toxicologists from Imperial College, London warned that nitazenes were leading to a 'sharp rise' in overdose deaths in the UK. Where is kush made? According to the Global Initiative against Transnational Organized Crime, the kush found in West Africa comes from two locations. Either the raw ingredients are imported from China and mixed in-country, or pre-made kush is imported from Europe. From the European side, Dr de Bruijne says that the UK and the Netherlands have emerged as leading exporters. 'I've been speaking to people in that market to serious levels; they all pointed to the UK as the area of origin,' says Dr de Bruijne. 'When you speak to people in the port in Sierra Leone, they often point to or mention the UK.' However, it's not yet clear whether the kush is being manufactured in the UK or simply moved through the country from another location. Dr de Bruijne suggests that production lines are changing rapidly since the Taliban seized Afghanistan and destroyed the country's opium poppy trade, a precursor for producing heroin. 'The global supply of heroin is going down; the estimate from law enforcement is that the big cartels are preparing for a situation with less heroin and trying to find alternatives in synthetic opioids,' he explained. Ms Lee was detained in Colombo on Monday after arriving on a flight from Bangkok. Authorities accuse her of attempting to smuggle 46kg of 'kush' into the country. Currently, the form of 'kush' containing nitazenes is an almost exclusively West African drug. Although nitazenes themselves are found increasingly throughout Europe, the specific mixed form is much less common. This makes it less certain which form of kush Charlotte May Lee is accused of smuggling. Lucia Bird, director of the Global Initiative against Transnational Organized Crime's West Africa Observatory, told MailOnline: 'Key is to note that "kush" is a street name in Sierra Leone and elsewhere. 'Consequently, it is difficult to know whether something seized that is called "kush" is necessarily the same drug from the perspective of chemical composition if no chemical testing has been carried out.' Ms Bird suggests that the drug in question was more likely to be cannabis and that the smuggling route is not tied to West Africa. However, Ms Bird says that, if chemical testing does confirm the presence of nitazenes, it would be an 'indication of additional global spread of nitazenes, including in what were previously synthetic cannabinoid supply chains.' Current reports suggest that kush typically arrives in Africa from Europe. The UK and the Netherlands appear to be the most common origin points of pre-made kush. This does not mean that kush is made in the UK, but it is, at least, a key point in the supply chain. It is not clear where the nitazenes in kush are being produced.
Al Jazeera
24-03-2025
- Politics
- Al Jazeera
‘Callous': Are Malian troops and Russian mercenaries attacking civilians?
Grainy camera footage showed them lying still in the blistering heat of the desert – six or seven bodies, maybe more. Wet, red spots in the sand and belongings scattered across the landscape were signs of what had happened. As the camera shifted back and forth, it caught a dirtied pair of jeans in the sand, curiously without its owner. It was February in northern Mali. The group lying dead in the sand were reportedly returning from a wedding in the Gao region when they were attacked, not by armed groups, but allegedly by the Malian army and allied Russian mercenaries of the Wagner group. At least 20 people who had been travelling in two vehicles were killed, including children and old people. Mali's military government, in a rare move, promised to 'investigate' soldiers alleged to have been involved in the deaths as an outcry from rights groups mounted. Weeks later, there aren't yet any results. Analysts were not surprised – saying the incident was only one of several reported killings of civilians by state forces in the insecure West African country. The Malian army has long been accused of abuses against civilians, and now Russian fighters, who have made inroads in the country in the wake of declining French military presence, are fast building a similar reputation. 'The most striking difference with France's former military presence has been Wagner's callous strategy, characterised by wanton violence against civilians,' Constantin Gouvy, a Sahel researcher with the international affairs think tank, Clingendael Institute, told Al Jazeera, comparing the Russian fighters with French troops who were once Mali's main support against invading armed groups before they exited the country in 2021 when Bamako and Paris fell out. Mali has since sacked an 11,000-man United Nations peacekeeping mission, as well, and turned exclusively to Russian paramilitaries. Wagner troops were almost immediately spotted deep in enemy territory upon their deployment in 2022 and were accused by rights groups of collaborating in civilian 'massacres' alongside state forces and pro-government ethnic fighter groups. However, analysts say that since August 2023, after the death of Wagner founder Yevgeny Prigozhin, the fighters appear to have intensified their involvement in Mali and expanded their scope of operations – at the cost of civilian lives. Bamako is eager to weaken armed groups linked to al-Qaeda and ISIL (ISIS) and has targeted villagers in the north that it sees as sympathetic to them. But battles with Tuareg groups, some of whom are fighting for a secessionist state of 'Azawad', have become a key focus, and have reawakened a decades-long independence war in the north. The travellers in the Gao convoy from February are believed to have been Tuareg. Between 1,000 and 1,500 Russian Wagner fighters are on the Malian front lines, which is the group's main active battleground in the region. Wagner soldiers are similarly present in the Central African Republic and Sudan. Since 2023, Russia has sought to control the group more directly. Some experts say Moscow is eager to avoid Wagner getting as powerful as it was under Progozhin, who staged a rebellion that embarrassed Russian President Vladimir Putin and senior defence officials just months before his death. Russian defence authorities have since rebranded Wagner's Africa operations as Africa Corps. But in Mali, the fighters have continued to identify themselves as 'Wagner', analysts who monitor their Telegram channels say. Mali's crisis began in 2012, when coalitions of Tuareg secessionists known collectively as the Coordination of Azawad Movements (CMA) took control of three northern cities – Timbuktu, Kidal and Gao, proclaimed an independent Azawad state, and split Mali into two. The then-civilian government sought help from the French military and the UN. The two forces were able to retake some rebel territory. In 2015, the rebels and Bamako signed a fragile peace deal that granted Tuareg separatists some autonomy. However, low-level attacks by the CMA continued. Armed groups such as the al-Qaeda-backed Jama'at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM) and the ISIL affiliate in the Greater Sahara (ISGS), which the CMA sometimes cooperates with, grew in power, attacking and taxing civilians, and seizing territory. In 2020, the military, riding a wave of popular anger at the France-backed government, seized power. France condemned the coup, pledging not to work with a military government. Analysts also note that Paris was unwilling to tamper with the Tuareg deal they'd helped secure, a deal the military was especially keen on discarding because they perceived it as threatening. The fighter groups were then forced to look elsewhere for support. 'It was only Wagner troops that were willing to help take back the north,' said Antonio Giustozzi, a researcher at the United Kingdom think tank, Royal United Service Institute (RUSI). The group, he said, is especially known among global mercenary outfits for having an appetite for high-risk warfare, such as the fighter tactics needed in remote Sahelian territory. 'The priority for the Malian government was always the north because they felt those guys got too much autonomy, and they didn't like how cozy they were getting with the French,' he said. Fighting was ongoing in Mali when Prigozhin died in a plane crash in late 2023. Some analysts predicted that Wagner would significantly reduce its operations in West Africa as the Russian government re-arranged the unit. Some 100 fighters were recalled from Burkina Faso to Ukraine in late 2023, raising those speculations. Giustozzi said Wagner's future was unclear for some months. Mali was unwilling to deal with a military force that was essentially under Russian government control. Moscow was also torn: On the one hand, it was wary of the group and did not want it to return to its former strength; on the other, shutting it down would mean Moscow lost access to the Sahel where it has gained significant influence, not to mention the millions of dollars in security payments. Eventually, a compromise was reached, the RUSI expert said: Wagner would stay on for the fighting, and Russian military officials would oversee noncombat deployments, such as training and maintaining equipment. The Russian military is deployed in similar roles in Burkina Faso and Niger. Wagner, now led by Ivan Aleksandrovich Maslov, has been pressured to prove to Bamako it can deliver despite the internal turmoil, analysts say, pointing to its doubled combat activities since then. In the last quarter of 2023, after Russia's direct takeover of the group, Wagner's activities in Mali doubled compared with the previous quarter, according to analysis by conflict monitor ACLED. That trend continued in 2024. 'What Wagner is willing to do, no one else is,' Giustozzi said. Russian fighters are active in remote parts of northern Mali, close to the Algerian border, where there is little air support or possibilities for medical evacuation. It's a situation most mercenary groups would baulk at, he said, but Wagner fighters are especially rugged and, like other mercenaries, violent. With Wagner's help, Mali's army made significant gains against the rebels. In late 2023, the government coalition took back control of Kidal. In February 2024, government forces also retook the Inathaka gold mine, the largest artisanal gold mine in the north which had been controlled jointly by armed groups and Azawad rebels. Government air attacks have also killed high-ranking rebel leaders. That success has come at the expense of civilian lives as the military, Wagner troops, and pro-government fighter groups step up military operations. Where armed groups killed about 400 people in total in 2024, Wagner and the Malian military killed more than 900 people, according to ACLED. Civilians fleeing Mali's north to Mauritania arrive with horror tales of 'white men in masks', according to reporting by The Washington Post. Experts tell of women strip-searched and abused, men decapitated, people burned alive, and entire communities razed. Human Rights Watch, in a December report, revealed that between May and December, the Malian army and Russian forces 'deliberately killed at least 32 civilians, including 7 in a drone strike, forcibly disappeared 4 others, and burned at least 100 homes in military operations in towns and villages in central and northern Mali'. The rights groups also accused JNIM and ISGS of dozens of civilian deaths in the same timeframe. French troops, when they were in Mali, were not without their faults. A French air raid in January 2021 killed 19 civilians taking part in a wedding. And Mali's army is routinely implicated in civilian deaths. Wagner and the Malian military too have been badly hit. Last July, the coalition suffered its biggest defeat yet, when a unit was ambushed by a joint force of CMA fighters and armed groups in northern Tinzouaten. Dozens of Wagner soldiers died or were taken captive. Mali, in the aftermath, blamed Ukraine for providing intelligence support to the Tuareg in order to get back at Russia. It also cut ties with Kyiv. Despite its military setbacks, Wagner for now appears intent on keeping both Moscow and Bamako happy, experts say. 'They are a relatively low-cost involvement which brings in money, minerals, and geopolitical sway,' Gouvy, the Clingendael Institute researcher said, painting Moscow's likely calculations with Wagner at a time when Western sanctions have hobbled revenue. 'For now, it's reasonable to expect Russia will continue to leverage Wagner and Africa Corps to spread its influence in the Sahel in one form or another,' he added.
