Category World News

Taipei, Taiwan – When Taiwan seized a Chinese-crewed cargo ship suspected of deliberately severing one of its undersea telecom cables last month, authorities pledged to “make every effort to clarify the truth” of what happened.

Taiwan’s Coast Guard Administration said it could not rule out the possibility that China had deployed the Togo-flagged Hong Tai 58 as part of a “grey area intrusion”.

Recent cases of damage to submarine cables around the island and in Europe suggest that proving sabotage, much less holding anyone accountable, may be no easy task.

Since 2023, there have been at least 11 cases of undersea cable damage around Taiwan and at least 11 such incidents in the Baltic Sea, according to Taiwanese and European authorities.

Taiwanese and European authorities have identified China or Russia – allies that share increasingly strained relations with the West and its partners – as the likely culprits in a number of incidents, though they have attributed several others to natural causes.

In January, NATO launched Baltic Sentry to step up surveillance of suspicious activities by ships in the Baltic Sea.

But so far, authorities have not announced specific retaliatory measures against Beijing or Moscow, though the European Commission has unveiled a roadmap calling for the enforcement of sanctions and diplomatic measures against unnamed “hostile actors and the ‘ shadow fleet'”.

Authorities have also yet to criminally charge any individuals or companies despite detaining a number of vessels and crew, including the Hong Tai 58, which was seized near Taiwan’s outlying islands on February 25.

Beijing and Moscow have denied any involvement in sabotaging undersea cables.

“This is what the entire grey zone is about. It’s about being deniable”, Ray Powell, the director of Stanford’s Sea Light project, which monitors Chinese maritime activity, told Al Jazeera.

“You just have to be just deniable enough so that even though everybody knows it’s you, they can’t prove it’s you”.

Subsea cables – which crisscross the globe carrying 99 percent of intercontinental digital communications traffic – regularly suffer damage due to age, environmental changes and marine activities like fishing.

Cable faults are so common – numbering between 100 and 200 each year, according to telecommunications data provider TeleGeography – that industry practice is to build subsea networks with built-in redundancies to ensure ongoing connectivity if one cable breaks down.

These characteristics also make subsea cables a prime target for “hybrid warfare” or “grey zone activities” – low-grade coercive acts that are often opaque and conducive to plausible deniability – according to security analysts.

“Most cable breaks are the result of accidents… anchors may be unintentionally dropped in rough seas or left out for longer than intended. Cables may also break when fishing nets are dragged in the wrong location. What’s more, a ship may not realise it has broken a cable”, Kevin Frazier, a Tarbell fellow at the nonprofit Lawfare, told Al Jazeera.

“The simplest way for a bad actor to break a cable is to make it look like one of the accidents that commonly cause such breaks. Anchors being dragged across a cable is one such cause”.

Barbara Keleman, an associate director at London and Singapore-based intelligence firm Dragonfly, said that the spate of recent cable breakdowns featured tell-tale signs of sabotage despite the relatively large number of failures each year in non-suspicious circumstances.

“If you just look at the data, like how often these incidents are now occurring and how many cables are suddenly damaged at the same time, and you include into that the proximity of some of those ships near those cables, you have statistical deviation which suggests that there is something else going on”, Keleman told Al Jazeera.

The incident involving the Hong Tai 58 came just weeks after Taiwanese authorities briefly detained the Cameroon-flagged Shun Xing 39 on suspicion of dragging its anchor over a section of the Trans-Pacific Express cable, which connects Taiwan with the United States West Coast.

Coastguard officials said they were unable to board the vessel due to bad weather and the vessel sailed on to South Korea.

Industry publication Lloyd’s List said the Chinese freighter turned its automatic identification system (AIS) on and off and broadcast as many as three separate identities.

Enforcing the law at sea is notoriously difficult for not only practical reasons but legal ones as well, including conflicting claims of jurisdiction.

Under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, ships sailing in international waters are generally subject to the legal jurisdiction of the country under whose flag they are registered.

Within a state’s territorial waters, defined as 12 nautical miles (22km) from shore, vessels are subject to the jurisdiction of that country.

Authorities can, however, exercise “universal jurisdiction” over a ship outside of their territorial waters in a limited number of circumstances, including cases of piracy, “terrorism” and slavery.

Some countries also assert jurisdiction in international waters in cases where a citizen is a victim or perpetrator of a crime.

Even in cases where authorities may have jurisdiction and evidence, it can be hard to make a legal case for deliberate sabotage, said Dragonfly’s Keleman.

“If the investigators or the country’s intelligence services can get a hold of a communication that clearly shows a command for the ship captain to do this, they might have an argument and can try to prosecute”, she said.

“I suspect that’s going to be quite difficult”.

The European authorities ‘ investigation of the Chinese-flagged Yi Peng 3 following the severing of two subsea telecom cables in November underscored the challenges of responding to acts of suspected sabotage.

AIS data showed the Yi Peng 3 slowing near the two cables – which connected Finland with Germany, and Sweden with Lithuania – around the time of their severing.

Sonar images of the nearby seafloor showed evidence that the vessel had dragged its anchor for as far as 160km (99 miles).

Despite the evidence, European investigators soon hit a diplomatic wall because the ship was flying under the flag of China and was anchored in international waters.

Beijing announced it would investigate the incident itself, though it allowed representatives from Germany, Sweden, Finland and Denmark to board the vessel as “observers”.

In late December, China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said the Yi Peng 3’s owner had decided to resume its voyage in consideration of the crew’s physical and mental health and following a “comprehensive assessment and consultation” with European authorities.

China’s Maritime Safety Administration and its embassy in Stockholm did not respond to Al Jazeera’s requests for comment.

Sweden’s Foreign Minister Maria Malmer Stenergard at the time criticised Beijing for not allowing investigators on board to carry out a preliminary investigation.

“Our request that Swedish prosecutors, together with the police and others, be allowed to take certain investigative measures within the framework of the investigation on board remains. We have been clear with China on this”, Stenergard said.

But even if European investigators were dissatisfied, there was not much else that could be done short of causing an international incident, said Jens Wenzel, a Danish defence analyst at Nordic Defence Analysis.

“In international waters, it is quite difficult without the consent of the master, owner/operator or flag state. Within territorial waters the jurisdiction of the coastal state kicks in, which allows for inspection if there is any suspicion of illegal activity”, Wenzel told Al Jazeera.

“In the case of Yi Peng 3, she anchored exactly outside Danish]territorial waters], giving both coastal states Denmark and Sweden difficulties using force to go onboard and without the adequate legislation in place”.

In the months since the&nbsp, Yi Peng 3 left Europe, incidents of cable damage in the Baltic Sea have continued even as NATO has pledged to step up its defence of the region.

They include a December 25 incident involving the&nbsp, Eagle S, a suspected Russian oil tanker flying the flag of the Cook Islands.

The ship dragged its anchor 100km (62 miles), damaging subsea cables in the Gulf of Finland, according to Finnish authorities.

Unlike other cases, Finnish authorities steered the ship into their territorial waters and impounded it.

Three crew members are currently under a travel ban and a criminal investigation is ongoing, although the Eagle S itself was allowed to depart Finland last month.

Herman Ljungberg, a Finnish lawyer representing the owners of the Eagle S, told Al Jazeera that the accusations are “nonsense”, and said that Finnish police had “searched the vessel in and out for nine weeks and found nothing”.

With US President Donald Trump pushing to end Russia’s war in Ukraine, Finland’s intelligence service warned last week that the end of the conflict would free up resources for Russia and its proxies to carry out acts of sabotage.

“The use of proxy operators by various states has recently become a more prominent aspect of both the intelligence and broader influencing scenario. Sabotage operations in Europe linked to the Russian military intelligence service GRU are one example of this”, the Finnish Security and Intelligence Service said in a statement.

“By using intermediaries, Russia seeks to cover its tracks. Russian sabotage operations aim to influence public opinion and the sense of public safety, and to overwhelm the authorities in target countries”.

Russia’s embassy in Stockholm did not respond to a request for comment.

Sea Light’s Powell said acts of sabotage against subsea cables are likely to continue.

“It appears that this is something of a recent trend, and China and Russia and others will do this because they will essentially calculate that the response will not be bad enough”, he said.

United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents (ICE) have arrested a Palestinian graduate student who played a prominent role in last year’s pro-Palestinian protests at New York’s Columbia University, the student workers ‘ union said on Sunday.

The student, Mahmoud Khalil at the university’s School of International and Public Affairs, was arrested at his university residence on Saturday, the Student Workers of Columbia union said in a statement.

Khalil’s wife is a US citizen and he has a permanent residency green card, the union said. He remained in detention on Sunday. Khalil’s wife declined to comment through one of Khalil’s fellow students.

Khalil’s lawyer, Amy Greer, told the Associated Press news agency that she spoke by phone with one of the ICE agents during the arrest, who said they were acting on State Department orders to revoke Khalil’s student visa. Informed by the lawyer that Khalil was in the country as a permanent resident with a green card, the agent said they were revoking that too, according to the lawyer.

Greer said the authorities declined to tell Khalil’s wife, who is eight months pregnant, whether he was accused of committing a crime. Khalil has since been transferred to an immigration detention facility in Elizabeth, New Jersey.

“We have not been able to get any more details about why he is being detained”, Greer told the AP. “This is a clear escalation. The administration is following through on its threats”.

The arrest appeared to be among the first known actions under President Donald Trump’s pledge to deport international students who joined the protests against Israel’s war in Gaza that swept college campuses last year. His administration has claimed participants forfeited their rights to remain in the country by supporting Hamas, which is designated as a ‘ terror ‘ organisation by the US.

The move has been described as an attack on First Amendment freedoms.

Khalil, an Algerian citizen of Palestinian origin, has been one of the school administrators ‘ lead negotiators of the pro-Palestinian student protesters, some of whom set up a tent encampment on a Columbia lawn last year and seized control of an academic building for several hours in April before police entered the campus to arrest them. Khalil was not in the group that occupied the building but was a mediator between Columbia provosts and the protesters.

The protesting students called for Columbia’s divestment from companies with ties to Israel, a ceasefire and an end to the war that killed nearly 50, 000 Palestinians and turned the enclave into rubble after nonstop bombardment. The US provided the bulk of the ammunition for the war.

Columbia said last year that it would consider expediting some of the students ‘ demands through its investments committee.

Rights groups have accused Israel of committing genocide in Gaza – home to 2.3 million people. Despite a ceasefire in place since January 19, Israel has blocked the entry of any aid into Gaza since March 1, drawing condemnation from rights groups and aid agencies.

The October 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel and subsequent Israeli military offensive on Gaza led to months of pro-Palestinian protests that roiled US college campuses.

At least 1, 100 people were killed in the Hamas attack and some 240 people were taken captive. Most of the captives have been released as part of truce deals. A new round of truce talks will resume in the Qatari capital, Doha, on Monday.

Targeted by the government

A spokesperson for Columbia said the school was barred by law from sharing information about individual students.

The Department of Homeland Security and the State Department, which oversees the country’s visa system, did not respond to questions from the news agencies. It was not immediately clear on what grounds ICE agents arrested Khalil. The ICE comes under the US Department of Homeland Security.

In an interview with the Reuters news agency a few hours before his arrest on Saturday about the Trump administration’s criticism of Columbia, Khalil said he was concerned that he was being targeted by the government for speaking to the media.

The Trump administration on Friday said it had cancelled government contracts and grants worth about $400m to Columbia University. The government said the cuts and the student deportation efforts are due to “anti-Semitic” harassment at and near Columbia’s Manhattan campus.

“What more can Columbia do to appease Congress or the government now”? Khalil said before his arrest, noting that Columbia had twice called in police to arrest protesters and had disciplined many pro-Palestinian students and staff, suspending some.

“They basically silenced anyone supporting Palestine on campus and this was not enough. Clearly, Trump is using the protesters as a scapegoat for his wider agenda]of] fighting and attacking higher education and the Ivy League education system”.

In response to the announced grant cuts on Friday, Columbia’s interim president, Katrina Armstrong, said the school was committed to combating anti-Semitism and was “working with the federal government to address their legitimate concerns”.

Protesting students have denied the charges of anti-Semitism.

‘ This is only the beginning ‘

Maryam Alwan, a Palestinian American senior at Columbia who has protested alongside Khalil, said the Trump administration was dehumanising Palestinians.

“I am horrified for my dear friend Mahmoud, who is a legal resident, and I am horrified that this is only the beginning”, she said.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said last week that international students who support Hamas, which the US has designated a “terrorist” organisation, face visa revocation and deportation.

On Thursday, Columbia issued a revised protocol for how students and school staff should handle ICE agents seeking to enter private school property.

The school said ICE agents without a judicial arrest warrant may be allowed to enter its private property in “exigent circumstances”, which it did not specify.

“By allowing ICE on campus, Columbia is surrendering to the Trump administration’s assault on universities across the country and sacrificing international students to protect its finances”, the Student Workers of Columbia said in its statement.

Montreal, Canada – Canada has its next prime minister.

Mark Carney has been elected as the new head of the governing Liberal Party, replacing Justin Trudeau in the midst of historic tensions and fears of a trade war with the United States.

An economist and former central banker, Carney will be sworn-in as prime minister in the coming days.

He is making his first foray into Canadian politics at the country’s highest level – and with a federal election looming.

He is also taking the helm of a party that, after years of declining support and criticism over its handling of social and economic issues, is riding a newfound wave of political momentum.

“I will work day and night with one purpose, which is to build a stronger Canada for everyone”, Carney said in his victory speech on Sunday evening after securing 85.9 percent of the vote&nbsp, on the first ballot.

But just who is Mark Carney? What policies does he plan to pursue, and will he be able to boost the Liberals ‘ fortunes in the upcoming federal election against a strong Conservative Party?

Oxford grad, central banker

Born in Canada’s Northwest Territories and raised in the western province of Alberta, Carney has presented himself as a political outsider who can steer Canada through a period of economic turmoil and uncertainty.

The country has been roiled by US President Donald Trump’s steep tariffs on Canadian products, which came into effect on March 4. Fears of a recession have fuelled a sense of Canadian nationalism and a desire for steady leadership in Ottawa.

Carney holds degrees from Harvard and Oxford universities and spent over a decade at the investment firm Goldman Sachs.

More recently, he served as the chair of Brookfield Asset Management, where he also led the company’s “transition investing” – an effort to promote investments that align with global climate goals.

But it is his banking experience in times of crisis that Carney and his supporters say best demonstrates his ability to help Canada weather the Trump storm.

The 59-year-old began his tenure as the governor of the Bank of Canada amid the global financial crisis of 2008, and he was credited with taking quick and decisive actions that helped spare Canada from a more serious downturn.

In 2013, Carney left to take the helm of the Bank of England, where he remained until 2020 – the year the United Kingdom formally left the European Union.

There, too, he was recognised as having minimised the effects of Brexit – though his assessment that a break with the EU posed a risk to the British economy drew the ire of conservatives who were in favour of leaving the bloc.

“He was an innovative and inventive central banker”, said Will Hutton, an author, columnist and president of the UK’s Academy of Social Sciences.

“He understood that actually, central banks have a job to make capitalism as legitimate as possible by ironing out its worst proclivities. And he was appalled by Brexit, which he thought was self-defeating”, Hutton told Al Jazeera.

“But he managed to organise the Bank of England’s behaviours so the fallout from it was less disastrous than it could have been”.

Lack of political experience

While few dispute Carney’s economic credentials, his lack of experience in electoral politics has raised questions.

He previously served as an economic adviser to Trudeau, who resigned amid widespread anger over his government’s handling of a housing crisis and rising costs of living.

But Carney has never run for political office before, and he spent much of the Liberal leadership campaign introducing himself to Canadians.

“He’s someone who’s been behind the scenes, an adviser”, said Daniel Beland, a political science professor at McGill University who described Carney as a “technocrat on steroids”.

Carney has laid out broad promises since he launched his campaign, including reining in government spending, investing more in housing, diversifying Canada’s trading partners and putting a temporary cap on immigration.

A former United Nations Special Envoy on Climate Action and Finance, Carney is also a major proponent of the idea that the private sector must take a leadership role in tackling the climate crisis and getting to net-zero emissions.

“I know how to manage crises. I know how to build strong economies”, he said during a debate against the other Liberal leadership hopefuls last month.

“I have a plan, a plan that puts more money back in your pockets, a plan that makes our companies more competitive, a plan that builds a strong economy that works for you”.

Beland told Al Jazeera that the Liberal leadership contest largely failed to test Carney because his main opponent was longtime friend and former Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland. The pair did not attack each other much during the race.

“That’s not the best test for someone who has no political experience and will then have to basically go into the lion’s den”, Beland said, referring to this year’s federal election, where Carney will face fiery opposition leaders such as the Conservatives ‘ Pierre Poilievre and Yves-Francois Blanchet of the Bloc Quebecois.

‘ Consummate insider ‘

Carney’s attempt to paint himself as an outsider has been challenged as well.

His time as a Liberal Party adviser, coupled with his experience atop the global financial world, make him “a consummate insider and a consummate elite”, said Canadian political analyst and journalist David Moscrop.

“At the same time, he’s an accomplished policy expert, a renowned and respected mainstream economic thinker. And if that’s your sort of thing, then this is pretty much the cream of the crop”, Moscrop told Al Jazeera.

“But if it’s not your sort of thing, then he represents what some on the left and some on the right see as a kind of global economic elite consensus that is oppressing day-to-day people”.

Poilievre and his Conservative Party have tapped into that feeling of public anger and anxiety over rising prices to lambaste the Liberal government over the past few years – and they have continued to use that line of attack against Carney.

Poilievre – a politician known for combative rhetoric during his two decades in Canada’s Parliament – has hammered the economist as “just like Justin” in an effort to tie him to the outgoing prime minister’s most unpopular policies.

That includes a Liberal carbon pricing programme that Carney once supported but recently promised to scrap amid strong public opposition. Poilievre has taken to calling him “Carbon Tax Carney” and admonishing the “Carney-Trudeau Liberals”.

The Conservatives have also accused Carney of lying when he recently said he was not at Brookfield Asset Management – his former firm – when it formally decided to move its headquarters from Toronto to New York.

The move to the US, Conservative lawmaker Michael Barrett said, amounted to “taking jobs away from Canadians”.

A spokesperson for Carney’s campaign rejected the criticism, telling local media outlets that the decision did not affect Canadian jobs.

In addition, Carney has faced calls from opposition parties to comply with conflict-of-interest rules that Canadian lawmakers are subjected to.

Since he has never been elected, Carney is not yet required to comply with those processes, which include the disclosure of private interests to an ethics commissioner and moving his financial holdings into a blind trust.

“If Mark Carney has the privilege of becoming prime minister, he would not merely comply with all applicable ethics rules and guidelines, but surpass them”, his campaign told the Toronto Star on Wednesday amid the criticism.

“The office of the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner has already been contacted ahead of time to help ensure all appropriate steps can be initiated right away, and assets would be immediately placed in a blind trust”.

Trump factor

But according to Beland, Canadians are currently less concerned about domestic issues than by the uncertainty surrounding the Canada-US relationship and Trump’s tariffs.

Indeed, fears of a trade war with Washington have helped bolster support for the Liberals over the past few weeks. Polls show that the party has narrowed what was once a 26-percentage-point deficit behind the Conservatives.

The future of Canada-US ties appears poised to be the central question of the upcoming election, and Canadians are evenly divided on the question of which leader is better suited to handle the US president.

An Angus Reid Institute poll published this week showed Carney with an edge of 9 percentage points. An estimated 43 percent of respondents said they trusted him most to deal with Trump, compared with 34 percent who chose Poilievre.

“They will have to come up with a very clear strategy about how to take]Carney] on. Just empty slogans probably won’t work”, the professor said of the Conservatives.

“You need seriousness in times of crisis, and Carney is the incarnation of seriousness. He’s an elite technocrat, while Poilievre likes slogans and to mock people”, added Beland.

“]Poilievre’s approach] might sound a bit silly in the context of this foreign policy and trade crisis triggered by Trump”.

Meanwhile, Carney has accused Poilievre of echoing Trump’s talking points.

“]Poilievre] worships the man. He uses his language. He’s not the right person for our country at this crucial time”, Carney said during last month’s debate.

The Conservative leader, in turn, has accused Carney and the Liberals of using the threat of tariffs to distract from their record over the past decade.

“If Carney-Trudeau policies did this much economic harm before tariffs, imagine the devastation they would cause after tariffs”, Poilievre said during a recent “Canada First” rally in the capital, Ottawa.

“Who’s the worst person to stand up to Donald Trump? Pierre Poilievre. He worships the man”. @MarkJCarney pic. twitter.com/QfF0tJJ8gv

‘ Meet the moment ‘

With Carney now taking the reins of the party, it remains to be seen if the Liberals can maintain their recent momentum.

Whether they can overcome a sense of “incumbent fatigue” is also unclear. Federal parties typically do not stay in government beyond a decade in Canada, and the Liberals have been in power since 2015.

“In many Western, G7 countries, people are done with the incumbents, and they want a change”, said journalist Catherine Tsalikis, who wrote a biography of Freeland, the former Trudeau deputy who was Carney’s main challenger in the leadership race.

Tsalikis told Al Jazeera she believes most of the Liberal cabinet coalesced around Carney because he represented “the best chance of looking like the party is differentiating itself from the Justin Trudeau brand, or looking like they’re making a change”.

“How different will he be from Trudeau? That’s an open question”, she said.

According to Moscrop, the political analyst, Carney may not be “the person to meet the moment”, in part because a majority of Canadians are responding to a “populist, angry tone that seems to confirm their anger and frustration and anxiety”.

Affordability remains a top concern for Canadian voters, alongside healthcare and housing.

“That doesn’t mean that those who are peddling alternative solutions aren’t themselves completely bogus. Pierre Poilievre is also a consummate insider and elite doing a faux-populist schtick that ultimately, I think, is going to lead him into ruin when he can’t deliver”, Moscrop said.

“But at least its tone matches the tone of a population that is struggling to maintain a positive bank balance while paying the rent and feeding themselves and their family”.

Ultimately, Carney’s own political fortunes may be tied to what his party’s expectations are for the next election.

The vote must take place by October 20, but the Liberals could choose to call it sooner.

If they can hold the Conservatives to a minority government and emerge as the official opposition, that could possibly be enough to be labelled a victory for a party that was once headed for a resounding defeat.

But if the Liberals fall short of that, Carney’s time as party leader could be short-lived.

“If you’re not at least the leader of the opposition, then you probably have to go on day one. You’re done”, said Moscrop.