US President Donald Trump is set to formally announce the first charter of his so-called “Board of Peace”, a body for resolving international conflicts with a $1-billion price tag for permanent membership.The board, which Trump will launch with what has been billed as a signing ceremony in Davos, Switzerland on Thursday, was originally conceived to oversee the rebuilding of Gaza. But a draft of the charter seen by AFP does not appear to limit its role to the Palestinian territory.- What will it do? -The Board of Peace will be chaired by Trump, according to its founding charter sent to countries invited to participate.It is “an international organization that seeks to promote stability, restore dependable and lawful governance, and secure enduring peace in areas affected or threatened by conflict”, reads its preamble.It will “undertake such peace-building functions in accordance with international law”, it adds.- Who will run it? -Trump will be chairman but also “separately serve” as representative of the United States.”The chairman shall have exclusive authority to create, modify or dissolve subsidiary entities as necessary or appropriate to fulfil the Board of Peace’s mission,” the document states.He will pick members of an executive board to be “leaders of global stature” to “serve two-year terms, subject to removal by the chairman”.The charter says the chairman can be replaced only in case of “voluntary resignation or as a result of incapacity”.A US official confirmed that Trump could keep the chairmanship, even after leaving the White House, “until he resigns it”, although a future US president can appoint a different US representative.- Who can be a member? -Member states must be invited by the US president and will be represented by their head of state or government.Each member “shall serve a term of no more than three years”, the charter says.But “the three-year membership term shall not apply to member states that contribute more than USD $1,000,000,000 in cash funds to the Board of Peace within the first year of the charter’s entry into force”, it adds.The US official said that membership itself “does not carry any mandatory funding obligation beyond whatever a state or partner chooses to contribute voluntarily”.The board will convene annual meetings with decisions by a majority vote, with the chairman breaking any tie.- Who’s on the executive board? -The executive board will be chaired by Trump and include seven members:- US Secretary of State Marco Rubio- Steve Witkoff, Trump’s special negotiator- Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law- Tony Blair, former UK prime minister- Marc Rowan, billionaire US financier- Ajay Banga, World Bank president- Robert Gabriel, loyal Trump aide on the National Security Council- Which countries are invited? -Some 35 world leaders out of 50 or so invited have agreed to join the board so far, a senior White House official told reporters Wednesday. Dozens of countries and leaders have said they have received an invitation, including close US allies but also adversaries.China has been invited but a foreign ministry spokesman said Wednesday Beijing would defend the international system with the United Nations “at its core”.Both Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky have been invited, despite Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine.A number of governments immediately said they would join.Several Trump allies are in, including Hungary’s nationalist Prime Minister Viktor Orban — who said he was headed to Davos to attend the ceremony, according to a pro-government media outlet Wednesday — Argentine President Javier Milei and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.Azerbaijan’s autocratic President Ilham Aliyev will also have a spot. And Kazakhstan’s President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev said he, too, would attend Thursday’s ceremony.The United Arab Emirates, a close US partner, also said it would join, as did Egypt. Canada said it would take part but explicitly ruled out paying the $1-billion fee for permanent membership.- Who won’t be involved? -Longtime US ally France has indicated it will not join. The response sparked an immediate threat from Trump to slap sky-high tariffs on French wine.Zelensky said it would be “very hard” to be a member of a council alongside Russia, and diplomats were “working on it”.Britain echoed the sentiment, saying it was “concerned” that Putin had been invited.”Putin is the aggressor in an illegal war against Ukraine, and he has shown time and time again he is not serious about peace,” said a Downing Street spokesperson.Norway, which has become the target of Trump’s ire after he was snubbed for the Nobel Peace Prize, has also said it will not join and that the proposal “raises a number of questions”.The charter says the board enters into force “upon expression of consent to be bound by three States”.burs/jj/st/phz

The Syrian government’s attempt to wrest back control of Kurdish-held areas has thrown into doubt the fate of thousands of suspected Islamic State group jihadists detained there, with Western observers worried many could take advantage of the chaos to escape.The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces spearheaded the battle against IS in Syria, backed by a US-led coalition, after it declared a “caliphate” in swathes of Syria and neighbouring Iraq in 2014.Almost seven years after they captured the last patch of that proto-state, the Kurds until this week held thousands of men in jails, and tens of thousands of women and children from their families in camps in northeast Syria. These prisons and camps “are hotbeds of radicalism”, said Laurence Bindner, a specialist of radicalisation online.US general Michael Kurilla three years ago warned of an IS “army in detention” in Syria and Iraq that, if freed, could “pose a great threat”.The largest of the Syrian IS detention camps, Al-Hol, is home to more than 24,000 people — around 15,000 Syrians, 3,500 Iraqis and 6,200 other foreigners, the camp’s director told AFP in December. Foreign women and children are held in a high-security section.The army of Syria’s Islamist-led government on Wednesday moved into the vast detention camp, after Kurdish forces withdrew a day earlier to defend their cities before a ceasefire was then announced.The latest truce opens the way for further talks on a deal to integrate the Kurdish de facto autonomous administration and its forces into the Syrian state.- ‘Opportunity to exploit’ -In Syria, the Kurds have repeatedly called on countries to repatriate their citizens from their detention facilities.Baghdad has accelerated repatriations.But Western governments have generally allowed home only a trickle, fearing security threats after a string of deadly IS attacks in Western cities, including shootings and suicide bombings in Paris that killed 130 people in 2015.A Western security official said the situation in Syria was “evolving very quickly” and they were “assessing the impact on the camps”. “We can’t rule out escapes,” the source said, before the army took over Al-Hol.On Monday, the Syrian army said the SDF released IS detainees from a prison in the northeastern town of Shadadi, while the Kurds said they lost control of the facility after an attack by Damascus.Any mass escape — with detainees either “exploiting security gaps” or being “deliberately allowed to leave” — would be a worst-case scenario, said Thomas Renard, research director at the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism (ICCT) based in The Hague.”This solution — of provisional detention facilities, without trial, without prospects — was never going to be sustainable in a highly volatile region,” he said.If detainees escaped, “we can imagine that some would try to keep a low profile”, Renard said.But others “would no doubt return to IS or another jihadist group, and that would be bad for Syria, for the region, and for global security”, he added.A Western security source said in November that the jihadist group’s agenda still included getting back IS fighters in jail. Bindner said pro-IS social media channels were abuzz with questions about the fate of the IS detainees.”For IS, it’s clearly an opportunity to seek to exploit,” she said.”Even if just a few dozen or hundreds of prisoners get out and join the roughly 3,000 IS fighters in Syria, that gives them a boost in strength and morale,” she added.”It could bolster their insurgency,” she said, even if no proto-state would likely be re-established.- Detainees ‘sick, weak’  -Around 2,000 of the alleged IS combatants in custody — and an estimated 8,000 detained women and children — in northeast Syria are foreigners, that is not Syrian or Iraqi, according to US figures from June.Among them for example is Shamima Begum, who joined IS as a teenager and whom the United Kingdom stripped of her British nationality.Lilla Schumicky-Logan, joint director of GCERF, a global fund that works to prevent violent extremism, said there had been no “overall assessment on how radicalised people are” in Syria’s IS jails and camps.Among the foreign women held in the camps, many have repented and asked to go home, she said.As for the suspected IS fighters in prisons, “a lot of them have been there for six to seven years. They are now sick, weak, suffering from tuberculosis”, she said.”How capable are they to pick up a gun and go and fight? I think we really need to ask this question.”